Freight cars

[Andrew Peters]

OK with all this talk about US railroading

And being another newbie to the Darkside Can I ask a silly question.

 

 

How can I tell the era of freight cars . Is there an easy way?

[Nile]

A US freight car should have the date it was built, or last rebuilt, printed on its side.That should give you a clue.

[Allegheny1600]

Hi Andrew,

As Neil says, US freight cars will have a "Built: M,YY" date somewhere along the lower part of the bodywork usually on R/H side of the car, often the car will also show "New: M, YY" - if these date differ then you can tell the car has been rebuilt!

There is also (usually) a "40 year rule" whereby a car will only be allowed to run on interchange service (between neighbouring roads!) for up to 40 years, after that presumably the car must be scrapped. This can explain why you can still see some cars with very old liveries referring to long dead railroads still running today, although things like roofwalks, high level brake wheels etc will have long ago been moved or removed altogether.

Cheers,

John E.

[298]

Bigger and longer cars are obviously newer than shorter and smaller ones, these two are from the same road but the red 40' one was re[ainted March 1958, whilst the green 50' is an early 1970's design and from one of the last batches built for SP&S before they merged to form BN. Two completely differenc tcars, and hardly a decade between them:

 

 

 

Roofwalks were banned from new build cars in october 1966, and had to be removed from all cars by 1977- although a few retained full height ladders after this date and ones that never left their home road may have kept them.

 

Taking PFE Reefer cars for example, a rough history of the car types is as follows:

 

36', all wood Ice bunker reefer

40', all wood

40', wood sides, metal ends

40' all metal (mid 1930's)

50' all metal, built up to 1957 and out of service by 1971.

 

Then generators were used for cooling instead of ice:

 

50' Mechanical Reefer (1958)

57' Mechanical Reefer (1966-first batches had roofwalks)

 

Confusing...? Just look at the date on the car...!!

[alastairq]

Hi..yes , all the above is useful....

 

 

era-wise.....ignoring pre-WW1......a typical box car/era can be judged by length.

 

for example.....for steam, and first generation diesel [1920/30's...to late 1950's....]....then typical car length was 40 foot....with roof walks and high brake wheels.....earlier examples having the brake wheel on a vertical stand ....later types having the brake wheel horizontal on the end, but high up.

 

With certain exceptions, pre-WW2 boxcars were mostly wood....but could be seen very much later on....[and some were still made in wood during WW2]

 

 

so...40-footers, with roof walks, are pretty much ok for steam/early diesel...[Geeps 7&9, etc]....50 footers came in roughly in line with second generation diesels...steam had gone by then, generally speaking.....so for 50 footers we're talking the mid '60's onwards.

 

 

the next major change is as mentioned above, the abolition of roof walks..[and lowering of brake wheel heights]......

[dave1905]

era-wise.....ignoring pre-WW1......a typical box car/era can be judged by length.

 

for example.....for steam, and first generation diesel [1920/30's...to late 1950's....]....then typical car length was 40 foot....with roof walks and high brake wheels.....earlier examples having the brake wheel on a vertical stand ....later types having the brake wheel horizontal on the end, but high up.

 

Generally true sorta.

 

With certain exceptions, pre-WW2 boxcars were mostly wood....but could be seen very much later on....[and some were still made in wood during WW2]

 

Not so much. Prior to WW1 most cars were wood. After WW1 the majority of cars were steel, and virtually all had steel underframes. Steel hoppers became the norm before WW1. During WW1 the US government nationalized the railroads, the USRA, and both steel and wood sheathed cars were produced. By the late 1920's and early 1930's all steel was the norm. Between 1942 and about 1944 many cars were steel cars but with wood sheathing (many were later converted to all steel).

 

so...40-footers, with roof walks, are pretty much ok for steam/early diesel...[Geeps 7&9, etc]....50 footers came in roughly in line with second generation diesels...steam had gone by then, generally speaking.....so for 50 footers we're talking the mid '60's onwards.

