The 40 Year Rule and 40 Foot Boxcars Into the 70s

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I’ve been modeling contempory era exclusively for a while now, but with a new layout on the horizon I’m thinking I might want to run some trains set in the 60s or 70s.

The trains will be Georgia themed, so Southern and Central of Georgia will dominate.

Southern ran 40 foot boxcars later than many railroads, and there are some nice models available with build dates in the late 60s and early 70s, but a lot have dates blt in the 30s.

My question is: With the 40 year service regulation, how accurate would it be to run cars with a build date in the 30s?

Although legal, would they typically have been replaced by then?

As far as roof walkways and friction bearing trucks from cars built in the 30s and 40s, if my modeling date would be about 1972, I would assume there should be a mix of cars with and without roofwalks, but all should have roller bearing trucks by then.

I’m trying to gauge how much I will need to update any older 40 foot boxcars I buy.

And I assume ALL wooden sided cars would have been out of service by the 60s.

Any help is appreciated.

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Doughless, cars with both roofwalks and “friction” bearing trucks could be seen in interchange service into the early 1980s. Cars extensively rebuilt/overhauled could be given a “RBLT” date replacing the “NEW” date, extending their service lives well beyond the 40 year rule. Most of the Southern’s 40 foot boxcars of the post mid 1960s had their 6 foot door openings increased to eight feet or more, as well as losing their roofwalks and having their ladders shortened. A number of 40 footers were fitted with roof hatches for bulk commodity loading, in which case they kept the roofwalks and full height ladders. As far as wood sided cars, the Wellsville Addison and Galeton Railroad in New York, operated a large fleet of former Boston and Maine single sheathed, externally braced 40 footers into the mid 70’s, some with TOC reporting marks. TOC, a Penn Central component, was the Toledo and Ohio Central. After the demise of the Rock Island in 1980, a lot of their 40 foot PS-1s went to work for the Chicago and North Western with simply a change of reporting marks. Modeling the 1970s should be be most interesting period with 40 foot boxcars from most railroads that owned them, still in service, such as Erie Lackawanna. The EL was formed by the merger of the Erie and Lackawanna in 1960, but , in 1980, 50 foot boxcars in auto parts service could be found in worn, but full Erie paint could be see even on the SP in Texas. If you could find an Official Railway Equipment Register from the early 1970s, you’ll see the 40 footer was by no means dead.

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If the boxcar had plain bearings when it was built, mostly they retained them until eventual scrapping. 40’ and 50’ boxcars on plain bearings were still plentiful in the mid-70s in interchange service.

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Just another of many reasons why late 1970’s is cool to model.

Give in to the “dark” side! It’s a new “transition era”!

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Thanks for the responses. To be clear, I understand that if a car was rebuilt to more modern standards, it would have its “blt date” changed to the date of the rebuild.

I’m just trying to get a sense of how many cars with a blt date of , say, 1937 would be in the average SE U.S. train.

Thinking further, I’m not really interested in having the train dominated by cars built in the 1960s. I want my “one-off” cars to be the newer cars, not the older cars.

I’ll probably have to date the train back further to about 1962.

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I saw plenty of 40’ boxcars, many with 6 foot doors, into the late 1970s and early 1980s perhaps because the C&NW had so many branch lines with grain elevator customers where the light trackage could not handle the big covered hoppers. Those cars had running boards, high brake wheels/ladders, and friction bearings right to the end. And some were not all that old - I can recall seeing patched out ex Rock Island 40’ boxcars with built dates in the mid 1960s.

I saw single sheathed wood boxcars to about 1970s because a spur track in my town had two tanneries, and raw hide service uses the lowest of the low for rolling stock - there is no lesser service they can be demoted to! I can’t speak to the 1970s because I went to college and didn’t know what was being switched out there anymore.

Dave Nelson

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Keep in mind that the AAR 1937 recommended design boxcar was produced in great numbers, especially after WWII. Granted, they wouldn’t have a 1937 BLT. date on them.

Also be aware that for a car to acquire a revised BLT. date (seldom a REBLT. date, I think - more likely reconditioned), the car’s frame would have been altered.

A car could receive new ends, roof, and sides, plus other mechanical upgrades (brakes, trucks, etc.), and yet not be considered truly rebuilt in the, at that time, accepted use of the term.

This ex-PRR X-29 boxcar, in other photos, is clearly built to the early design of this car, but the BLT. date shown puzzled me until I researched its history (the original number is stencilled on the inside of the doors, as is its second number)…

It was a standard X-29 boxcar, like thousands of similar ones, but in 1934 was withdrawn from service and rebuilt as an express car. The rebuild included steam and signal lines, passenger service brake gear, high speed trucks, with locking centre pins (still on the car), and a revised schedule of steps and grab irons. None of those modifications, however, would permit the revised BLT. date.
I later learned that the car’s underframe was altered (confirmed by crawling under it), replacing the original single wood stringers on each side of the centresill with double steel ones on each side. Only the fact of the altered frame permitted the revised BLT. date.

This definition of “re-built” may have changed in later years.

I think that your idea of making the newer cars the less commonly seen ones is a good idea, and another way to enhance that might be to have a few older (but

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Thanks for the ideas and support. Now, I’m not changing modeling eras out of the contemporary, but I’ve always been I bit more interested in railroads that served the SE, so that is the focus of one or two “heritage” trains.

