80's frieght cars

[JLK]

Can any of you tell me what kind of freight cars where used in the 80's? I model a freelanced branch line in the  80's.

[chutton01]

Not different from the 1970s really, and not all that different from the 1990s/today even (the 1960s was when a lot of current frieght car designs really came into being).

Remember, the early 1980s was marked by recession, especially in the industrial sector, so not a lot of new rolling stock was built in that early 80s period except for intermodal and gondolas.

You'd see a lot of 50ft 70t former 'IPD' boxcars from the 1970s in the bright colorful paint schemes of their former shortline owners, except weathered and w/ the patched reporting marks of their new owners - same for a significant number of Railbox boxcars. New standard boxcars were not built in any quantity during the 1980s.

The remaining reefers were of the later PFE types, either in faded PFE scheme, or later on in White SPFE or bright yellow UPFE (or tan FGE Solid Cold schemes among others)  - new reefers weren't built in any numbers till the 1990s.

Most new gondolas looked like today's standard 52' ones, w/ the square top channels.

Opera centerbeams were around, and regular centerbeams ones toward the end of the 1980s IIRC, but most such wrapped lumber was shipped using bulk-head flats.  Boxcars for loose lumber loading and such.

You had the usual 'centerflow' cover hoppers, just not as massive as todays new cars.  'Flat' sided covered hoppers were still common enough.  I don't know if those traditional covered hoppers are built in any great number today (2011), almost all new manufacturer offerings seem to be of the 'centerflow' type (and so that becomes...the generic covered hopper type)

Funnel flow tank cars were around but not particularly common, the majority of tank cars were, like today, frameless cylinders.  Some chemical tanks had frames.  I think Shelf couplers came into general tank-car use in the 1980s

Intermodal was the growth center, and was all over the place in designs - I think double-stack well cars were around, but you can't go wrong w/ the 89ft 'piggy-back' flat for shipping single stack containers as well as 40-45' trailers.  Various one offs, spline cars, converted boxcars (stripped to the frame and trailer hitch added, and those 2 axle skeleton platforms for trailers.

No Bethgons yet, so plan on  using 100t hoppers for unit-train coal shipping

Many trains still sported cabooses, although as the decade progressed they were being phased out.

Basically you'll have a lot of cars from the 1960s and 1970s, and then some newer ones from the 1980s if you set your date later than 1984 (when new cars builiding started to recover)

[Anonymous]

In the 1980´s, I owned a car which you could rightfully call a fri(e)ght car. It was a 1981 Renault, which spend more time at the garage than on the road.

Sorry, but I could not resist this one

To the OP - no offense meant!

[dehusman]

Pretty much any car built between about 1950 and 1989.  Obviously a huge range of cars.  Most of the 40 ft boxcars and gons were gone, the 50 ft boxcar was "king", as was the 52 ft 6 in mill gon.  Welded cars were the norm.  Most intermodal was TOFC or COFC on 89 ft flatcars,  wiyh all but the largest ramps circus loading. Most hopper cars were 90 ton or higher.  Rotary cars were becoming common, as was the large covered hopper,

[wjstix]

Regulations in effect in the mid/late sixties banned roofwalks on cars (except where necessary for loading like covered hoppers) so you wouldn't see any boxcars with roofwalks in the eighties. However, you could see some late sixties cars still around (ones built without roofwalks) in original paint. I photographed a "big sky blue" Great Northern boxcar still in service in 1990 for example, and here in Minnesota cars lettered for Northern Pacific, CB&Q, and other local  "fallen flags" still turned up from time to time. A New York Central boxcar might turn up too. All of these would show some weathering of course!! At least in the early eighties, Railbox cars were pretty common.

O and don't forget cabooses!!

[chutton01]

dehusman

Pretty much any car built between about 1950 and 1989. 

