The “Forty and Eight” boxcar (so named because it could hold 40 men or 8 horses) was used extensively in both WWI and WWII and was the standard boxcar during that period. It was used for hauling everything from war materials to POWs. However, regardless that this was the most common boxcar in early to mid 1900’s, I can’t seem to find any in a kit. I would at least expect an European manufacturer to make one.
I’ve had this dream of recreating the train seen in the 1965 Von Ryan’s Experss movie since I first saw it over 50 years ago and would sure like to find a dozen or so of the boxcar kits in HO (preferably in easy-to-build plastic).
During WW II, Deutsche Reichsbahn used just about any type of “covered freight car” to move men and material they could get hold of in the occupied countries, in addition to own stock.
Typical box cars would be either this one:
or this one
or this one:
Note that the lettering does not show the period emblem.
They are not available as kits.
They are made by Piko and available through reynaulds.com in the US.
After WWII the French people sent 49 40 and 8 boxcars to the US with “gifts of gratitude” for the relief goods sent from the US to France. There was one car for each of the 48 states with the 49th shared by the District of Columbia and Hawaii Territory. There is a website that gives the history of the Merci cars with links each state with information about that state’s car. Unfortunately, most of the cars have fallen into disrepair and many were scrapped. The Maine Merci car is on display at Boothbay Railway Village, and was restored in 2009 to mark the 50th anniversary. The artifacts from that car are in the Maine State Museum in Augusta; some are shown in the second link, below.
The term “40 and 8” is a new one to me. In Germany, they were referred to as “covererd freight wagon”, for which the letter “G” was used. In railroader slang, they were called G10´s or G20´s, G for “Gedeckter (covered) Güterwagen” and the 10 resp. 20 indicating the first year of manufacture.
As a boy, our next door neighbors were a couple old men who had fought in the Great War. They sometimes mentioned the 40 and 8’s, but being a kid, I didn’t pay as close attention as I should have.
A friend of mine and his wife went all over to take pictures of all the remaining 40 n 8 box cars, I think they found 38. Some were in pretty bad shape from neglect, which is so sad that history is forgotten.
Just to clarify, the “40 and 8” freight car was a French railroad car, not German. I’m sure German cars of the time were probably similar however.
I haven’t seen “Von Ryan’s Express” for a long time, but I do recall that the movie is set in Italy, not Germany…so I’m not sure if the train was made up of German equipment, or Italian?
During WW II, you could find those 4-wheeler boxcars of any occupied country (which includes Italy in 1944) in freight trains. A typical train could have been made up of German, French, Italian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, formerly Austrain and whatever car was available.
It was Italian. The locomotive on the train was a 740 class 2-8-0, The chase train in the movie used a locomotive of the same class rebuilt with a Franco-Crosti boiler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FS_Class_740 .
Posted by Sir Madog on Tuesday, February 07, 2017 10:44 AM
“During WW II, you could find those 4-wheeler boxcars of any occupied country (which includes Italy in 1944) in freight trains. A typical train could have been made up of German, French, Italian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, formerly Austrain and whatever car was available.”
Likely very true. The movie was shot in Italy less than twenty years after WWII and since a good selection of original 40&8 boxcars was probably still available, I would imagine that they were used when possible, or at least for the close-up shots. However, slight variations in car heights ARE noticeable in some scenes so it’s logical to assume that an assortment of varied boxcars was used to make up the movie’s POW train (which would likely be authentic as Sir Madog speculated).
Nonetheless…the beautiful scenery in the movie was real!!!
Neither was the scene in “The Train” where a locomotive depot was being bombed and you could see 141-R’s, which were postwar imports from the US and Canada.
