The other day I was digging through some old photos and found one of my very first HO layout. I was 8 years old. In the picture was a model of a box car. This car had no doors and if memory serves, its sides rolled up and down like those on trucks used to deliver soda and beer. My question is, did any cars of this design exist in real life? The model was lettered for Souther Pacific. Thanks.
I have never heard of such a car.
Is this what you are talking about?
First time I saw one in our yard I though the side rolled up also, till I got closer.
They haul synthetic rubber in small containers that stack on top of each other…every once in a while UP will miss-route one to us, and we have to send it back to them…Goodyear still gets a lot of these cars.
The boxcar you are describing, sounds like a Thrall all door boxcar. They were built in the 70’s and used mostly to haul lumber and plywood, many railroads and lumber companies had them, a few still exist today, I saw two of them about 6 months ago lettered for a shortline.
Jim
Ed, yours is actually a flat car, with permanent racks for those containers.
The Thrall-Door cars have four actual doors on the sides, and the maximum width of the opening was half the side, or two doors–any two.
Now, the Southern Railway had some cars that fit the description of the model. The sides of the cars consisted of four doors, separated by posts. The doors would roll upward against the ceiling–and when all four were put up, the posts could be rolled away to one side or the other, opening the entire side of the car. These were built in the early 1960s, some time before Thrall and others came up with their all-door cars.
Years ago, I started a thread about these cars–if you cut the roof away and removed the doors, they were basically bulkhead flat cars, and that was how they were designed, structurally. There just aren’t too many left.
Thanks for the information. To date this was the only model of these cars I’ve ever seen. What roads did these cars run on? I know model companies will often take a few creative liberties with roadnames.