Another series of ACI questions for the forum: Were 62’ Woodchip cars or Thrall All-Door Boxcars ever found with ACI labels? Thank you as usual for your assistance with my inquiry.
Any freight car operating from about 1967-77 could have had an ACI label. I’ve seen both large capacity wood chip cars and Thrall door cars with them.
Then the next question would be: Would the 9’6" height of the labels (for both the Thrall and the woodchip car) be measured from the rail height or from the bottom of the car body. I have seen diagrams showing that measurement being made from both depending on the type of car. I presume that for the woodchip car, it would be from the rail height as the other method puts the label on a structural member. (I measured it out on a junk woodchip car body. It was cannibalized for parts at one point.)
Is the 9’ 6" an “IH” (inside height)? If so its measured from the floor of the car. Since the floor of a car is nominally about 4 feet above the rails, if the 9’6’ was ATR that would make the inside of the car only 5-6 ft high which would be really short for wood chip car.
The 9’6" is a dimension that is shown in the December 1969 MR that talks about ACI decals placement, not a car dimension. If one were to look at the article, hopper cars labels are positioned with the top at the 9’6" from the bottom of the car while the top of the ACI label area for a boxcar is mesured from the top of the rail, hence the original question.
I’d suggest reviewing prototype photos of the car types in question. Location of the labels varied a lot between roads or owners, and even on different cars from the same road. I think the AAR car classification for most chip racks is GTS (although some are hoppers HK, HTS and so on), while Thrall door cars are LU. (Trivia - the Thrall door car was considered a special type of flatcar, and thus not classified as a boxcar, hence the LU.) A site like Railcar Photos turns up a number of photos of all-door cars here http://www.railcarphotos.com/Search.php?SearchType=Box Car - All Door&Search=Search, and chip racks here http://www.railcarphotos.com/Search.php?SearchType=Woodchip Car&Search=Search. There’s a good variety of prototypes available any many show ACI locations, including cars photographed well after the requirement was discontinued in 1977.
Those photos worked perfectly. I even found a glitch with the way I was modeling my woodchip cars that I will need to get fixed as a result of looking at those photos! (Sometimes you look for information and you find information you didn’t even know you were looking for.)