50 ton war emergency open hoppers
50’ wooden auto carriers
40’ wooden reefers
etc, thanks, just asking if these were around still between 1958-1962.
All were still around in your time frame, but they were getting rare. Depending on the region or specific road you’re modeling, they’d be common or virtually unheard of.
The war-emergency hoppers started getting new steel sides around 1955, which was when the wood siding reached ten years old. Some roads like the IC just replaced the sides, some roads like the NYC removed the lateral braces as well, and some roads like the CB&Q never replaced the wood sides (I’ve got photos of WE cars with their original sides from the 1970s).
50’ single sheathed auto cars were still around, and were relatively common on roads like the Milwaukee, Rock, and WP. But by 1962, virtually all were in the general service pool, no longer hauling cars. Most, like the Rock’s cars, were relegated to hauling 2x4’s or worse, hide service. The one Rock Island 50-footer that’s at the Illinois RR Museum ran into the 1970s hauling dog food out of Rockford.
40’ wood reefers were the most numerous wood cars in your era, since most of them were built with strong steel underframes in the 1920s and 1930s. 36’ meat reefers were especially common, as were WFEX and NP produce reefers.
40’ single and double sheathed cars were still on the rails, especially the huge fleets owned by the NP, ATSF, and all Canadian roads. Trussrods went the way of the Dodo in 1953, but some single sheathed cars survived in grain and hide service well into the 1970s, before their 50 years ran out. So yes, you CAN have these cars running in a 1960s layout, but I’d make them no more than 2-3% of your entire roster.
Of course, if you LIKE wood cars, you can always backdate a bit! I like wood and trussrods, which is why my drop dead date is 1949. I can have K brakes too.
Weren’t there different rules for using older equipment internally (never venturing off the property) versus those used in interchange service? If so, use the older stuff for local switching.
Yes, things like archbar trucks and trussrods were outlawed by the ICC in the thirties, but they only controlled cars used in interchange. If you owned a line taking logs from the woods to a lumber mill, you could use pretty much anything you wanted to from wooden cars to link-and-pin couplers.
Because a fair number of woodsided (but steel underframe/end/roof) cars were built to save steel during WW2, there were still a few of these 15-20 year old cars still around in the time you mention. I know a couple GN boxcars lasted long enough to be repainted into ‘Big Sky Blue’ in the later 60’s.
Virtually all carloads before the current era of mega mergers started on one line and finished on another, so railroads generally didn’t keep the old equipment around to use for revenue purposes. 50 years is an OLD age for a car with wood construction; during the 1800s, a boxcar had a life expectancy of only 20 years. Cars with archbar trucks, trussrods or K brakes were generally scrapped as soon as they reached their interchange age limit, since it was more cost-effective to burn them for scrap that it was to keep them in shape to run.
The only occasions that you’d see ancient cars wandering around is if the railroad didn’t interchange with any other (logging, mining, narrow gauge), as MOW cars on a class one, or as idler flatcars on wharves. Even cars relegated to hide or offal service were techically “legal” cars.
True, but those weren’t war-emergency cars. The GN and NP built double-sheathed cars well into the 1940s not because they couldn’t afford steel cars, but because they were catering to one of their primary shippers - lumber companies. Just as the N&W and IC hung onto steam to placate the coal shippers that were their lifesblood, the Pacific Northwest roads built wood sided cars late.
And comparatively, very few war-emergency cars were built, as opposed to the vast numbers of USRA cars that were built for the previous war. Surprisingly, al-steel car construction outnumbered composite cars during WWII, since by the time the USA’s economy was fully war-mobolized by 1943, we were actually making more steel than we (and the rest of the allied powers) needed, which lifted much of the rationing restrictions for railroads.
I would think a great deal of the survival of equipment was economically based, both from a maintenance and a reliability stand point. If a piece of equipment was undamaged and required minimal maintenamce to stay in service it would survive its full life expectancy. From a reliability stand point, why risk a derailment due to a failure of an arch bar truck that could tie up the whole railroad, and impact revenue directly. A wood sheathed structurally sound car that could produce revenue in interchange would still be a good use of relatively low maintenance costs to keep it in service.
Will
The Great Northern had wood sheathed box cars that to the casual observer looked like steel (especially when new). They had plywood sheathing. While most were built during WW2, they were built as late as 1947. GN Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Dacid H. Hickcox has a photo of # 44066 from the XM series 44025-44999, built in 1945, the 44066 was still in service Sept 1971.
A number of the photos in the book are of wood sheathed cars in service during the late 1960’s, even though they had started rebuilding wood sheathed cars, replacing the wood with steel, in the mid 1950’s.
The Wellsville, Addison, & Galeton (WAG) operated wood sheathed box cars well into the 70s.
http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0105/wag5002.jpg
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=91630
WAG car is located on the other track by the nose of the 6813.
Note that the roof walk has been removed.
I can remember, as a kid, in virginia, I used to see wood side cars a lot, and even into the 70’s in Louisiana. But I think the mid to late 70’s was about the last for them. The only place I’d seen any in the early to mid 80’s was in MoW service. I don’t think I’ve seen any though from the mid 90’s onward.
Study photos in magazine. Not model railway photos but prototype photos and all will become clear.
How did railroads keep track of their cars when other lines used them? What was their method?
GGB
“How did railroads keep track of their cars when other lines used them? What was their method?”
Paperwork, tons and tons of paperwork and thousands of clerks. Everyday, every freight yard and every freight agent sent in a report with all the car reporting marks of all the cars sitting in their yard or spotted at all industrial tracks under their control.
Do a Google search on the term “AAR Car Service Rules”…
and have a look at htis website…
http://www.acacso.org/About_ACACSO/history.asp
All the best,
Mark.
For whatever reason in the late 50’s and most of the 60’s there were quite a few 40’ single sheathed wood boxcars in Philadelphia from Central Vermont and Canadian National. There were also some from Canadian Pacific but they were less common. Probably one of the paper mills in the area got either pulp wood or raw paper for reprocessing.