Depends on the cutoff year the OP wants, and how picky he is about prototype reality - for example, it turns out 72'6" Centerbeam flats (like the Walthers models) were first purchased in 1986, so if the OP is modeling 'Morning In America' 1984...no luck (there were 60' Centerbeams at that time, however)

50 ft boxcar was "king"

Again maybe not, depending on the OP's year - I cannot find the year on the web, but IIRC the number of coverered hopper surpassed the boxcar count  by the mid-80s - due to the recession, no new boxcars were build and older boxcars continued to be scrapped, while hoppers had superceded such former boxcar duties such as loose grain loading (or other loose bulk which had to be shipped by bags in boxcars, but could be loose bulked shipped in hoppers).  When carbuilding numbers started to grow again after 1984, covered hoppers, along w/ intermodal flats, gondolas, and coal hoppers made up the bulk of new orders, while very few new boxcar orders occured.

Thru-out the 1980s there was some experimentation, such as 1988's 'Bopper' for BNSF (I guess that falls under a boxcar order...or maybe a hopper? Well, it didn't work out anyway), and the Trailer Train* 4-runners (which is the 2axle single platform TOFC car I mentioned in my previous post; however, it seems to me that the changes in design were not as drastic as the 1960s, when frameless tankcars, 'center-flow' style covered hoppers, 100t hoppers, mechanical reefers, the famous 89ft Piggyback flats, and so on became common in revenue service.

*Trailer-Train would change it's name to TTX in 1991, so the OP is out of luck if he really likes the TTX logo.  On the plus side, he'll find the fashion styles sported by the figures in the Presier unpainted sets fit right in...

[dehusman]

chutton01

50 ft boxcar was "king"

Again maybe not, depending on the OP's year - I cannot find the year on the web, but IIRC the number of coverered hopper surpassed the boxcar count  by the mid-80s

The 50 ft boxcar was "king" of the boxcars (as opposed to 36 ft boxcars or 40 ft boxcars).

[AltonFan]

IIRC, RailBox started in the mid- or late- 1970s, and it was a subsidiary of Trailer Train.  I seem to remember hearing something about boxcar shortages at the time.

I also remember that during the late 1970s -early 1980s, a lot of shortlines acquired a lot of box cars and made them available where needed.  You would see boxcars from obscure shortlines all over the place.  I think there was some kind of investment bubble associated with this.

A lot of cast-off cars from the Rock Island were also circulating in those days.  They were usually blue with the huge "R" on the side, often very badly painted over.

[BRAKIE]

dehusman

chutton01:

50 ft boxcar was "king"

Again maybe not, depending on the OP's year - I cannot find the year on the web, but IIRC the number of coverered hopper surpassed the boxcar count  by the mid-80s

 

The 50 ft boxcar was "king" of the boxcars (as opposed to 36 ft boxcars or 40 ft boxcars).

The 50' boxcar is still "king" since its a general service boxcar  that comes in 2 styles..The standard 50' and the hi cube 50'.

[ericsp]

BRAKIE

 

dehusman:

 

 

chutton01:

 

50 ft boxcar was "king"

 

Again maybe not, depending on the OP's year - I cannot find the year on the web, but IIRC the number of coverered hopper surpassed the boxcar count  by the mid-80s

 

 

The 50 ft boxcar was "king" of the boxcars (as opposed to 36 ft boxcars or 40 ft boxcars).

 

 

The 50' boxcar is still "king" since its a general service boxcar  that comes in 2 styles..The standard 50' and the hi cube 50'.

Judging from what I see, if any nominal length boxcar is currently king of the boxcars, it is probably the 60 foot boxcar.

[BRAKIE]

Judging from what I see, if any nominal length boxcar is currently king of the boxcars, it is probably the 60 foot boxcar.

---------------------

I suppose that would depend on several things to include the type of boxcar traffic.

The 50' and 50' HC boxcar is a all around freight car that can handle any type of commodity to include paper,appliances,lumber beer and whiskey.The standard 60' boxcar sees the general merchandise lading as well.

The 60’ HC boxcar is  the primary choice for appliances,along with larger rolls of paper and auto parts. 

However,I see far more 50 footers then 60 footers on the NS Sandusky line whereas the CSX in Crestline shows a equal amount...

Did you know NS and CSX handles more boxcars then Intermodal?

As a example.

NS handle  19,326 boxcars compared to 7,470 intermodal week ending 3/11/11.

CSX handled 19,473 boxcars  compared to 7,224 intermodal  week ending 3/11/11.

