I would like to ask you all a question that has simply baffled me since I began in this hobby. This question is, how does one know what eras certain freight cars were used in? For instance I can look at at a GP-9 locomotive and know its production dates were between January 1954 â August 1963 and still in use today. However freight cars do not have model numbers. They are listed as 40â box car or 2 bay hopper but nothing describes a model or type that I can correlate to a date.
I would like to model in the mid 50âs but I have no idea what style of freight cars were used. Can anyone help a poor chap out with this question?
For the mid 50s you will need 40 footers and newer 50 footers. The 36 foot box cars were being phased out by then. The AAR I believe had a fifty year life span on car frames in interchange, but the cars could be rebuilt as many times as the railroad liked. Seventy ton hoppers were numerous and the fifty ton 2 bay hoppers were used for smaller shippers and consignees. Amongst the car data there are built dates and rebuilt dates. Anything older than your modeling date of the 50s would be OK.
It can get confusing. I always use the year 1960 for reference with rolling stock on U.S. railroads⌠Looking at photos it seems after the 1950s that freight cars started getting longer and more âadvancedâ (e.g. plug door boxcars, 50â ACF steel boxcars without roofwalks, centerflow hoppers, 15,000+ gallon tank cars). Maybe you could say the 1960s was the beginning of the ânewerâ era of freight cars.
For your era maybe stick with 40â steel and wood boxcars and reefers, 10,000 gallon tank cars, two-bay hoppers, basic 50â flatcars.
To add to the confusion, remember that paint schemes and details like safety appliances changed over time, and a car built or even painted in your era will not necessarily be appropriate depending on whatâs happened to the paint and details. Use photos as much as you can to ensure youâre using cars that will fit in.
Hereâs a 1950s era car - that had it running board removed in 1966 or later, received a 1970s paint job, a 1967 -1977 ACI label, and 1974~ish consolidated stencil. The 40-foot boxcar to its left has also lost its running board post 1966, despite being a 50s car as well.
This is possibly a 50s car too, but not only has it received changes to the safety appliances and such, itâs painted in a scheme that isnât appropriate before the 70s. Itâs also possible to find cars retaining all their 50s era detailing, but still painted after your era and as such not fitting in.
There are some general guidelines about things like hoppers (generally avoid 100-ton cars and grain hoppers, or any car that doesnât have full height side ladders or high mounted brakewheels as that would indicate being built circa 1966 or later), or boxcars (no high cubes or cars with later safety appliances), but photos of typical train consists will be a big help. Thereâs a steam era freight car list on Yahoo Groups that specializes in this kind of thing and may be of help too.
Search for âThe Official Railway Equipment Registerâ combined with a year you are interested in on one of the used book sites on the web. I like abebooks. The ORER lists all the RRs and their rolling stock broken down by class type and roadnumber, along with capacities and dimensions.
I have several, including the NMRA reprint of the January 1953 ORER. If you can find a copy of it, it includes a useful introduction to the ORERs in general and using it to answer questions exactly like yours.
Also, if you have a particular RR in mind, color photo guides to various RRs freight car fleet are a staple of Morningsun and other publishers. Jim Eagerâs Rio Grande Color Guide is a classic example of those.
Itâs not indexed by search engines by choice of the owner, but just go there directly and look up what you need. Itâs a really excellent resource for older rolling stock.
While itâs mostly modern, there are some older items at railcarphotos, which you can discern by searching by photo date:
Morning Sun Books has published about 40 Color Guides to Freight and Passenger Equipment. If they donât cover your prototype or you are freelancing, get one for a railroad similar to yours.
Each book has color photos of most car types of that railroad. The text tells when the cars pictured were acquired. Often, if there is a paint scheme change, that will also be shown with the dates. Sometimes the text may also give an end of service date. If not, you can often get an sense of the car typeâs life span by the date of the picture - that is the text may say the cars wee acquired in 1951 and the photo is dated 1972 - you have at least part of the life span.
These books are a good single source answer and as a bonus, the car pictures are good prototype weathering guides.
Actually, freight cars do have model numbers or names, like a PS-2 boxcar. There have been books published on freight car history, which will tell you when each type of car was introduced. In some cases, it can help to know a little about freight car regulation. By 1940 arch-bar trucks, cars without steel underframes, and billboard reefers had all been outlawed or had their use severely restricted. Starting around 1964, regulations said house cars (boxcars, reefers, stock cars) couldnât have roofwalks, so new cars quit having them around that year, and old cars generally had them removed by the 1970âs.
The data on the model cars themselves can at least give you an idea if the car will work for your layout or not. Freight cars will be stencilled with a built date (âBLT 9-46â) saying when the car was built. When new, it will have a ânewâ date (âNEW 9-46â) also. Later when the car has been through the shops for rebuilding, repair or just repainting, the ânewâ date will change to the date of the repaint / repair, usually with a few letters to indicate where the work was done. So a car marked âBLT 9-46â and âCHI 3-55â would be a car built in September 1946, last shopped by the railroad in their Chicago shops in March 1955.
You have to check both dates - a car built in 1952 might seem right for your 1950âs layout, but not if itâs wearing a late 1960âs paint scheme. On the other hand, keep in mind freight cars could last a long time. In the 1950âs, youâd still see 1920âs era 8â-6" high woodside (single or double sheathed) or steel boxcars running next to newer 10â-6â high steel boxcars. Plus, during WW2 some boxcars were built with steel roofs and ends, but wood sides, to conserve steel for the war effort. These cars would still be common in the 1950âs.
One becomes a freightcarologist. A specialty field in railfanning and rail research. I think the collection and research in specific freight car prototypes and modeling took off in the late 1970s- early 80s by modelers.
