I’ve been searching for Railroad History Timelines on the web and here and came up with nothing.Search engines just don’t cut it.
I’m wanting to know the year that the following were used first on a systemwide basis by the railroads.
45’ Trailers
45’ Containers
Double Stack Trains(looks to be 1985 to me)
TTWX Twin-45 flats
Have a good one.
Bill B
OK, 45 footers began showing up in the early 70’s out west, and they started coming east by ‘75. 45’ containers were out in the late '70s. Double stacks appeared in 1982 here in Mudville, USA, running on the ex-Erie Southern tier line in Conrail and Susquehanna trains. Best of all was how the D&H/NYS&W trains got from New Castle to Mudville CSX (now B&P,ex-B&O, nee-BR&P New Castle- Mudville). The TTWX twin 45s were showing up in 1977, hurriedly converted from twin 40s. Conductors and brakemen (brakepeople, if you must) hated them, since there was no space on the car’s ends for them to do anything that needed doing, like tying down the hand brakes or replacing a trailer seal. But, if they were loaded right, they had their doors less than 6" apart, precluding looting of open trailers. I hope this helps.
The APLX stack cars, built by Thrall, began to appear in early 1984. These cars were used on the first stack trains to run from Chicago to the west coast over CNW and UP. It wasn’t until 1985 that FMC (Gunderson about then) began building NYS&W’s fleet of stack cars. SP had some prototype stack cars as early as 1977, but not much came of the concept until APL and Thrall got into the act.
TTWX reporting marks were added to the Trailer Train Company’s ORER listings in late 1982.
Intermodal ISO standards were set between '68 and '70.
The Port of Oakland intermodal facility began operation in the late '80s; 1984 looks to be about when the intermodal trains really started to go systemwide.
That’s based on the Wikipedia article titled “Intermodal Freight Transportation”.