As we can see the boxcar is still "king" in its line of business hauling general merchandise.

----------------------------

Some fun facts for specialty cars.

Only the open hopper exceeds the covered hopper.

NS handled 53,332 open hoppers  and 46,501  covered hoppers week ending 3/11/11.

CSX  handled 55,821  open hoppers and 50,955  covered hoppers week ending 3/11/11.

 

 

[cv_acr]

dehusman

Most of the 40 ft boxcars and gons were gone, the 50 ft boxcar was "king", ...  Welded cars were the norm. 

Except that the Canadian roads had so many 40' boxcars, and hadn't really built much 50' cars in the 1950s whereas in the US pretty much all construction was 50' by that point. In the late 1960s and early 1970s CN and CP started acquiring new 50' cars specifically for paper service, but did not start replacing their general service fleet until later. In the 1986 ORER for example, CN still had well over 10,000 40' boxcars of various descriptions. By contrast, in the same edition, railroads like Burlington Northern had less than 100 examples still listed in revenue service, if at all.

The boom of new 50' cars in the US during the late 1970s certainly added a lot of colour. In the mid-1980s a recession hit and the shortage turned into a surplus and lots of new 50' boxcars went up for sale. Then CN and CP started snapping up secondhand boxcars, and the loss of a lot of LCL and express freight to the trucking industry finally started the decline of the Canadian 40' boxcar.

40' boxcars stayed common in Canada longer than on US roads, and any interchange traffic from Canada that you might be featuring would still have significant amounts of 40' cars.

[chutton01]

Well, I guess the 50ft boxcar would be considered the most common boxcar type (certainly in the 1980s), especially on US roads (the many 40ft boxcars used for grain loading in Canada didn't seem to stray too far from Canadian soil), so yeah, it can be King of the 'House-Cars' or something, but as I mentioned it was nowhere near King of the freight cars (as 40ft boxcars probalby would have been in, say, the late 1940s.
Interesting note, on a forum there was a post claiming that Model Railroader in 1979 stated that the then current percentage of 40ft boxcars was 40% - now, I guess that includes Canadian roads, but that is a surprizingly high percentage even after the IPD (Incentive Per Diem) rates which gave us the Colorful shortline boxcar boom of the 1970s.  Those IPD rates ended apparently at the end of the 1970s (seemingly due to a lawsuit, not sure), and bam - the IPD building boom ended w/ it.  Now, the recession of the early 1980s (there was a double dip recession, actually, one in 1980 and one in 1981-1982) hit the industrial sector of the US very hard (indeed, it is arguable that the US industrial sector never truely recovered from it), and since the industrial sector and freight railroading are rather closely tied, the need for railcars diminished greatly and a lot of those IPD boxcars ended up stored on their shortline owners (with various amusing stories such as one shortline having more boxcars than track to store them on).  This also affect Railbox of course, and some of those RBOX boxcars ended up sold to other owners after the economy picked up (more or less by 1984 - hence the 'Morning in America' political ads, among other things). So, in the early 1980s, new railcar construction was mostly for Gondolas (I guess there was a lot of scrap to haul) and intermodal (obviously) - I don't have exact figures, couldn't find them on the web - the only broad mention of this downturn I found on the web was a statement from Trinity Railcar's Chairman to shareholders: "As 2009 progressed, industry order for ralicars declined to levels comparable to the trough of the early 1980s down cycle.".  So if the OP is modeling the very early 1980s, long strings of stored rail-cars on back sidings is definitely prototypical - even back then, I see to recall a Model Railroader (workshop?) article on cocooning model locomotives (wrapping them in plastic w/ thread securing 'rope' to model the newly build prototype locomotives that EMD had to put in storage because the railroads that ordered them had no use for them and couldn't afford to buy them (of course now I can't find that article in the new magazine index - oy!)

[Mike Kieran]

That's why I'm modelling 1979 on my model railroad. I love those IPD cars, but the shortline box boom ended around the early 1980s when investors in IPD 50 foot box cars weren't getting the dividends promised and a downturn in the economy.

I would venture that the majority of freight cars would be hoppers, covered hoppers, gondolas, and tank cars. I remember the majority of class 1 box cars that I saw were Southern, Santa Fe and Canadian National.