Speaking of rebuild, I want to be able to run some of the Athearn 40’ wood chip hoppers with rebuilt/extended sides and ends. Bashing some of my own wouldn’t seem like it would be too hard of a project. I recall articles in either MR or RMC back in the day. I think these were re-built in the early 50s from coal hoppers, so they may be some of the newer cars I would look at.

I’m thinking beat up wood sided hoppers for coal deliveries down the branch, and a variety of boxcars.

Its free lance with heavy plausibility being the goal, but not exact replication.

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While I certainly understand your desire to kitbash some Athearn cars into woodchip cars, Bowser has recently released some ready-made ones which you might find to be of interest.

The woodchip cars which used to run through town here during the mid-'70s were often ex-steel reefers, with the doors either welded shut or plated-over. The side extensions looked like cut-down sides from older steel gondolas.

Wayne

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That’s an important point. In 1937 the Great Depression was still quite bad. Railroads had equipment sitting idle, so didn’t do that much purchasing of new equipment. After WW2, with the postwar economic boom, you saw railroad buying passenger cars, diesels (and some steam) and freight cars. So a 40’ boxcar c.1972 would be more likely to be from the late forties to the fifties than from the thirties. BTW around 1972 there were still a few 40’ woodsided boxcars - in some cases, cars built with wood sides to save steel during WW2 - rolling around in service.

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I wondered about that too. Economic cycles usually make capital expenditures a cyclical thing, and WWII impacting what gets built.

I’m thinking having a couple of trains kept in the 60s decade will allow me to run mostly 40 foot cars with some wood sided beaters once in a while.

Accurail makes some nice outside steel braced woody’s. Hopefully, some of those particular cars would still see service into the 60s.

Wow, Speaking of Accurail, their website shows all of their rolling stock complete with blt dates. The Georgia RR 4200 series 40 foot OB boxcar with wood

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In the early 70’s, 40’ boxcars were still the most common way to ship grain, here in Minnesota grain trains made up mostly (if not entirely) of 40’ boxcars heading to Minneapolis/St.Paul or Duluth/Superior were the norm.

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Two railroads that ran significant numbers of composite (steel underframe, ends and roof with wood sides) boxcars were Northern Pacific and, Great Morthern. NP had single sheathed 40 and 50 footers in interchange up until the early 1970s. Some of the 40 footers even had their roofwalks removed and ladders cut down to comply with the 1966 rule revision. They also sported ACI labels. A fair representation of a 50 footer can be had by removing the frame reinforcement from under the doors of an Athearn/Roundhouse RND 84419 or 84420 model. The model comes with doors on the A end and a radial vs. peaked roof, as on the prototype. Great Northern replaced the vertical board sheathing on about 800 40’ boxcars with plywood sheathing in the late 1950s/early 1960s. These cars ran up until Burlington Northern occurred in 1970 with some in the last red scheme, the majority in the Glacier green “Rocky” paint, with a few showing up in the Big Sky Blue pre-merger paint beginning in 1967. Intermountain produces an excellent model of these cars in a number of GN paint schemes. One plus of modeling a 1960s era freight is the varying heights of the boxcars, form the rather low Pennsy X-29s (Red Caboose) and 1932 ARAs (Atlas), the 10’0" cars from a number of manufacturers, as well as the more prolific 10’6" examples by many different manufacturers. It was also the decade of mechanical refrigeration, jumbo tankcars, 86 foot auto parts boxcars WITH roofwalks, piggybacks, and open sided auto racks. Also many 40’ wood sheathed reefers under Fruit Growers Express and, Western Fruit Express made it into the 1970s–some in Burlington Northern paint!

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I share your enthusiam!

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It is amazing what was still on the rails in the 80’s. I remember wood reefers into the late 90’s.

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Not just “beaters”. One thing to keep in mind is that a boxcar might wear several paint schemes over it’s service life. As noted Great Northern had some 40’ woodside boxcars that were painted into the Big Sky Blue paint scheme in the late sixties for example. I believe some woodsided boxcars and reefers even made it onto BN’s roster. So a 1940 boxcar in a 1969 train might be the cleanest, most recently painted car in the train!

BTW - except for ‘baby hi-cubes’, I don’t think you’d see new 40’ boxcars being built in the 1960’s as was mentioned in the OP. Might be you saw the date of it’s most recent reweigh date on the car. The built date “BLT” stays the same, but the reweigh date changes everytime the car is reweighed, which is usually every few years.

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The Rock Island did buy new 40ft box cars in the 1960s.

www.railgoat.railfan.net/other_cars/ri_cars/ri_number/028350-029349.htm

Sorry, I can’t get the link to work.

Jeff

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When it comes to Accurail, take the name with a box car of salt. Some Accurail box cars are decent matches for prototype box cars but many are stand-in’s at best. If you don’t mind models that don’t match any real box cars, then buy what you fancy, but if you want box cars that match real box cars, then see if you can vet them first on sites such as:

rr-fallenflags.org

www.railcarphotos.com

BTW, these are 50’ box cars but Moloco makes some nice CofG box cars (I bought one to mix in):

https://www.molocotrains.com/collections/freight-cars/products/42003-cg-delivery-fge-12

https://www.molocotrains.com/collections/freight-cars/products/42013-cg-repaints-fge-12

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I believe one of the MoPac lines ran single sheathed wooden side boxcars into the 1970s.

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-Kevin

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Riogrande is right the 60s-80s are the second transition Era, the end of real railroading.

I’ve started to kinda sway towards the “dark side” of the 70s, mostly because I just can’t afford steamers, I can barely afford diesels!