jecorbettI remember when I was in elementary school back in the 1950s, our teacher read passages from The Boxcar Children which I believe was a series of books about a family of orphans who took refuge in an abandoned boxcar. Anybody else remember
Hi
I didn't know my mother untill I was about 60 years old. When I finally did meet her I ask about her past and she said she was born in a boxcar. I believe her father was working on the electric interurban railroad at KC in about the 1920s.
happy railroading.
Lee
I believe I read quite some time ago that The Golf Club outside of New Albany, OH uses old boxcars as shelter houses for the golfers. You won't see any pictures of this because it is a very exclusive club and they don't allow pictures to be taken of the golf course.
This does illustrate that boxcars can be used for any number of purposes. What you have is a prefabbed metal or wood structure which can be obtained for minimal cost so it makes sense than they would be recycled.
As others have pointed out, old dining cars were often recycled as roadside diners and many roadside diners were actually built to resemble old dining cars.
I remember when I was in elementary school back in the 1950s, our teacher read passages from The Boxcar Children which I believe was a series of books about a family of orphans who took refuge in an abandoned boxcar. Anybody else remember that?
For quite a while in Lorain, the B&O had an old outside braced box and an old short clerestory combine or RPO next to the scal house just North of the local newspaper building. While the Journal is still there, the yard trackage and structures have been gone at least 15 years now.
I remember a McDonalds' restaraunt in Waterford that had an old caboose in their parking lot, that was a playhouse for kids. That was years ago, and it is no longer there. The caboose sat a couple hundred from the tracks that tpassed behind the McDonalds.
A favorite example of railroad cars used for other purposes was the Southern Pacific commissary at Schellville, CA where the Northwestern Pacific interchanged. It was 83 miles for the trip from Schellville to Roseville, and crews needed somewhere to eat. The railroad took two obsolescent wood passenger cars (I think they were a former RPO and coach) and converted them to a commissary to provide meals to the crews. SP contracted with J.V. Moan and Co. to run it. The crews referred to the commissary and the operator as "Moan and Groan."
Mark
Judging by the available evidence, the Santa Fe would sell rolling stock with sound carbodies to anyone who'd remove them from railroad property:
Most of the cars seem to have been retired in the '60s, give or take.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
When I was a kid in the mid sixties there was a pulp mill up in the Prince George area of British Columbia.. The PGE mainline ran by this mill. The employees of the mill would build a very nice outdoor hockey rink in the winter months and would hit the ice after work. They had an old boxcar between the rink and the mainline that they would store all their equipment in. One memory that will never escape me is those diesels thundering by not 50' away when we were out there at 10:00 at night playing hockey and it was 20 below and snowing. You could hear them coming and all of a sudden they would jump out of the snow and roar by. I hope to model this some day. So ya, old boxcars are used to store hockey equipment.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Hay Good stuff all. The pictures help. I though I was on the right track (pun intended) I'm building a farm supply store and yard from scratch. A first for me. I'll post pictures soon.Thanks all.
You bet it's prototypical! The only instances of this I've seen have been in or near yards. I found you two examples from maps.live.com from the two yards nearby.
Union Pacific
Wisconsin and Southern
Hope that helps you out!
Hi Lee,
The local PRR train station is now owned and used by a Theatrical Group. When the PR abandonded the track a box car was left for the Theater.
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up
The Des Plaines Lumber and Coal Company in Des Plaines, Illinois, for many years, had an old Chicago Great Western boxcar parked in their yard, which they used for storage. (I don't remember, if I ever knew, what they stored in the boxcar.) The car was still on its trucks.
Dan
In the parking lot of the former Pharm store in my hometown of Bucyrus, Ohio, there used to (don't know if it's still there) a box car on blocks, and that was a few blocks to the west of the Norfolk Southern tracks and several blocks south of the former Conrail main through town.
And, I'm thinking there is (or was) another one in a lot between West Mansfield Street and the former Conrail main towards the west side of town.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
Yes, it wasn't uncommon. Most frequently they were box cars and passenger cars that were old/surplus. Box cars were typically used for railroad storage, usually as a separate structure and sometimes as additions to normal structures.
Passenger cars were used as railroad yard offices, telegraph/train order offices, dormitories, and restaurants.
These days passenger cars, cabooses and box cars are used for non-railroad restaurants and their addendum dining rooms. Cabooses also function as motel rooms. Farmers and others used old box cars for sheds too.
I've seen plenty of pics of old boxcars being used as storage etc. usually with their trucks removed.
In the depression some folks lived in old boxcars. One was Country star Merle Haggard, his dad worked for the SP and got an old boxcar or reefer cheap from the railroad and made a home out of it.
HelloI believe I have seen freight cars that were used for storage near railroad tracks but not on a siding or detached rails for support. That is, just sitting on a foundation. Anyone know how likely this would be proto typical?Thanks
Happy railroading.