My brother and his wife live in Montana, and a few months ago they acquired an old wooden boxcar that had been used as a cabin. They finally got it moved to their property, where they also plan to use it as a cabin. Getting it to their wooded lot was a real chore. They haven’t been able to find out much about its origins. All they know is that it’s all wood, including the frame, and it has some faded lettering that says “Northern Pacific”.
Anyway, they sent me an email detailing the move, and I thought it was interesting so I’m posting it here:
Yesterday was the big day, transferring the old boxcar from it’s location in Springdale to our property on Stephen’s Hill. What a mixture of stress and excitement! Over the past few weeks we’ve had the excavation and grading work done, had two massive loads of gravel delivered ( 24 cubic yards! ), got that leveled, built a rock-solid foundation out of railroad ties, dug out the dirt two feet deep from around the boxcar so the forklift could get under it, as well as removing a fence and numerous tree branches from the yard in which the boxcar was sitting. All this in addition to the previous work of stripping the whole “boxcar building”, as well as another building for the studio, down to the bare walls, then dismantling those walls and roofs and moving them out to our place.
As you might imagine, the boxcar itself was way too big to move, even for us, without some heavy equipment, so we finally decided that it was a job best left to the professionals. Although we discussed it with the contractor back at the beginning of September, the soonest he could schedule it in was the 19th of this month. This was both a good and a bad thing. It did give us the time we needed to prepare the site for its arrival, but it also greatly increased the chances of bad weather when the time came. As any of you who’ve been to our property know, even a moderate rain can make the road down all but impassable.
Sure enough, at the beginning of the week the forecast called for rain starting on Wednesday and continuing straight on through to this weekend. It arrived as predicted Wednesday morning, but only lasted into the night. Thursday was dry ( albeit cold! ) and windy, which in this case was a good thing, as it would help to dry things up. By this time the forecast had changed to “dry through late Friday night”.
Finally, the big day arrived. An hour and a half before we were supposed to meet the contractor out in Springdale, he called to ask how the weather was out this way. He’s from Livingston, which is west of here, and it was raining and blowing pretty hard there. Even worse, the forklift he was to pick up was even further west, out in Belgrade, and the guy there told him it was just about blowing traffic off the highway, and the rain was turning to snow! I assured him it was dry here, and the air completely still. So it was a go, although a nervous one.
We arrived in Springdale to find that the weather was pretty questionable there too. Not too bad, but windier and wetter than we would have liked. Nevertheless, things went smoothly once we got started. The “forklift” they brought was humongous! It wasn’t your regular kind of forklift; rather it was one of those huge earthmoving machines that is articulated in the middle, for turning in very tight places, and has a large front loader bucket that can handle several tons of rock and dirt in one scoop. Only the scoop had been exchanged for a massive fork attachment with six-foot forks. Each tire was nearly as tall as a person. Our little 8’ x 30’ boxcar had already started looking smaller, as we removed the room additions. Now, sitting in front of this behemoth it looked downright tiny!
Since we had already cut it in half across the middle, it was child’s play for this monster to lift from its resting place of seventy-plus years. The two halves were each loaded onto separate trailers, with a third trailer for hauling the behemoth itself. This trailer was ten feet wide, yet the tractor’s tires stuck out almost another foot off each side.
As the boxcar halves were being lifted, I was at last afforded the chance to see the underside, which until now had mostly remained a mystery. We knew there were some beams running lengthwise, that seemed in fairly good condition, but not much else. Turns out there were several large eye-bolts sticking out from the bottom of some of the beams, as well as a couple of large iron hooks. This didn’t bode well for a level landing on the foundation we had prepared. Well, there was nothing to do but wait till we got out there. If necessary I would cut notches in the wooden foundation for the bolts to rest in.
Once we headed back toward Big Timber and beyond, the weather got considerably better. The drive out to Reed Point was uneventful, and after a brief pause to make sure the forklift on it’s trailer would fit under the overpass ( it did, by about two inches! ), we headed on up the hill. I suggested they off load the forklift at the top, and just “walk” it down, and they agreed. This turned out to be the smartest move of the day.
Although our “driveway” is only a mile and a quarter, it took nearly an hour to make the trip. The first hairpin turn, which I had thought would be the most difficult part, wasn’t much of a problem at all. They just took it as wide as possible, and had three feet to spare without going over the side. The second turned proved more difficult, as they had to cut in a bit more, and the drop was on the inside of that curve. On the way back up, I noticed the trailer’s tires had been hanging out halfway off the edge! Most of the rest of the way down wasn’t bad, other than having to creep along at a snail’s pace to keep the loads from rocking off the trailers. Until the turn at the bottom, that is, by the culvert.
Here there was no room to turn out wide, so the trailer’s tires were destined to run afoul of a couple of large tree stumps on the inside of the turn. This proved to cause the most trouble of the whole trip. Luckily, since the forklift had been positioned between the two trucks just in case of trouble, they were able to maneuver even this turn, with some skillful ingenuity. The truck went around as far as possible, then the forklift picked up the back of the trailer and carried it sideways as far as it would go, then the truck would move forward again, another foot or two, and again the forklift stepped in with a massive helping hand. This procedure was repeated seven or eight times, until the truck and trailer finally made it around the stumps! Driving that road with our little mini-van, or even the Bronco and a sixteen-foot trailer, it seemed like a pretty good-sized road. Who knew!
The off-loading took a bit more fancy maneuvering, but all-in-all went rather smoothly. Thank God they brought that giant machine, though, because most of the work took place on a slope. Nevertheless, they did get it positioned perfectly. All the bolts and hooks and things turned out not to be a problem, and in fact lead to an unexpected blessing. Once the boxcar halves were over the foundation, we realized that by simply moving them both out toward the ends a couple extra feet on each side, they would slip perfectly into place, with all the extra protuberances falling between the railroad ties. This gives us about five extra feet of space between the two halves, thus expanding our floor space by forty square feet. With a building this small, every little bit extra is more than welcome!
I liked the bits about the forklift lifting and shifting the trailers around the bends … who hasn’t done that with a dolly shifting furniture … ooh, my back 