I’ve had a copy of the 1959 Railway Equipment Register for quite a while now and always wondered about a private car company that always brought a smile to my face as well as a chuckle. It bore the reporting marks HOCX, had 53 class TM tank cars, and went by the name of the Head-On Collision Line. Just the name for me is hilarious, but I know absolutely nothing about this company other than it is (or was) headquartered in Chicago. It’s home points were Chicago, IL, E. St. Louis, IL, Hubbard, OH, Kansas City, MO, Longview, TX, Miltou, PA, New Orleans, LA, Philadelphia, PA, and Sharon, PA. Anyone have any info on this?
It was still listed in the 1977 edition of the RER. The home points are probably contract shops for maintenance of the rolling stock as these are common home points for other small leasing firms. I’m going to guess that the firm is a subsidiary of a chemical or manufacturing business, not unlike Crystal Car Line with Corn Products Co.
This reminds meof the some of the body shops around here, which invite you to go to their shops for your collision; I prefer to avoid such places lest my car suffer damage.[:)]
The last of the HOCX cars were sold off in 1989.
A lot of their cars were tallow tank cars, in the vicinity of 23000 gallons’ capacity. But they did have some small tank cars that were lettered “Pure Cane Molasses” at one time (yellow carbodies with black lettering and a black center band), and some 8000-gallon corn syrup cars that were leased to the American Maize-Products Company. These were mode modern “111A” tank cars (no domes).
I have no idea where they came up with the name.
This discussion from a few years ago may be of interest: