**in the '60s, i saw some boxcars with “df” on the side in yellow… also saw “df2”… i lived in louisiana, and sp was the line i watched the most… have not seen it since locating to s.c… it seems i only saw this on sp boxes, maybe others had it… i was told ( i think) it meant “damage free”… didn’t hear what “df2” meant… is this real? why spend money on a distinction that would change if the car was hurt? then it would have to be scraped off… spending time in texas and la., my favorites were mp and sp… really hated to see their flags fall… loved mp’s sawtooth logo…
You guessed right, the df stands for damage free. What it means is that the car is equiped with a system to divide and hold whatever is inside so it will not shift or move. Tiedowns in the walls and floors, some have steel frames inside, some use big, really big inflated bags. It also most likley has a cuishioned drawbar and center sill. And why would you scrap it off? If the car was damaged, it would be repaired, including the load dividers, and whatever system it had would also be repaired. And the screaming eagle was pretty cool too.
Ed
DF was a specific type of load-restraining device, manufactured, I believe, by the Evans Products Company. DF2 was an improved version, or at least a revised version…I don’t know how compatible the two were.
But look out for Chessie System cars…they’d be stencilled with something like “DF-9” on the side. It wasn’t anything different; it just meant that there were nine belts on the interior for the placement of the DF loaders (some cars were also lettered “DF2-9”).