FRRYKID,
Try looking at Intermodal cars,,like spine cars,for 45 ft trailers,3-packer,5-packer,or single car,or COFC 40FT tubs,they are around 50 ft long...50 FT Tank cars,Hoppers,3-Bay..There are many out there..
Cheers,
Frank
The most common new car was (modern style) 50' and 53' boxcars that was needed to replace the aging 40' boxcars.In short there was a boxcar shortage in the 70s.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Centerflow covered hoppers, twin airslide, coil cars, Ortner hoppers, Funnel Flow tank cars.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Well, as already mentioned 50 IPD outside post boxcars and centerflow covered hoppers were probably the most common new cars added in the 1970s (along with the newer style of 52ft gondolas - like the old MDC Railgon Gondolas), but there were also a lot of new larger Mechanical Refrigerator cars added to the national fleet in the late 1960s - early 1970s (think Athearn's 57ft R70-20 model) if you want to go a bit off-beat route.
Not new cars but a new look was the enclosed auto racks. I remember seeing a mix of open and closed auto racks in the seventies. Giant box cars were there too. The 89 foot with four double doors were all over the rust belt.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
I'd have to say the IPD 50' boxcars, too. Lots of shortlines got in on it, many probably with insufficient track to hold even their own fleets. There were various styles of cars (MDC/Roundhouse covered several of them) and a plethora of colourful paint schemes. They could be seen all over North America.
Wayne
doctorwayne Lots of shortlines got in on it, many probably with insufficient track to hold even their own fleets.
Wayne,Actually the cars belonged to investors that bought the cars then leased them to short lines..Short lines got the a share of the freight charges (like railbox these cars was in pool service-"next load any road") and the leasers got the lease payments..
The short lines got a cash boost and the investors got the lease payments.
I think the Car Builders Cyclopedias (or the combined Locomotive and Car Builders Cyclopedias) usually had that information but my newest one is 1970.
Dave Nelson
dknelson I think the Car Builders Cyclopedias (or the combined Locomotive and Car Builders Cyclopedias) usually had that information but my newest one is 1970. Dave Nelson
I recall vast numbers of cylindrical hopper cars owed by the Government of Canada and provincial wheat pools entering service because neither CN or CP would upgrade their older cars - the frozen grain tariffs had made upkeep and replacement uneconomical. The 85' flat cars of Trailer Train became very common either in piggyback service or carrying stacks of car frames on their way to car assembly plants on both sides of the border. Railbox's 50' ABOX cars entered service in 1974 through 1979.
By and large, plug door boxcars began to replace sliding door cars. But the most noticeable change was the removal of the roof walkways on almost all boxcars and the shortening of all side and end ladders and repositioning of the brake wheels as a result.
chutton01[C}enterflow covered hoppers were probably the most common new cars added in the 1970s
[C}enterflow covered hoppers were probably the most common new cars added in the 1970s
chutton01[B}ut there were also a lot of new larger Mechanical Refrigerator cars added to the national fleet in the late 1960s - early 1970s (think Athearn's 57ft R70-20 model) if you want to go a bit off-beat route.
[B}ut there were also a lot of new larger Mechanical Refrigerator cars added to the national fleet in the late 1960s - early 1970s (think Athearn's 57ft R70-20 model) if you want to go a bit off-beat route.
locoi1saNot new cars but a new look was the enclosed auto racks. I remember seeing a mix of open and closed auto racks in the seventies. Giant box cars were there too. The 89 foot with four double doors were all over the rust belt. Pete
BRAKIEdoctorwayne Lots of shortlines got in on it, many probably with insufficient track to hold even their own fleets. Wayne,Actually the cars belonged to investors that bought the cars then leased them to short lines..Short lines got the a share of the freight charges (like railbox these cars was in pool service-"next load any road") and the leasers got the lease payments.. The short lines got a cash boost and the investors got the lease payments.
BRAKIEdknelson I think the Car Builders Cyclopedias (or the combined Locomotive and Car Builders Cyclopedias) usually had that information but my newest one is 1970. Dave Nelson Those are nice reference books but,I favor the Official Railway Equipment guide since it goes into detail.
Frrykid,
Just ''Google'' Most of the,Tiiles given,by some of the posters and read it for free..Just a Thought!
BRAKIE Those are nice reference books but,I favor the Official Railway Equipment guide since it goes into detail.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
A car not mentioned, was the 60' Auto Parts Car, these are available from a number of importers,
Athearn, Pullman Standard (Early Version) (The later Hi-Cube cars were 1980's cars)
Atlas, ACF Precision Design Single and Double Door
Intermountain - Pulman Standard - Single Door
Walther's - Pullman Standard, Single and Double Door
ExactRail - Greenville Late Version (Plate C), Pullman Standard Waffle Side.
Con-Cor - Greenville Early Version (Plate B), can also with a little work be modified into the Thrall or Early ACF cars.
Rick J
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
Rule 2: I make the rules.
Rule 3: Illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, but in the event of visitor-perceived anacronisms, detail descrepancies or operating errors, consult RULE 1!
