Freight Car Companies

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Do you know what happened to the following companies?
Pacific Car & Foundry (PCF)
Magor
Maxon
Berwick
SIECO
Evans
North American Car Company
Interational Car Company
USRA
Golden Tye
United States Railway Manufacturing

I went to PACCAR’s website, however, they do not say what happened to PCF.

Trinity Rail Group says it has bought out Thrall, Greenville, Ornter, DIFCO, and Pullman Standard (http://www.trinityrailcar.com/history.html).

It seems like I heard somewhere that Gunderson bought FMC’s railcar manufacturing division.

2

PACCAR’s SEC Form 10-K from 1994 has the following statement, “Net income for 1989 includes a $52.4 million after-tax gain from sale of a division and a fleet of railcars.”

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/75362/0000891020-94-000045.txt

3

A good book about freight car companies is " The American Car and Foundry Company", by Edward S. Kaminski. He is an employee at ACF,and the book tells alot about the ACF,their products, and other rail car companies.The book is a pricey $65.00,but worth every cent. He also has one out on the tank cars as well. I’ve got both,and they are excellent reference tools for spotting freight cars,and knowing more about them, as well as how they are constructed too.

4

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

5

Just guessing that most of these companies quit making cars sometime in the 1980s.

Golden Tye existed only to produce some of those “National Railway Utilization Corporation” box cars for the St. Lawrence Railroad, Pickens Railway, and the like, and that boom went bust in about 1983.

U.S. Railway Equipment, or U.S. Railway Manufacturing became Evans Railcar Manufacturing. SIECO became one of their subsidiaries. Their lease fleet was taken over by GE Railcar (which was also successor to the North American Car Corporation), and though some of their plants may have survived to maintain the cars that GERSCO owns, I’m sure they haven’t built any new ones for a while.

International Car Company (of caboose-building fame) became a subsidiary of Paccar (and you know more about that company than I do).

I forgot who took over Magor; they were gone by sometime in the 70s.

Berwick was taken over by Whittaker Industries, and apparently just folded in the early 80s.

6

Thanks, Carl.

Here is some information I forgot to include in the original post.

Bethlehem Steel’s car division was bought by Johnstown America Industries which recently changed its name to Freight Car America.
http://www.freightcaramerica.com/about/abt_history.htm

Here is an interesting fact, American Car & Foundry changed its name to ACF Industries way back in 1954 (http://www.acfindustries.com/acf_information/history.asp).

Texana Tank is probably the most enigmatic freight car manufacturing company (http://www.texanatank.com/).

Hopefully, one of these days Greenbrier (Gunderson) will have a history page on its web site.

7

The former Evans railcar repair facility in Springfield OR is now owned/operated by Gunderson.

8

Ya know I never knew that Bethleham Steel built freight cars back in the day. I also had on clue that Freight Car America had Bethleham history tighed to it. This is interesting I live in PA and have been to Bethleham many of times and, I never knew that iinteresting information. I really need to get it together with PA history. lol

9

I wonder if Chicago’s TTX wound up with any of the old companies?

10

USRA is the the United States Railroad Administration which took over the railroads from 1917 to 1920. They developed a number of standard car and locomotive designs during this period, some of which continued to be used after 1920.
Enjoy
Paul

11

I would seriously doubt it because of the anti-trust ramifications. Although TTX is a leasing and fleet management operation, it is a joint subsidiary of the Class 1 railroads and others and vertical integration would be an issue if they attempted to purchase a carbuilder.