Guess it’s kind of ironic that a guy who calls himself “BOXCAR Melvin” wouldn’t know this, but well…I don’t. [:D] So, I figured I’d ask you guys. It’s actually two questions. I have googled and yahooed and wikied like crazy. Couldn’t find the answers to these.
When were 40’ Boxcars removed from railroad service and 2) When were 50 footers introduced?
See, I’m building a 1970s era layout and I personally like the 40’ boxcars better than the 50’, but my dad is telling me that 40 footers weren’t used in the ‘70s. It could be a ploy to win my 40’ boxcars. [(-D] I don’t know.
Out in the western U.S. at least, 40-footers were very uncommon in the early 1970s. I lived next to a Union Pacific yard and if there were any 40-footers around at all, they were generally hauling company material or in maintenance-of-way service. Canada was still using 40s on some grain branches. The best thing to do would be to study old photos from the area you want to model.
Well, there were a few places in the West where 40-footers were used up until 1981, but this was only in grain service on some branches that had rail too light to handle 110ton grain hoppers. In gereral merchandise service, the 40-footers were pretty much gone by the mid-70’s.
In July 2005, there were still 23 40’ boxcars with “BN” reporting marks (inside the group 199619-200294). Dang things just won’t go away. The BN ones that lasted 'til real late were mostly/all in MOW service. BUT, they’re still there. There’s probably still some somewhere in interchange service, though they’d be of the hi-tech variety, I think (waffles and plug doors and the like).
Yeah, in the '70’s, there were plenty of both 40’s and 50’s.
If you’re curious about a PARTICULAR place (say, on the mainline of the SP over Donner), start finding train pictures of that location and date and start “thinkin’”.
Thanks, potlatcher. I was thinking it must’ve been in the mid 70s or near, because I don’t recall seeing any that size on the W&ARR (L&N) road when I was a kid growing up. Most of the ones I saw were 50 footers, but I wasn’t sure when exactly they were introduced or if I was remembering it correctly.
Thanks, Ed. What is exactly is MOW? have seen that logo on rolling stock in stores, but never on actual railroads. Is it a work service railroad or something?
In the early '70’s I lived across the street from the EL main line and there were still plenty of 40 footers going by every day, a lot had their roofwalks removed and some ladders shortened but there were still plenty around.
Funny last week I had the same question as I have 3 40 footers on my roster and I run a more modern railroad and I did some research, and like what was said, most were gone by the late 70’s. but then I decided it is my railroad and so what [(-D]
As I am an Erie lackawanna fan, I have a book on the EL with many color photos and the dates on which the photos were taken. I can see plenty of 40’ boxcars on photos taken well through 1975. These were not just EL boxcars either. Other roadnemes appear in these photos. I would say, however, that by the late seventies there was more of a prevalence of 50’ boxcars and certainly by about 1982 most of the 40 footers were phased out. I model the 70’s too and I’m not afraid to have those beautiful 40’ boxcars on my layout; I’ve got plenty of 'em. Also, having been colloge-post college age in the 70’s I recall seeing them in train consists back then.
In this case, it’s not so much a logo as an abbreviation: Maintenance Of Way (“Way” being “right of way” being the track, bridges, land, tunnels…)
So, something can be in MOW service. Railroads tend to use their old cars for this (except for maybe purpose built stuff). The BN cars look like they’re used for that. An unusual thing to me is that the cars kept their old numbers from when they were in revenue service. Typically, railroads will chose a new number and precede it with an “X” or a “0”. An exception is UP, which typically gives the cars a 90xxxx number (say, 903045). I’m sure other railroads have other variotions.
If you have a favorite railroad, you might pick up a picture book of their rolling stock and check things out. You could go to the Morning Sun Books website and check out the long list of "Color Guide…"s.
