I’ve heard the CIA (no kidding) uses old 86’ boxcars as spy stations with a fiberglass panel in the roof to enable satallite coms. Who would suspect anything clandestine about an old rusty boxcar?
Riiiiiiiight. Be sure to wear your aluminum foil hat so they can’t hear what you are thinking. [:)]
There’s still quite a few in use. Watch the first five minutes or so of this Virtual Railfan ‘grab bag’ video from 12/19/22…
They’ll turn up solo in odd places infrequently as survivors have proven useful for very low density products. Toilet paper, tissue paper, foam insulation, that sort of thing.
I could have sworn I photographed one near Atlanta inside the NS intermodal yard in 2019, but I cannot locate the image.
-Kevin
The video in my link in my earlier post shows a string of 86’ cars taken a couple of days ago on a train.
The 86’ HC Boxcars are alive and still in use today. There primary use is hauling light weight auto parts, body stampings. These cars are very adaptable, I saw a picture of a DT&I 86’ car hauling lumber, spotted at a lumber yard off the GTW in St. Johns, Michigan back before that line was torn up. They have hauled pallets of diapers, cereal, etc. The first cars came online in 1964, which makes them 59 yrs old and and still in interchange service, and they have out lived their brothers and cousins, the 40’, 50’, early 60’ boxcar types, with little or no rebuilding. This makes them the most sucessful type of boxcar to date and I don’t see them going away anytime soon. One can still see a former ICG car, still in orange paint, although quite weathered and worn, in capative service to Ford Motor working out of the Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.