For what it is worth here is what the 1970 Cary & Locomotive Cyclopedia says about car types, as of 1969 (so a later edition might be more precise for your era because things were changing pretty fast at that time in the way of freight car design)
It is part of a chart showing 1955, 1960, 1965, 1967, 1969 -- and for other years it shows average capacity in tons but not for '69 as the data was not yet available. You can make some educated guesses about what kinds of cars were being described by the raw numbers.
Box car general 404,592
Box car special 146,252
flatcar 68,558
stockcar 14,964
gondola 197,087
hopper open top 410,508
hopper covered 122,566
refrigerator 52,535
rack --- (an older classification; starting in 1969 autoracks became special flatcars for this purpose. The prior year there were 49,399 racks and 49,897 flats)
tank 4,717
other 36,441
The one area were I would expect to see very rapid (downward) change from 1969 into the mid to late 1970s is, of course, stock cars. I was surprised by the seemingly small number of covered hoppers but I can recall railfanning some large central grain elevators in the 1970s and 80s and there was still plenty of grain being shipped in 40' boxcars with 6' doors. That too changed pretty rapidly by the mid to late 1980s.
BRAKIE doctorwayne ,Actually the cars belonged to investors that bought the cars then leased them to short lines..Short lines got the a share of the freight charges (like railbox these cars was in pool service-"next load any road") and the leasers got the lease payments.. The short lines got a cash boost and the investors got the lease payments.
doctorwayne ,Actually the cars belonged to investors that bought the cars then leased them to short lines..Short lines got the a share of the freight charges (like railbox these cars was in pool service-"next load any road") and the leasers got the lease payments..
A few minor corrections. The short lines always had a share of the freight charges. With the new per diem lease boxcars, the short line received a small portion of the car hire earnings of the cars when they were moving around hauling the freight. Railbox was part of the Trailer Train initiative and not the short line per diem movement.
Most of the short line boxcars were owned by large leasing companies like Brae, Itel, GE and others. Some were indeed also owned by dentists, lawyers, etc. These were usually then managed by a car leasing company who in turned tried to find homes for them on short lines. I remember switching a paper mill in Georgia when those cars first started coming out. We loved them. They were all clean and the doors would open so easily.
Mike M1961But the most noticeable change was the removal of the roof walkways on almost all boxcars and the shortening of all side and end ladders and repositioning of the brake wheels as a result.
Only in a very few cases were all the ladders shortened and brakewheels lowered on existing cars. The normal way to meet the safety applicance regulations was to remove the running board, shorten the A end ladders to four rungs, and install an angled grab iron on the roof at the B end roughly replacing the grab that used to be part of the running board assembly. A yellow label staing "keep off roof no running board" was also required adjacent to the B end side ladder. Typically you would also see horizontal grabs added across both ends, roughly lining up with the fourth ladder rung from the bottom. New cars and full rebuilds received the new standard safety appliances at all four corners.
A typical car might end up looking like this. The SPFE car represents a prototype built in the 1960s that received ladders at all the corners, plus crossover platforms and end grabs to go with them. Despite that it retained the high brakewheel when the running boards were removed.
Rob Spangler
FRRYKidI've decided that I'm going to do some of the Athearn Mech Reefers.
Note that PFE was broken up in 1978. Prior to that the fleet had cars with separate reporting marks for UPFE and SPFE, and starting in the late 60s car orders received different underframes depending on who they were assigned to. SPFE cars had hydra-cushion underframes, while UPFE typically got Keystone undeframes, which have different details visible from trackside (the hydraulic cylinder and attendant hardware for the SP cars could be readily seen). Athearn's car has an underframe more closely resembling the Keystone design.
Throughout the pre-1978 period paint and lettering changed several times, with the older black ends becoming orange to match the sides, white Scotchlite lettering replacing black (which itself replaced the older black rectangles that had the reporting marks in white), and the heralds changed (especially UP which had a few variations). On cars with heralds from both roads, the SP was almost always toward the B end of the car (the positions of the heralds switched depending on which side of the car you saw, so that each road got "top billing" only half the time).
Following the breakup, both roads started repainting cars into their own schemes, and patching older ones here and there. SPFE introduced a solid white scheme that was basically the old PFE scheme without heralds, and nearly everything else the same as the orange cars. SP used a couple different white schemes later into the 1980s. On existing orange cars, SP often placed a rectangular sticker with "perishable freight experts" atop the UP herald.
UP started repainting cars yellow with white roofs. Again the scheme was similar to the old orange cars. There was a large UP herald in place of the smaller ones for the two roads, and the Pacific Fruit Express lettering to the right of the door was revised to Union Pacific Fruit Express with smaller letering.
All these variations make late 70s PFE cars a lof of fun to model. Older 50' mechanical cars quickly disappeared, along with the few ice cars, leaving only the 57' mechanical cars, but there are so many paint and detail differences they still provide lots of variety and color.
Atlanta DaveMost of the short line boxcars were owned by large leasing companies like Brae, Itel, GE and others. Some were indeed also owned by dentists, lawyers, etc. These were usually then managed by a car leasing company who in turned tried to find homes for them on short lines.
The short lines also got paid for the use of their name by those leasing companies.IIRC ITEL had a lot of colorful cars bearing names of short lines that was previously unheard of.
I only wish I took photos of those IPD boxcars.