I have been away from working on railroad for sometime. but I have a finished a track Plan and starting to build up rolling stock. Which box car length should I consider, because I plan on modeling the ere of the early 1970’s up to the early 1980’s?
For that time period, anywhere from 50- to 85-foot boxes would be roaming the rails.
You can use 40 footers on up to 85 footers. I see 40 footers still in service today.
What’s the minimum radius of your curves? 50 foot cars should generally work on 18-inch curves in HO gauge. Longer than that, though, you will likely have trouble.
That’s a good point. Longest I generally run are 62’ as all my curves are 18" radius.
As the others have said, 40’ and 50’ cars with the roof walks would have been on the way out. They were banned in 1968 with a 10 year grandfather clause so by 1978 a car with roofwalks could not go through exchange
In that same time period the 50’ Railbox type boxcar were making the news. The 60’, to 65’ boxes were becoming common and monster 85’ boxes were being experimented with.
So my advise would be to limit the era a bit more. Go with early 70s and the 40 & 50 footers, or go for early 1980s and stick to the more modern boxes.
During your time frame 50’ boxcars was the norm withe few 40’ boxcars that was on the endangered species list…By ‘78 short line IPD and Railbox 50’ boxcars was seen everywhere.
Hi
40 footers: In the 70s, you would have 40 footers. but by the 1980s the 40-foot boxcar gave way to the 50-footer, which further improved redundancies by allowing for even more space within a given car, which today remains the common boxcar size .
HiCube 40 footers :It should ne noted that these cars were a minority car, and for the most part in captive service between the major white-goods manufacturers and the regionaldistribution locations hauling high volume low weight cargo. While mostly usedduring the mid to late 1960’s they appear to have all be off the roster, or at least mostly out of use by the mid 1980s.
This memo appeared on the wall at the Southern Pacific Transportation COmpany at Oakland, January 13, 1981 from the superintendent {noting the demise of the 40 footer}:
"All Agents,
Due to the rapidly declining availability of 40-ft boxcars, It is necessary to review individual shipper needs who continue to order this equipment and make provision for the use of the 50-ft boxcar instead…"
THe Conrail histrorical society has this to say*: The era of the 40 foot boxcar wasn’t quite dead on April 1st, 1976, and the new Conrail used many of them in those first few years. The writing was on the wal*
So You can use 50 footers on your 70’s layout.
I certainly should hope so since the IPD era started in’ 76-remember seeing all those colorful shortline boxcars that was seen everywhere?
Here’s how it happen.