About that time, I was just barely able still to find existing examples of extant cars from 1950s.
ATSF#181756 railroad class GA-65 two-bay covered hopper at Midlothian, TX 1981
Sâfun building unusual cars for a specific operational purpose, on specific rail route⌠Example: Slightly kitbased but almost more scratchbuilt Santa Fe sulphur gondolas with composite wood superstructure but one-piece cast steel underframe. (SP had same design carsâŚ)
Pullman Standard boxcars are designated PS-1. Covered hoppers are PS-2. Any such car would receive the same basic name, so the very first boxcar design that would be appropriate for a 1950s layout would carry the same PS-1 designation as an 86-foot hight cube car from the late 60s, and so on. There are sub-designations for things like cubic capacity, discharge gate arrangement for covered hoppers, etc. Knowing the full designation (e.g. PS2CD 4750) can be helpful for some things, but doesnât tell the whole story (an early PS2CD4427 is a completely different carbody than a late one).
The date next to the LT WT amount is the date the car was âlight weighted.â A car run thorugh the shop for repairs may receive both a new amount and date if there was a material chan
The 1840-50âs was a huge change to double truck bogies.
1870âs saw a transition to truss rods and iron trucks.
1900-1910 was probably the largest revolution in freight cars in history. Car sizes went from 30-34 ft to 40+ ft. Steel replaced wood. Knuckle couplers were adopted. Air brakes were adopted. Standard grab iron and ladder arrangements were adopted. Standard lettering and car data was adopted.
1960âs saw car sizes grow, roller bearings, roofwalks removed.
1980âs saw the car capacity rise, intermodal equipment proliferate.
Since railcars can span 40 years or more if rebuilt any era can have many older cars in it.
As a brakeman all I needed to know was the carâs initials and number(say) SSW 45890 and I could have cared less if it was a FMC,PS or SIECO boxcar.The switch list told me where that car went-SSW 45890 Patton Warehouse Door 5âŚ
And needless to say I carried that into my waybills.
BTWâŚSome 40/50â boxcars kept their roof walks into the early 80s.While scarce they was around.
Gidday, you have been given a lot of good references and advice but I think that Rob has, for me, hit the nail on the head.
The amount of times at a train show that Iâve bought a 2nd hand freight car, for a good price, that has all the âcorrectâ details, only to find that the paint scheme is later than the era I model, or indeed the railroad itself is a later amalgamation [:$]. Perhaps Iâm showing masochistic tendencies[banghead] but I do find itâs fun learning from my mistakes, and theyâre still good candidates for a repaint and redecal.
iâm not sure if youâre looking for particular types of cars, or simply cars that fit your era.
all freight cars have reporting marks info (thanks wp8thsub) that indicate when built and other dates (already described by wjstix) (see image below, presumably built in march 1951. donât know what other dates mean). If youâre modeling the 50âs, you may not want cars with reporting marks in the 60âs or later.
Of course, as JaBear has mentioned, model manufacturers may not correctly match the paint scheme and model. Iâm sure others can explain this better. (I see now, others have already)
Without knowing the railroad, it would be impossible (or at least very difficult) to find out what it all means. For example if a car says âER 6-60â, it wouldnât tell you very much unless you knew it was a Rock Island car; then it means it was last worked on or reweighed at their shops in El Reno, OK.
Just a guess about the pictureâŚIf itâs a southern railroad, MS might mean âMuscle Shoalsâ and SAV âSavannahâ. Perhaps FFIA is the name of a company that bought the car used and restored it for lease or resale??
Model Railroader has had at least one special issue about modeling the 1950s and they had good information of the kind you seek.
The most useful resource, in my opinion, are Car Builders Cyclopedias (later merged with the Locomotive Cyclopedias) â which were a sort of Walthers catalog for actual railroad equipment. They tended to show the latest equipment and perhaps just a bit older, so for example if you model 1956 the 1956 Car Builderâs Cyclopedia would show what should be the very newest cars on your layout. Youâd also want ones from the 1940s, 1930s, and perhaps even 1920s since a freight car would be expected to have a 30 to 40 year life span back then. I can recall seeing boxcars built in 1919 in cow hide service (the absolute lowest rung of car service for an old box car) in the mid to late 1960s.
Having said that, those Car Builder Cyclopedias are expensive at railroadiana shows.
The NMRA published a book, no longer available from the NMRA but copies are around, on the postwar freight car fleet. One of the authors, Ted Culotta, had a substantial series of articles in Railroad Model Craftsman on that same topic. RailModel Journal and Model Railroading both also had long running freight cars of the fifties seriesâ. Those older magazines can be found at swap meets.
Another poster mentioned the Morning Sun and similar color books that sometimes focus on the freight cars of a particular railroad.
Model Railroader itself published a great article by John Nehrich in the March '86 issue, âBoxcar Fleet of the Fifties.â You will want that issue. It of course would be on the big DVD of back issues.
Old Trains magazines, as well as industry publications such as Railway Age, covered the "newestâ freight cars as they were released. I have seen Railway Age being all but given away at railroadiana swap meets.
Shop codes were/are standardized. A car may be reweighed at any shop on its travels if work is required there, so the stencil may reflect an off-line location. It may be more typical to see one of the roadâs own shops doing the work, but not always. Even if you donât know the carâs owner, a look at a standard shop code listing will identify possibilities for where the reweigh occurred.
I posted a link to one list earlier; hereâs what may be a better one http://www.whatcheerlines.com/prototype/re-weigh-stencils/ . From that list, the possibilities for shop code MS are Oshawa, ON; Milwaukee, WI; Missoula, MT and Marshall, TX. For code ER, El Reno was indeed one possibility, but so are Erwin, TN; East Rochester, NY/Despatch shops.
