What types of cars to get for an early 1980s layout with a lumberyard in southern VA? I saw 72’ partitition center-beam railcars. Any other type(s)? They are quite expensive at $30/each or more in HO scale.
My best,
Lee
I assume you mean the railroad is delivering lumber to the yard.
Bulkhead flat cars. The older MDC/Roundhouse/Athearn car is a nice model and are plentiful on the secondary market. Current productions are more detailed and expensive.
53 foot Evans double door boxcars were favored by lumber companies to ship plywood. Atlas and Scaletrains currently make models decorated for such service. The Atlas model is also plentiful on the secondary market.
And any regular boxcar, preferrably double doored.
There are also Thrall all-door box cars, but I’m not sure if they were still in service or fell out of favor by the early 1980’s. Walthers makes a model, but its fairly pricey.
You might want to look at Thrall Door Cars. They were a pretty unique car and some had fancy paint jobs for the various lumber and plywood manufacturers.
https://www.walthers.com/gold-line-tm-56-thrall-all-door-boxcar-single-car-ready-to-run-lignum
Good Luck, Ed
The Atlas FMC 5077 CF Double Door Boxcar, the WP had hundreds of these for transporting lumber. They just announced a new run of these for delivery later this year.
The Intermountain Railway FMC 5283 CF Double Door Boxcar, the SP, Cotton Belt, and MILW bought a number of these cars for lumber service, the MILW cars ended up on the BAR after a couple of years.
Rick Jesionowski
Its interesting to see the pic of the recent release. That model looks like the same tooling from old Life Like runs back in the day. I used to have several painted in that same scheme. With only the addition of better trucks and couplers, I don’t see much difference from the LL vintage.
The LifeLike car seems like a decent enough casting and the paint jobs were good too. I suspect Douglas is correct and that Walthers just improved the LifeLike tooling. It says it is discontinued but you never knew when these things make a comeback. And the LifeLike versions are still seen at swap meets.
Dave Nelson
As far as those Thrall door boxcars, I think they fell out of favor fairly early in their production since the door mechanisms were complicated. Structurally, they were just a bulkhead flat car with a permanent steel cover and doors to protect the product from the elements. I think lumber companies began to cover the products in those weather resistant wraps and the railroads began using more flat cars and center beams instead of the thrall.
1980’s ?
Plain flatcars for the rougher lumber that would be stored outside.
Bulkhead flatcars for bundled lumber (could be wrapped or not.)
Early centerbeams for bundled lumber (could be wrapped or not).
40 ft boxcars (still a few of them floating around).
50 ft cars with an 10 ft sliding door.
50 ft double sliding door cars.
All door cars, but they were relatively rare.
The Life Like and Walthers cars are entirely different. I don’t remember off hand but the door sizes are different between the two cars and they are based off of two different prototypes. The Life-Like car was an early version and the Walthers is a later version of the car.
Rick Jesionowski
No, Walthers had their own Thrall-Door model at the same time Life-Like had theirs, long before the buyout. The Walthers one was far superior in the detail department, as the Life-Like one was basically a toy train car, with visible mounting tabs and slots in the side side, molded on door rods (the Walthers car has separate parts) and really shallow end detail.
This is a re-release of the Walthers tooling, not the crappy Life Like stuff.
Lumber was deliverd in double door boxcars,bulkheads and centerbeams. While working on the Chessie I don’t recall seeing 50 or 60 foot flatcars carrying lumber. I seen a lot of 60’ flats carrying John Deer,Internation Harverster tractors,Bobcats,backhoes and other like loads.
Are you sure about 72’ Centerbeam in the early 80s? I didnt think they were even built until around 86 or 87. There were 63’ Centerbeam like the Thralls ExactRail offered a few years ago.
Out west lumber was shipped on flat cars, bulkhead flat cars, Thrall All door cars and in dd boxcars.
What do you mean by early?
They were quite popular in the Pacific Northwest and Canada in the 70s and into the 80s. A few lasted onto the 1990s.
It’s a shame Atlas, to date, still hasn’t offered a WP like pictured above. If get some. Only the late era WP with the wierdly colored doors.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Seeing that there are multiple options available avoids me having to only get one type of freight car. The boxcars and center-beam flat cars seem more readily available than the partition flat cars. They also are more expensive than boxcars, which serve multiple industries.
I was buying some of these thrall door lumber cars early in my re-entry to the hobby. I recall the very basic car that LL introduced originally. Then I recall the improved car with the ‘relief molding’ coming out.
But my memory says that second generation was also a LL product? It was a period of time where LL was making big moves to go from their toy like models and transistion into their Proto 2K models.
In that same vein, I feel that LL into Proto2K was a major driver of the move to much superior plastic models.
Walthers sells a pretty decent Thrall All-door car.
As for expensive, there is a decent selection of them on eBay in the 20 to 30 dollar price range - that isn’t too bad. Scroll past the higher priced options.
Which car also depends on what you are shipping. Flat cars are more likely “construction grade” wood (2x’s, 4x’s, fence posts) while stuff in boxcars are more likely to be finish grade and stuff that can’t get wet (1x’s, mill work, particle board, interior plywood, etc).
I stand corrected. I think the emergence of the center beam kind of put them on the back burner and they may not have fulfilled their intended useful life. I think the doors were viewed as a pain to operate in loading and unloading.
Apparently, center beam cars existed even earlier than the 1980s: