Generally speaking, in what decade were the last 40 foot boxcars replaced by 50 footers?
Thanks,
Jarrell
I remember seeing a few 40 footers into the 80’s at my local Glass plant. So the 80’s more than likely. I know that in Canada they were used for Grain hauling into the late 80’s and here in the USA into the late 70’s on certain branch lines.
You’d have to say that the 1960s was the beginning of the end for 40-footers. Some of the 40-footers were actually “stretched” into 50-footers (Chicago Freight Car Leasing was good at this, and I know that C&O and C&NW did it to some cars). The newest American 40-footers I can think of were built in 1965, I think, for the Rock Island. Oh…I should amend this to include the hi-cube 40-foot appliance cars built for several railroads around the turn of the decade, and the ribbed-side high-roof cars that SP got in the 1970s.
The 1970s probably saw declines in the 40-foot box car fleet, but they really seemed to become rare because of the amazing number of 50-foot cars produced for Railbox, the leasing companies (Itel, Brae, National Railway Utilization Corporation, etc.) and railroads like the Maryland & Pennsylvania.
By 1980, many railroads’ fleets of 40-foot cars had been decimated (including those "mini-hi-cubes for appliances), but they were still going strong in Canada, and the always-progressive Chicago & North Western bought those “nearly-new” 40-footers from the estate of the Rock Island. The CNW’s cars didn’t last long, and CN’s and CP’s soon followed suit.
At least a few survived past 2000. These SP cars supposedly in copper service.
I also remember seeing some GTW 40’ plate F boxcars in (I believe) auto parts service sometime in the 1998-2002 range. (On UP trains in northern Nevada; with high cube boxcars and autoracks.)
Thanks for the information, guys!
Jarrell
Yes, those are the SP cars I alluded to. It would appear, however, that only ten or so of these cars are still around.
As for the GTW, they had both 50- and 60-foot auto parts box cars whose height was increased from more normal box cars–but no 40-footers like that (I can say that GTW’s last 40-foot box cars of any sort were retired in about 1997).
My January 2008 ORER shows 79 of the former SP cars in the NOKL 77000-77089 series.
While driving into Chester, Ill. one summer afternoon in 1973 I stopped my car at trackside for a few moments to witness an historic event. What I saw was a loaded southbound unit grain train traveling at a pretty good clip along the Missouri Pacific mainline. Unlike today’s grain haulers that are solid covered hopper consists, all of the cars in this train were C.& N.W. system 40-ft boxcars. A good number of CGW, CMO, and MSTL “XM’s” were in that train plus many CNW ones displaying faded slogans that read either “The Overland Route” or “Route of the 400 Streamliners.” Every car had brass journals, and many of them had brand new journal box covers applied as well. Man I sure wish I’d have had my camera with me at that moment!
During the late 1970s I remember seeing a good number of C.& N.W. system 40-footers parked along various subdivisions in southern Minnesota. The railway may have held onto them as long as they did to protect grain shipments that originated along their numerous light rail branchlines.
At Monte Vista, Colo. during the mid-'80s I seem to recall seeing some ex-REA (Railway Express Agency) insulated boxcars (or perhaps they were ex-ice-bunker reefers) being used by the San Luis Central. The initials stencilled on each car were “SLC” and they didn’t look like they were in any kind of long term storage.
In the late 1980s the Norfolk Southern had some 40-ft. Southern Railway boxcars assigned to a North Carolina furniture-manufacturers pool. Although the paint jobs were weathered somewhat, each car I saw was in remarkably good shape. All of the journals had roller bearings.
[tup], Eric. Nice catch!
Bob, about the time you saw those 40-footers, we still had a “grain box” classification track in our yard. The car inspection employees in the receiving yard had to inspect the box cars in the course of their duties and determine whether they were suitable for Class A loading, class G loading (grain), or required cleaning (in which case they were sent to the Cleaning Track, alongside the hump, which no longer exists).
The grain box cars were shipped out on whichever trains would be carrying the cars for areas in which they were needed (in other words, there wasn’t a train that you could routinely count on to be handling the grain boxes–though they usually went to Iowa from here). For a while, we were sending a bunch up to Spooner, Wisconsin. This could have been when you were seeing them in Minnesota as well.
In the late 1960s, CNW was buying up secondhand 40-foot box cars from a number of sources. I can remember P&LE, Clinchfield, and New Haven cars that had been repainted, refurbished, and relettered at Clinton (they got them before my time, but quite often the old lettering would eventually show up through the paint). And in the mid-70s there were a couple of developments: a number of CNW, CGW, and MSTL cars were upgraded to food service (white epoxy interiors, AAR Mechanical Designation XF), and renumbered into the 600000 series. and, as I’ve mentioned on the Forum recently, Monkey Wards built and opened a huge warehouse on property either purchased or leased from CNW, designed to load and unload 40-foot box cars.
In 1980, when the Rock Island folded, CNW got over 1000 of their newest 40-foot box cars (built in 1965,but still with friction bearings). Most were clean cars suitable for grain (701000 and 702000 series), but some were good enough for food service (706000 series), while others were suitable only for hide service and other “contaminating commodities” (705000 series). I think CNW used these to get rid of a lot of its own older cars, whic
Bob, those Railway Express cars were bunker reefers. They were a bit longer than 40 feet (can’t remember dimensions off the top of my head–might not have been longer inside). Saw a couple of them at the Colorado Railroad Museum with Mudchicken and CopCarSS.
The GTW boxcars I remember appear to have been built as plate F. Completely smooth sides except for the doors. And I’d swear I saw them more recently than 1997. (Wish I had some idea of where in my pile of slides those particular pics are.) [banghead]
At Newton,KS, 1982 became the final yr 40 footers were used for sacked flour loading. They were quickly replaced by 50 foot cars and that was it for small sized boxcars in our town. The standard then on flour loading in 50 footers was limited to 1350 bags at 110 lbs each.