Looking for a breakdown of box car door types in use today. Do plug style doors dominate? What share are combination? Are all reefers plug door? Love all sorts of data points
I can’t answer your question, but welcome back to the forum, gewald.
From observation most new box cars seem to be
plug door types. There’s still a lot of conventional sliding doors out there. I see some combination cars, but not a lot. I think all reefers have plug doors. I’ve never seen one with a sliding door.
Open plug doors on cars in the yard (not in a customer’s facility) and on the road are a pet peeve of mine. Even if some of the new, and some not so new, guys don’t understand why they need to be closed for movement, loaded or empty.
Jeff
There was a thread here on the old forum that might interest you. Part way down there was a discussion about boxcar doors. I don’t know how much longer the old forum may be available.
(edit): The thread is now in the new forum.
I believe the old forum was scheduled to be shut off on January 15th – so probably down already. But that thread should have been ported over, and if it can’t be found via the discobot search tools, Nick might be able to post a link.
Success!
I made an entry in the “Inspections” thread which caused it to move to the new forum.
Open plug doors when the cars are out in transportation away from a customers loading dock are at a big danger of coming off the cars with the slack action that a train contains - both buff and draft actions will cause the open door (which is heavy) to move the full extent of its tracks and creating a large force when the door hits the end of its tracks.
I recall mention in Trains Magazine (about a half-century ago!) that some of the yards in the Northeast had tracks so closely spaced that some types of open plug doors on cars on adjacent tracks would foul.