OK. Here's what I know about shipping a privately owned MV by rail.
I tried this 10 months ago with a 5 ton tractor and a 5 ton dumper. The dumper was in California and the tractor was in Pensylvania. I'm in Denver.
I called the major rail companies. CSX and NP called me back. Nice folks from both companies dealt with me in a very informative and helpful way. After some conversation they tried to guide me to the best and cheapest solutions. I say solutions because there is more than one way to skin this cat and it all depends on where your freight starts and terminates.
You CAN break a deuce and a half down and fit it in a standard width container. Roof off, mirrors off, stack removed and windshield folded down. You cannot do this with a 5 ton. The 5 ton is too wide to fit in a standard width container.
You CAN fit deuces into a box type car. But the railroad will NOT load the boxcar for you as this is not a standard type item for the boxcar. You would have to pay for an independent loading company to load the boxcar. A Deuce and a Half will NOT fit through the door of the boxcar.
Flatcars have become undesired by the major railroads. They prefer container(intermodal), box freight, tank, coal and vehicle cars. To load a flatcar you have to meet it at a flatcar ramp or load it by crane or huge forklift AND restrain the load. There was a flatcar ramp 30 miles for where the tractor was in PA but the closest one to Denver was in Iowa. Again a no go. So I could load in PA onto a flat after driving or towing the truck to the ramp. But I would have to unload in Denver with a crane. Too expensive. This mode got to over $6000 and I quit asking.
The best prices were for a vehicle car configured for large vehicles. I would have to remove the mirrors on the 5 ton's. One could fit 2 and a half 5 tons in one of these cars. So basically two 5 tons. It could be loaded in PA at the same place where the flatcar ramp was. It could be unloaded in Denver at the railyard here. But the vehicle had to load and unload entirely under it's own power. And I had to pay to have it loaded, unloaded and restrained. The price for this was $5400 from PA to Denver and $4800 from CA to Denver not including the load, unload and restraint. Load, Unload and restraint was supposed to cost $300 each end or $600 total. So not at all cost effective compared to truck shipping.
I got a quote to haul the Dumper back from CA to DEN and it was $4200 on a Semi truck low boy trailer combo.
All too expensive so I spent the time and drove the Dumper home from CA.