Well, yes, I was a bit short on the car description.
The car is a 40 ft AAR stell boxcar, DT&I (Duluth, Toledo & Ironton).
After thinking about it during the 6 hours!!! it took me to build this car, I kind of figured that the Despatch ends of the car would be, as facing the car end, the right side of the car end where the wood tack board is. Perhaps these tack boards carried any kind of special orders or bills of lading that had to stay with the car throughout it's shipment.?
The other thing I thought of was that maybe since these irons are used at the car end, rather than the car side, a different style of bracket would be required to reinforce the mounting of the iron, since it was bolted sirectly to the car end panel. Maybe some sort of blocking was required inside the wall to distribute the weight better, and avoid the problem of the brackets pulling out of the car end....
Just guesses on my part. Not particularly important, just a real curiosity that has me captivated as such that I'm trying to rationalize why these paricular irons would be so different than the others.
I ended up using the "H" grabs anyway, because in the end, I though the appearance of them against the car end looked better...
Still curious, though!!!
Rey