Here is an interesting boxcar. Has anyone seen any?
http://www.gbrx.com/Technical%20Bulletins/Insulated%2060%20foot%20boxcar%20for%20TTX.pdf
Not yet, they will surely be rolling through Indy soon. See more neat stuff in Indy than I ever did in St Louis.
I saw a whole bunch of them the other day. it was a mixed freight and about half of the cars were theese exact same cars.
To the best of my knowledge, this is TTX’s foray into any type of specialized boxcars. I wonder what will be next. Autoparts cars, reefers, nothing? I also noticed it is an XPI, not an RBL. It appears that this might be a fiberglass cars.
An RBL would have load restraining devices in it – a “DF” (Damage Free).
R=Refrigerated(ie Insulated) B=Box L=Load Restraining Device(s) Equiped
XPI is a plain insulated box car
X=Box Car P=Plain I=Insulated.
Please do not ask why in one designation a box car is “B” and in another it is “X”. I don’t know the rational for that.
Plain box cars are Xxx mechanical designations – a plain single door old style box car is an XM. Insulated and refrigerated cars are Rxx. A mechanical reefer with DF bulkheads in it would be an RML; without the mechanical unit it is an RBL.
I thought mechanical reefers with bulkheads were RPLs, I know that is what the PFE (subsequently SPFE, UPFE, and ARMN) cars are. I noticed that UP’s new reefers built by TRG are class RPs. Appearently since the UP reefers and now TTX insulated boxcars have no load restraint devices (it seems like most of the recent predecessors did), the produce and food industries must have decided they could to a better job retraining the load (with bracing, paperboard honeycombs and cylinders, etc) than the bulkheads in the boxcars. Since the RBLs have no refrigeration units, why are they classified as reefers? I thought that maybe it goes back to the ice bunker days, however, even the ice bunkers had a means of refrigeration. It seems like the closests the RBLs come to reefers is the TIV cars for PFE.
Aren’t plain double door boxcars XMs also?
Also, is there any difference between XLIs and RBLs? It seems like I heard the R value of the insulation is higher for RBLs, but that is all I heard.
I haven’t seen those yet. Most of the TTX high cubes I see are either FBOX or TBOX from the National Steel Car.
Don’t usually see reefers in the area and when I do it usually is 1 or 2 BNSF 71 footers.
Class X boxcars are assigned to freight service. Express boxcars are usually equipped with high-speed trucks, steam/HEP and signal lines and are classified BX. Class B is the general passenger classification for head-end baggage and express cars.
I’ve not seen any revenue-service IBOX cars yet (the car in the photo, numbered in the 110000 series, is purely a prototype–TTX reserves that 110000 series for cars that you won’t find anywhere else in its roster).
The “B” in “RB” and “RBL” originally represented “bunkerless”, to differentiate those cars from the ones equipped with ice bunkers. I never saw any documentation that differentiated an RB and RBL from an XMI or XLI (or XPI), but also assume that it has to do with the amount of insulation. There has to be something to it–the Southern Railway redesignated a lot of its insulated cars from RBL to XPI once, back in the pre-NS days.
If, by chance, some of the new IBOX cars are showing up somewhere, could somebody please send along a car number? I can figure out a series from that.
What’s up with Railbox and TTX together now? I thought Railbox was dead!
Much like TTX (originally Trailer Train Corp.), Railbox is owned by almost all the major railroads. Like its old slogan said, it was the “nationwide boxcar pool”. RBOX had great success, as did many short-lines, with the per-diem freight car pricing. When this pricing changed, the entire market changed drastically! And a lot of the per-diem boxcars, along with many RBOXes, were re-marked and eventually repainted for other railroads. But RBOXes still roamed the rails, despite their thinning numbers.
More recently (in the 1990s?), RBOX changed their paint scheme, using a smaller version of the “Next Load, Any Road” logo and a slightly different paint color. And then, more recently, the TBOXes showed up…
I’m not sure whether RBOX has always been part of Trailer Train/TTX or has just recently come under TTX control, although the paint color similarities would seem to indicate so. Maybe someone else can provide more information on this, as well as correcting any details that I may have wrong. Also, does anyone know if Railgon (GONX) is still an ongoing entity?
-Mark Hintz
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken
PS I like the IBOX, can’t wait to see it!!! -MH
The new GNTX gondolas still are marked for Railgon.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=GNTX&cid=6
Haven’t seen them yet, but I’ll be watching for them!
Railbox and Railgon were both set up as subsidiaries of Trailer Train Company (later TTX Company)–Railbox in about 1974 and Railgon toward the end of the 1970s. Eventually, both were folded into the parent company–Railbox first, then Railgon. All of the reporting marks for the various box cars and gondolas are now assigned to the TTX Company.
It’s interesting that the new gons still have a “Railgon” logo, but “Railbox” is nowhere to be found on the TBOX and FBOX cars (nor the IBOX, whenever the revenue series is produced).
I wonder if they are in service yet.
I haven’t seen any, nor heard about anyone building them yet. Probably Gunderson would be a good choice for builders, though Trinity could do it, too.
I just saw my first IBOX car today!
It was the prototype–IBOX 110102, built in April 2004–and, as far as I can tell, it’s still the only IBOX car out there. It was built by Gunderson, and stencilled with class XGH-601. It should be XGH-60I, but it carries the other nonsensical class as a typo. It looked like portions of the side I saw had been painted over already–whether that was a repair or an obliteration of graffiti, I don’t know.
Although it has no mechanical refrigeration, it has a device for GPS tracking on one end (at least I think that’s what that thing near the roof is).
They must have decided not to go into the insulated boxcar business. The April 2007 ORER lists only IBOX 110102.