I was still seeing plenty of 40 foot boxcars in the 1980 to 1985 era when I lived along the Chicago & North Western’s main line to Butler Yard. Indeed around 1980 the CNW got a bunch of “new” 40 footers when the Rock Island folded – they had Rock Island heralds but CNW reporting marks. And I used to see 40 ft cars at the large grain elevators in Milwaukee in the 1980s.
I think I read somewhere that the last 40 ft cars were built in the 1960s so I suspect the newest 40 ft cars were retired well before they had to be fro mechanical reasons.
One thing that kept 40 ft cars alive were the grain elevators on lines that could not possibly manage 100+ ton covered hoppers. I believe Canada was in something of the same boat through the 80s. But I would not assume that every 40 ft car in the 80s was in grain service.
One thing that was VERY rare by the late 70s and early 80s – forty foot box cars with 6 foot doors.
An “X” in the reporting marks indicates that a car is either not in revenue service, or is in some sort of lease arrangement so is not in general use. Sometimes Maintenance of Way cars would have “MWX” for example. The MOW cars were owned by the railroad they were working on
The latter X use was common on reefers, which (except for some railroad owned ones used online for ice service etc.) were leased by the private companies whose names they bore from car leasing companies. If ABC company leased reefers for example, their reporting marks could be “ABCX”.
They mostly were scrapped in the 1980’s and 1990’s (although there may be a few running around out there now in service.
1890’s. Furniture, buggy and barrel cars.
Grain was shipped in boxcars into the early 1980’s. I know the MP used 40 ft boxcars to haul raw sugar out of Galveston to Sugarland, TX into the mid 1980’s .
I believe you may have confused the class of the car with the reporting marks.
And “X” on the end of the reporting marks means that the car is not owned by a railroad, it is owned by a “private” owner.
They most definitely are in revenue servce (considering that about 25% of todays railcar fleet are private owner). They may or may not be leased (for example a TTAX stack car, a TBOX boxcar, or a unit train coal car may not be leased, but would be in revenue service). If they are leased they may or may not be leased to a particular service.
Actually the majority of reefers didn’t have private owner reporting marks. The SFRD, PFE, ART and MDT all were railroad owned, didn’t have an “X” on their initials and between them operated the largest fleets of reefers. And that’s without throwing in all the other smaller railroad owned reefer fleets. The meat reefer fleet was predominately privately owned since they were specialized cars.
The place where the vast majority of cars were privately owned was and is in the chemical car fleets, both tank cars and chemical covered hoppers. Intermodal equipment is overwhelmingly private fleet (TTX) and the unit train coal fleet is substantially private.
The problem with reefers is about 100 years ago the federal gov’t decided railroads had to divest themselves of the reefer car business, so they set up separate companies which although connected to one or more railroads were at least independent enough to satisfy regulations. Obviously the Burlington Refrigerator Express was tied to the CB&Q, but was technically a separate entity and used the initials BREX. It can get quite complicated, you even had situations where a leasing company would be leasing out it’s cars to others, and at the same time be leasing cars from other companies. It may be a majority of reefers c.1925 say were not in a lease arrangment, but a very high percentage of cars (especially “billboard” reefers) were; it would be a significant number.
when i first worked on the railroad in the early 60’s there were lots of 40’ box cars still in service although my employee’s timetable listed passing siding capacities in 50 foot cars.
by 1967 when i went to work on the Big Four, the size of cars seemed to have grown tremendously especially with the coming of the high cube auto parts cars that were 60 to over 80 feet long.
come to think of it, while i was off driving a truck for a couple of years, all the running boards disappeared too.
by the Conrail era, 40’ cars were still around but getting to be somewhat scarce. a furniture manufacturer in St Louis was constantly ordering 40’ cars but getting 50 footers for the railroad’s convenience and so noting this on their bills of lading so they would not have to pay the higher minimum for using the longer car.
i think modeling the 60’s is a good choice since you can have the dependability of four axle diesel operation and still have a broad variety of car types. 86’ auto parts cars in the same train with wooden sided burlington hoppers.