One must make the destinction btw wood passenger cars with wood underframes and wood cars with steel underframes. (Many wood passenger cars and cabooses were rebuilt with steel underframes.) Many still retained their truss rods. Some wood passenger cars with steel underframes were used in revenue service as late as WWII on class one railroads as head-end equipment. Many wood cabooses with steel underframes lasted into the 1960's.
Railroads were actually very reluctant to stop using wood passenger cars. I don't believe wood underframe car were really outlawed until around 1940, and that was only if the car was used on more than one railroad I believe. For example, CNW used some woodsided cars - with open end platforms by the way - in Chicagoland commuter service at least into the 1950's if not into the sixties.
What really brought heavyweights to the forefront was the US government requiring first that all RPO cars or cars with RPO sections had to first have steel underframes, then had to be all steel. This was in the 1910's IIRC. Since the government required this for safety reasons, it made the railroads look like they didn't care as much about the safety of the general public, so they started getting steel cars.
BTW did you know that some early all-steel cars had the sides scribed so they looked like wood cars??
Thank you all for the good information. My question had to do with my new layout. My old layout was part of a 1939 short line, wheras my new layout (under construction) will be a terminal on a 1947 regional road. I think my wood (steel underframe) coach will now be downgraded to MOW service and repainted from green to boxcar red.
The Ma&Pa used open platform, wooden passenger cars until the end of passenger service in 1954. They had a couple of gas electrics, so not every passenger run used them.
Enjoy
Paul
The Boston & Maine used some wood passenger cars in commuter service into the 1940s or early 1950s IIRC. Some people used to refer to them as the "Splinter Fleet".
The CNR used wooden cars, with steel underframes (and some of these had truss rods, too) into the early '60s, on branchline and local trains. They also had many wooden cars (again with steel underframes) that had been plated-over with steel - to the casual observer, they were indistinguishable from standard steel heavyweight cars.
Wayne
SP maintined wooden coaches and baggage cars in revenue service on secondary/branch service well into the late twenties, some pre 1900 examples survived until WWII in MW service. SP discovered that it's wooden fleet was in too good a condition to dispose of upon the uniiversal acceptence of steel equiptment, many were converted to new uses and survived into the late fifties assigned to MW and stores department, many with no significient body changes.
Dave
Wood cars lasted through the 1970's in work train service. Most of these cars had steel underframes, however, and were not all wood.
All-wood passenger cars were prohibited from interchange service around 1910 or so, around the time that all-steel cars began entering the national passenger car fleet. If specialized cars such as diners were to continue in use, laws required that they be upgraded with steel underframes.
By the 1930's, few wood bodied cars remained in main line, Class 1 service. Commuter lines and branches continued to use them. Plenty of photos can be found from the 1930's which show 1870-1890-built coaches (open platforms, large spaces between the windows) in work train service. These cars did not usually survive in the post WWII years, when they were replaced by the afore-mentioned wood body, steel underframe cars which were downgraded to work train service.
How late were wooden passenger cars...coaches, baggage, etc....used on Class I or other standard gauge lines? I realize a lot of them probably wound up in MOW service. Thanks in advance for any help!