Hey, I’m just curious as to how long boxcars like this were used:
Also, are these wooden boxcars? I never knew whether they were metal or what.
outside braced boxcars are indeed wooden with metal braces…a
“double sheathed” boxcar is a outside braced boxcar with another layer of wood outside the braces…i believe these cars were pretty much out off interchange service by the mid 50’s but i know you could see them in MoW service as late as the mid 70’s
That is what’s called a “composite” car. It has a steel underframe, steel roof, steel ends and steel structural side posts with a wood sheathing. It is also called a ‘single sheathed’ boxcar. They date from the WW1 era to the 1950’s. They were made in the late teens and early 20’s as a transition between all wood and all steel cars, then were made during WW2 to save on steel.
That I don’t believe that particular side style was owned by the B&O, they used the USRA designed cars with 8 panels on a side (four on either side of the door.)
Dave H.
Wellsville, Addison & Galeton (The Sole Leather Route) had a small fleet of these boxcars in free-running interchange service into the early 1970’s.
much better discription…i neglected to mention the metal under frame…and double sheathed cars were an early atempt at insulating cars…?
No. Double sheathed cars had a wooden superstructure, the exterior sheathing protected the wooden superstructure and the interior sheathing kept the lading from catching on the superstructure. On the single sheathed cars the superstructure was metal and so it wasn’t as critical to keep it dry or out of the sun. There was no insulation between the interior and exterior sheathing on a double sheathed car.
Dave H.
A number of double sheathed cars made it into the late 60’s. Keep in mind woodsided cars began to be built again during WW 2 due to steel shortages, so those cars would only be 20 years old in the mid sixties.
For example the Athearn wood sided boxcar was built in the 1940’s (its actually NEWER than the Athearn 40’ steel boxcar).
Dave H.
I can recall seeing wood outside braced boxcars serving the Rapco tannery in South Milwaukee WI in the late 1960s. Tannery service is about the last gasp of a revenue boxcar. I distinctly recall my friend and I getting excited about seeing a 1919 built date on one such car, nearly 50 years old when we saw it.
An advertisement for Standard Railway Equipment (a maker of boxcar flooring) in the May 18, 1959 Railway Age magazine, page 49, shows Green Bay & Western outside braced boxcar 8142. The ad mentions that the Standard flooring had been installed 21 years earlier.
Moving forward to the January 1967 Railway Equipment Register, it shows a car 8142 still in service: a 40’6" car with 6’ doors. The class was 8100 to 8196 and there were 27 such cars on the roster in 1967 – which suggests to me that, yes, this was a survivor of a diminished class of wood outside braced car.
Dave Nelson