 

50 foot cars were used for special purposes when 40 ft cars were common, the same as 60 ft cars were used for special purposes when 50 ft cars were common. So there wer 50 ft cars in the 40's and 50's, its just they weren't the norm. By the 1970's the 50 ft car was the norm and 40 ft cars were rare, just as by the 1970's the 50 ton hopper was pretty much going or gone and the 70-90-100 ton cars was becoming the norm.

 

the next major change is as mentioned above, the abolition of roof walks..[and lowering of brake wheel heights]......

And new car types. Covered hoppers replacing boxcars for hauling grain, rotary dump gons becoming common for coal, spine and stack cars replacing piggyback flats, 60 to 80 ft cars becoming more common.

 

Many US cars can last decades in an old paint scheme. In 1980 I found a old 40 ft boxcar being used for company service material that was last painted the month and year I was born, about 25 years earlier.

 

Good news is it gives you a lot of flexibility.

Bad news is you have a lot of flexibility.

[alastairq]

thanks Dave..yep, I realise there were and are too many variables to generalise......but as a beginner in US modelling, it is very hard when going over the boxes on a dealer's shelf, to decide whether a certain freight car is ''out of context'' with one's intended layout idea?

 

If I had a shelf switching layout...set in the 40's or 50's ...then I'd stick with 40 footers..[until I'd studied the subject a bit more intensely]....and avoid anything without roof walks..

 

If I chose the 60's [my favorite] I'd mix 'n match a bit more...the 70's would see me kitbashing for individuality, chopping roof walks.....and so on.

 

my comments regarding wood box cars and WW2...were general...and when one looks inside a box at a dealers.....the sight of wood planking might better set the era???

 

 

so..what do I do with my kitbashed PBNE mill gon, [built following an article in one of the mags, amny years ago..]..it's over 60 feet long......is it too new for my SW's....???

 

 

and 20 years ago, I bought for coppers, a bag full of Thrall all-door boxes [lifelike???], as used by the lumber industry..the intention being , of making chassis with trucks, etc....I still have that bag...it is bio-degrading fast.....what of the thralls now???

[alastairq]

and 20 years ago, I bought for coppers, a bag full of Thrall all-door boxes [lifelike???], as used by the lumber industry..the intention being , of making chassis with trucks, etc....I still have that bag...it is bio-degrading fast.....what of the thralls now???

[Andrew Peters]

Thanks guys, I think I have a bit of a better idea now.

Will have to decide on the area now and go from there, depending on what I find.

I think I'm going to aim for early - mid 60's as I love fifties and sixties cars and trucks as well.

 

 

[dave1905]

so..what do I do with my kitbashed PBNE mill gon, [built following an article in one of the mags, amny years ago..]..it's over 60 feet long......is it too new for my SW's....???

 

I'd load it with mill products. The RDG built 60 ft gons in 1929.

 

You can buy Official Railway Equipment Registers (ORER)for your era (either in CD or a real hardcopy one on e-Bay). They were published quarterly since the early 1900's and list every car in interchange service in N America and their capacities and general dimensions. While they won't tell you the make and model of a car they will tell you that ATSF 123456 was a 40 ft boxcar with 6 ft wide doors and that it was in service as of the publishing of the ORER.

[shortliner]

Andrew - oddly enough a similar question has been asked recently on another site I frequent - will this help?

http://www.worldtrad...o_Rail_Cars.asp#

[Glorious NSE]

thanks Dave..yep, I realise there were and are too many variables to generalise......but as a beginner in US modelling, it is very hard when going over the boxes on a dealer's shelf, to decide whether a certain freight car is ''out of context'' with one's intended layout idea?

 

If I had a shelf switching layout...set in the 40's or 50's ...then I'd stick with 40 footers..[until I'd studied the subject a bit more intensely]....and avoid anything without roof walks..

 

The difficulty of such generalisation is that there are exceptions & some of them might be quite large. I'm mostly a 1970s modeller and i've a fair few 40' boxcars in the fleet, some are still with roofwalks fitted, some of them are even in paint jobs that did not exist until the 1970s - if you think about it if you're a 40's/50's modeller there's 20 years worth of new liveries that could be applied to a 40' boxcar between the end of your era and a nominal end-of-1970s scrapping date (my impression being they were finally killed off by a combination of the IPD boxcar boom and the following heavy recession at the back end of the 70s - although even with that generalisation there are exceptions, SP had a brand new build of 40' boxcars delivered in the early 70s which are still around!)

 

I'm not saying it's not a valid way to proceed, but there are some heavy limitations.

 

and 20 years ago, I bought for coppers, a bag full of Thrall all-door boxes [lifelike???], as used by the lumber industry..the intention being , of making chassis with trucks, etc....I still have that bag...it is bio-degrading fast.....what of the thralls now???

 

Certainly a good car for the 1970s & into the 80s, and i'd suspect they are a 1960s development? I'm told they are not extinct yet but they must be pretty close. They were made prematurely obsolete in lumber service by the widespread acceptance of centerbeam cars in the 1980s.

[Andrew Peters]

Andrew - oddly enough a similar question has been asked recently on another site I frequent - will this help?

http://www.worldtrad...o_Rail_Cars.asp#

 

 

Thanks, more great help from the Darkside.

[highpeak]

This site has some useful information on freight car modelling, it's a bit earlier than your chose era, but many of the cars featured would still be around in the early 60s.

http://www.steamfreightcars.com/index.html

 

With that era, you sidestep the problems of removing running boards and so on, but you'd be surprised how many steel cars still had wooden running boards quite late on. I came across a picture of a Maine Central 40' boxcar built 1942 to the 1937 AAR design. The car was upgraded to 50 ton capacity in 1956 and got a new coat of paint, but retained its wooden running boards as late as 1967.

[shortliner]

Picked from a link by Gil Janus on the Switchers, Boxcars, "downtown"- help- it's got hold of me! thread

 

http://macrodyn.com/...ne-Freight_cars

[highpeak]

The development of steel running boards went something like this:

 

Late 20s: stamped steel brake steps introduced with some sort of pattern of projections to give a safe tread in slippery conditions

Mid 30s: Alan Wood Steel Co introduces diamond pattern steel plate. American Car and Foundry uses it on a batch of tank cars in 1934. The problem with the diamond plate is lack of drainage. In 1942 Wood introduce diamond plate with slots cut in it for drainage. Nevertheless, diamond plate is used more on tank cars than boxcars.

 

The big breakthrough came in 1938 when Apex introduced the Tri-lok design of brake step and running board. First application of this was a batch of 11 cars built for the Frisco (reported in Railway Age in March, 1938). Other companies (Blaw-Knox, Morton, US Gypsum) introduce similar products.

 

The AAR proposal to standardise on metal running boards was unanimously adopted effective Jan 1, 1944 but the deadline got pushed back twice because supply couldn't keep up with demand. The final deadline was April 1, 1947 for boxcars and September 1, 1947 for tank cars. Railroads still had the option to replace wooden running boards with wood if they chose.

 

Source: Railway Prototype Cyclopedia, volume 16, article by Ed Hawkins which includes some interesting trade journal ads.

[Gil Janus]

And here a couple of more Timelines

 

Via a Great Northern Empire History site

 

A Personal View Of History by John Nehrich

 

The first is more specific to the Great Northern, and the second is a really great timeline - includes some personal commentary, and New York and New England regional specific details, but is quite good. I highly recommend it. Covers car and locomotive introductions - really handy to know.

 

Gil, known as Bill somedays ... B)

[Glorious NSE]

Hiya Gil, that second one is really great - but there's exceptions to be found - for example:

 

1995Kaminski said all roller bearing trucks converted from plain-bearing trucks banned from interchange. (Chris Barkan said the reason was that the hot bearing detectors couldn't "see" them if they overheated.)

 

I shot this car in 2000 - if the reporting marks don't lie it's a private owner car so can't really be counted as "non interchange", yet still retains converted ex friction bearing trucks.

http://usrailroadpic...t/p8496820.html

 

I guess one possibility is the reporting marks do lie - it's a non interchange MOW car (on the Kankakee Beaverville & Southern) and they just haven't bothered to restencil it - but it was an interesting find. The livery is Illinois Central circa 1967-72 as well so an interesting survivor all round.

[dave1905]

Hiya Gil, that second one is really great - but there's exceptions to be found - for example:

 

1995Kaminski said all roller bearing trucks converted from plain-bearing trucks banned from interchange. (Chris Barkan said the reason was that the hot bearing detectors couldn't "see" them if they overheated.)

I shot this car in 2000 - if the reporting marks don't lie it's a private owner car so can't really be counted as "non interchange", yet still retains converted ex friction bearing trucks.

http://usrailroadpics.fotopic.net/p8496820.html

 

That's a roller bearing equipped car. It complies with the 1995 ban on plain bearings. They didn't outlaw the trucks, they outlawed the bearings.

[Glorious NSE]

It's got "roller bearing trucks converted from plain-bearing trucks" which is what is quoted as banned in 1995...

[Gil Janus]

As far as I know, if the car is not interchanged with another railroad, then it can still be used. That car may have been in some kind of captive service that kept it from being interchanged.

 

In Vermont for example, there is an 50 MW Electric Plant in Burlington, VT. It burns wood chips and scrap wood (bio-mass). It gets deliveries via truck and a dedicated train of wood chip cars. The cars are owned by the utility company, and spend their entire life in running from a wood transload facility and the plant. These are new 7000 cubic-foot (CF) wood chip cars (think really big gondolas/hoppers - see link for a photo). They stay on the one railroad, the New England Central, for their entire trip, and so far for their life. Now they could be interchanged, but they are in a captive service, and when they need to be worked on, the NECR does the work - so they never get to travel very far.

 

Burlington Electric - McNeil Station

 

Gil, known as Bill somedays ... B)

[Andrew Peters]

And here a couple of more Timelines

 

Via a Great Northern Empire History site

 

A Personal View Of History by John Nehrich

 

The first is more specific to the Great Northern, and the second is a really great timeline - includes some personal commentary, and New York and New England regional specific details, but is quite good. I highly recommend it. Covers car and locomotive introductions - really handy to know.

 

Gil, known as Bill somedays ...

 

The second link is great cheers

[dave1905]

It's got "roller bearing trucks converted from plain-bearing trucks" which is what is quoted as banned in 1995...

 

My bad, I misread the post I quoted.

 

Dave H.

[Jon Grant 4472]

The subject of freight car eras bamboozled me as well, when I first started out with american modelling, buying stuff that could never be seen at the same time and place, except in a museum.

 

The already-mentioned advice is sound, especially with the dates - if you can see the little s0ds - some US manufacturers even started putting era-related info on the sides and ends of the box to help the modeller, but this seems to have died the death recently.

 

As a general rule, 50 ft and longer boxcars in colourful liveries and no roofwalks aremore modern than 40 ft boxcars in red/brown with roofwalks. Wooden boxcars are usually older than steel boxcars. Rivetted side seams are older than welded, wood cabooses/cabeese older than colourful steel ones, small tankcars with centre dome that look like they could be out of Casey Jones older than longer/larger diameter tank cars.

 

With most of the above - there are exceptions

 

It's a bit of a minefield in the 50s,60s and 70s, with the older stuff running alongside newer cars, so photos research is recommended.

 

Jon

[highpeak]

While doing some research about a picture of an Atlantic and Western car that I posted, I came across some statistics printed in the February, 1979 Railroad Model Craftsman in an article about the IPD business. The stats come from the AAR.

In 1977 there were 281,663 general purpose boxcars in the USA. The numbers had been declining at about 5% per year, down from 639,200 in 1961.

Fifty foot cars accounted for 160,126 of the total, forty footers still made up about 138,000 with most of those having narrow doors (it doesn't define narrow, I'd imagine six or seven feet). The average age of the 40' cars was 23.1 years (narrow doors) and 16.7 (wide doors). The 50 footers were a bit newer on average, at 11.8 years. Sixty foot cars were comparitively rare in 1977, accounting for only 4,838 cars with an average age of 5.7 years.

Remember, this is general purpose cars, so stuff with, say, industry-specific loading apparatus would presumably not be included. I would assume insulated cars or cars with linings for food service would also be out, and those classes may well include more of the longer cars.

 

As far as the running board issue goes, I came across a slide of a CP car with running boards, my notes indicated December 1980. Photo wasn't taken on the CP either! But they were very few and far between by then.