Can someone explain the reasoning behind the 8-door versus 4-door versions of 86 foot auto parts boxcars? Is it true that General Motors plants required 8 doors whereas Ford and Chrysler utilized the 4 door versions? Thanks!
It looks like the rumor about GM is false. Here are some in the Sparks, NV yard (most likely headed for GM’s Reno SPO). Here is another sitting on the siding just outside of the Reno SPO. You will need to rotate the view by 180 degrees to make the car appear. Here are more sitting in the yard outside of the now closed Shreveport, LA plant. All are 4 door cars.
Here is a horde at the Flint, MI plant. Most are 4 door with a few 8 door cars sprinkled in.
The eight-door cars were in fact built for service at GM plants. But not just any GM plants…they were originally assigned to Chevrolet service exclusively.
This is not to say that Chevy only received eight-door 86-foot cars…we would send hi-cubes of both types to the Chevy plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, when it was still operational.
My friend Eric Neubauer, whom I’ve referred to here before, has done some roster work on the hi-cube cars, and eventually (when I dig up his booklet, currently two states away from me) I should be able to give you a ratio of four-door cars to eight-door cars.
Since you mentioned Flint, Eric, it brings up an interesting point. It was home to two major GM production plants, one for Buick and one for Chevrolet. The Buick plant was served exclusively by the C&O, and the Chevy plant by the GTW. C&O never had eight-door hi-cube cars on its roster (though B&O did), and GTW had plenty of them.
With the downsizing of the auto industry, beginning as far back as the 1980s, some of the cars were released to non-
Potlatch owns some. According to Christopher Palmieri, they haul scrap paper.
For a little while 86’ boxcars (HLMX, ex-CR) went to a composite roof shingle plant around here. I suspect they carried glass mat to the plant.
I also suspect that some (HCSX reporting marks) hauled tires from the Pirelli plant in Hanford, CA before it closed.
I seem to recall hearing a rumor that Kimberly-Clark used them to haul tissue paper.
Here is a photograph from 1976 of an 86’ boxcar with Amoco reporting marks. I wonder what it hauled.
Most of the Auto Parts Boxcars both 86’ and 60’ long were both built between 1965 and 1975, but it seems that only the 60’ Auto Parts Boxcars are being retired. Have the 86’ Boxcars been rebuilt enough to keep them running beyond the magical “40 Year” scrap mark always mentioned in TRAINS?
A bunch of ex-Chessie and L&N boxcars owned by HLMX are used to ship peat moss from the province of New Brunswick.
my guess is faster loading and because the loading docks are so close to eachother. One set of twosets of doors could be at one dock while on another autoparts boxcar, the other set of the two sets is at another dock. Here’s a string of four-doors at Franklin Park IL
Model Railroader magazine January 1993 page 112 says:
“Originally, the eight-foor cars were assigned to General Motors and the four-door cars were assigned to Ford and Chrysler.”