I just purchased a lot of 59 pieces of rolling stock, about 35 of which are old athearn blue boxes, off of craigslist for $65. The majority of the good, usable cars are AAR 40’ boxcars that are best suited to the 1930s to the 1970s. Here is the problem, I model in the mid-1990s. So here is my question, has anyone ever seen any of these type of boxcars in REVENUE service recently? By recently I mean from today to about 1990. I’ve seen plenty on museums, work trains and captive service, but I personally have not seen one in revenue service. All I want is one example so I can justify modernizing them and running them all. For what its worth I am a freelancer, but I still would like to have an example so I can feel better about using them.
I see 40’ boxcars on the KCS all the time from many roads.
Could be tough - even by the 1990s, there were few 40ft standard boxcars left in revenue service, and most of those I believe were used in Canadian grain service (think Churchill line). Also Mexican service.
I have a 1992 copy of the Official Equipment register, and a (somewhat quick) search through it seems to show the only railroads at the time with significant (100+) fleets of 40’ XM were CP, CN, and NdM (Nacional de Mexico - they had over 2000!)
Interestingly, there were several hundred 40’ (new) boxcars constructed around the turn of this century (21st) for use by Cemex.
Thats the thing. I too have seen 40’ footers, but they are all ex-SP/Cotton Belt FMC-type, or they are the high cube CEMEX types. Just looking at RRpicturearchives, NERails, Railcarphotos, etc…, the latest I can find is the mid 80’s. I guess in theory I could justify using 40’ Standard types since I plan to have a short line. I guess my question is then would they be accepted in interchange service with a class 1 or 2 railroad. They would be upgraded to current standards, new trucks, no runningboards, etc…
AAR has a self imposed rule of no equipment older than 40 years in Revenue service.GTW converted most of it’s PS-1 fleet into boxcars or storage for the signal department.They parked one unmodified in the coachyard at Pontiac,Michigan and it was there from 1985 to the present.I rode in one of the cabooses,they were scrapped as soon as FRED’s became availible.Since 1960’s roller bearings are standard and most andrews trucks were scrapped or modified.Many warehouses have the loading docks spaced for 40 foot cars,that’s why some Hi-cubes are 80’with 2 doors for forklifts.[8)]
Besides the above, remember that anything running in revenue service in the 90’s will have the ladders cut down, roof walks removed, and brake wheel relocated.
–Randy
I run 40 footers all the time with modern loco’s. The only reason is that they look better on my 22 inch curves.
I hear what your saying as I am not the quintessential rivet counter but I like to try and keep my trains at least looking prototypical for the era. So I’m not hitching up an Amtrak passenger car behind one of my Y3’s or anything like that but rather then just scrap the cars totally from use why not use them as fill in cars. I applied that way of thinking when I got my first couple of Rapido passenger cars. I couldn’t afford an entire set so I just ran two of the Rapido’s in the front right behind the locomotive and the observation car. If one were to really nit pick you could find subtle differences of course but for the most part it pulled of the illusion. You can always make use of a few here and there on sidings or as yard fillers.
Too bad the OP got a bunch of standard XM boxcars - industries like to reuse covered hoppers as on-site storage, often not even bothering to remove the trucks (I know of about 3 places off-hand, probably lots more - there was a thread on this in the Trains forum, but the industry removed the trucks and added catwalks etc). However, the old retired boxcar used as a storage shed concept seems pretty rare around Tri-state NY these days - instead, storage containers (stacked up 2 high, doors cut into the side, converted into field offices, 2 sets of containers forming the sides of a ‘butler building’ workshop, whole rows of them forming part of an industry’s boundary wall and so on) seem to have completely taken over that field for the past few decades. I cannot envision a row of standard boxcars stacked 2 high like I can containers, although I’m sure it happened somewhere. I do remember seeing some article discussing a scrap-yard boundary wall be constructed out of old boxcar doors, so that’s one use for that batch of boxcars…
I see little use for those obsolete box cars. People often buy lots like this at extremely low per-item cost to obtain possibly useful items. If you got 20 useful items, the resultant unit cost of $3.25 is still probably a bargain. Hope it works out for you.
Sell or donate what you don’t use.
Mark
Actually, I see one terrific use:
I can understand the freelance idea. But you are saying that you model the mid-1990s. So even though you freelance I would think that you’d really want to be running equipment appropriate to the era. That being the case I would think that 40 foot boxcars would not be appropriate, especially since somewhere around there is when containers started to become prevalent and 50 foot boxcars started to become residents of the storage tracks.
Even if we ignore all this and you manage to come up with a picture of one 40 foot car in a mid-1990s train, I think I’d say I’d be comfortable converting one of the 40 footers to represent what you saw, not all 35.
Same here and my curves are 30 and 32 inch radius. I like them because I can put more cars on a train and still not fill up a siding or a yard track.
Yeah I think I see your point. The problem I think I’m having is that most of the Athearn cars that I plan to use are all there parts-wise (other than metal wheels and couplers), and I dont see the point in converting them all to sheds if they work properly, especially with the abundance of cheap Tyco/Life-Like/etc… cars that are cheap and easy to find. I could always backdate to the early 80’s, or use them in captive service. I did see that writeup in MR about the paper mill boxes in captive service a few months ago. Thanks for all your input guys, I appreciate it!