Here is the link to the YouTube video about the Wisconsin & Southern Evans Products Insulated box cars. It was supposed to be embedded, but that did not work.
In the text for the video it is stated that the Wisconsin & Southern Evans Products double plug door box cars are being retired. Have they been scrapped by now?
On the WSOR website they say that they have a fleet of Insulated box cars or RBLs available for customers.
If the RBLs built by Evans Products are retired, what type of new insulated box cars are in the WSOR fleet now?
My guess is the WSOR RBLs will be replaced by XM and XP boxcars. A few years ago RBLs were common out here. Now all of the industries that used to ship in RBLs ship in XM or XP.
It looks like they are all going away rather fast. Another freight car type from the 1970’s that needs to be captured in High-Resolution, before they all are gone.
Somebody at WSOR has to get their website information reworked to match the current fleet.
Would they every get a fleet of new Mechanical Refrigerator Cars from Greenbrier or Trinity to have more potential customers?
A fleet of silver, white, & red Wisconsin & Southern 64’ or 72’ Mechanical Refrigerator Cars would be better than the insulated box cars they are replacing.
I doubt that there would ever be any customer in WSOR country that would load a big mechanical reefer, let alone a fleet of them. They would certainly be overkill as replacement for the RBLs–the canned goods hauled in the RBLs need temperature protection–not cooling or temperature control as is afforded by the mechanical reefers. And the biggest irony is that the reefers primarily keep the goods from freezing, rather than overheating.
Replacements? Any box car will do. Will Watco buy some brand-new box cars for WSOR service? Probably not.
The RBLs are being retired because they’re old. They were actually pretty old when WSOR got them, but still had about half of their lives left. Out of the big block of reefers they had (503001-503251), 101 remain as of today. Most of them are in the higher numbers, which makes sense because the cars were renumbered in order from various USLX series. It sure looks like a case of mandatory retirement at age 40 here.
There are 4 places that I can think of off the top of my head on WSOR that see big CRYX reefers spotted on a fairly regular basis. Frozen vegetables and butter.
There have been some new used boxcars showing up. WSOR 500xxx are a mishmash of various older cars, usually double door, many excess height, a lot of waffle side, I believe most came from MWCX, same numbers.
WSOR 120xxx are newer, 60’ double door, Plate F maybe.
Part of the issue is that some canneries have doors and docks spaced for RBLs, and the bigger cars don’t fit as well.