[BRAKIE]

Mike Kieran

That's why I'm modelling 1979 on my model railroad. I love those IPD cars, but the shortline box boom ended around the early 1980s when investors in IPD 50 foot box cars weren't getting the dividends promised and a downturn in the economy.

I would venture that the majority of freight cars would be hoppers, covered hoppers, gondolas, and tank cars. I remember the majority of class 1 box cars that I saw were Southern, Santa Fe and Canadian National.

Mike,Here's the thing that is overlooked by many concerning today's railroads..The boxcar is far from dead and while its out numbered by Hoppers,Covered hoppers and tank cars the boxcar still out number gons by a small margine.

Also some areas boxcars out number any other type of car due the requirements of the local industries..Some industrial areas you will see a equal amount of boxcars,tank cars and industrial type covered hoppers.

As modern day modelers we need to understand  today's railroads and how each area will differer in freight car needs..

[Mike Kieran]

Oh hey Brakie,

I'm missing about two paragraphs from my latest post saying what you just said.

I'm modelling a shortline in the summer of 1979. On my layout, the box cars will outnumber the covered hoppers 2-1. When I was growing up by the Brooklyn Army Terminal, I saw more boxcars than any other freight cars. Same for the New York Dock Railway whenever I went to the Brooklyn Promenade and saw carfloats being unloaded. There was a heavy presence of warehouses in both locations.

Whenever I left the city though, I saw boxcars in the minority because bulk shipments were cheaper by rail than by truck and more shippers would ship by truck instead of box cars. Remember, you don't need as much warehouse space by truckload as by box car load (unless you used the box car as your warehouse).

It's a shame because shipping by rail is cheaper and it takes 2 trucks (tractor trailer) off of the road per box car.  In addition, labor costs are reduced because a 50 car train is manned by 1-5 employees versus 200 truck drivers being paid. Mind you, the 2-1 box car to trailer ratio is not exact, but it was the analogy given to me by the traffic director of the New York Cross Harbor RR.

[BRAKIE]

Mike,I also like what I call the IPD era with all those colorful shortline boxcars.Seems to me in my neck of the woods some cars was more plentiful like Cadiz,St.Lawrence,LNA&C and  S&NC.

That era sure beats the boxcar brown boxcars of today.

[chutton01]

Oh No, Thread Drift!

Brakie, nobody is doubting that boxcars are not important nowadays, especiallly me, just that they do  not constitute as large a percentage of the US railcar fleet as they were 30 years or so ago.

The OP (JLK - whatever happend to him anyway?) just wanted to know what sort of freight car fleet he would find in the 1980s, and I responded with the usual 'it depends'  - which is probably true of any decade - has any ten-year period in the US railroad car fleet  really been that static - heck, even in the 30s you had steel cars replacing wood cars, in the 40s you had replacement of the old stock worn out in the war period, in the 50s you had mech reefers replacing ice bunkers, 50fts replacing 40fts, 70t hoppers, in the 60s...well, what didn't change? the 70s brought the IPD boom, Railbox, Railgon, etc...You gotta pick a year (or at least a group of years - early '80s/mid-80s/late-80s) - so JLK, if you still exists, please pick a year or two...

[Mike Kieran]

BRAKIE

Mike,I also like what I call the IPD era with all those colorful shortline boxcars.Seems to me in my neck of the woods some cars was more plentiful like Cadiz,St.Lawrence,LNA&C and  S&NC.

That era sure beats the boxcar brown boxcars of today.

Absotutely. It also helps me to cheat by removing the lettering off of Railbox (RBOX) box cars and putting my own lettering on them. I'm starting a private roadname exchange group and this helps me to justify a shortline with box cars as well as making my own decals cheaply.

[JLK]

Thank you for all the helpful replies. I am thinking of modeling the mid to late 80's, and yes I still exist! 

[chutton01]

JLK

Thank you for all the helpful replies. I am thinking of modeling the mid to late 80's,

Late 80s might be rather good, you can make use of 72' Centerbeam while retaining 60' bulkhead flats for packaged lumber.  Also, double stack intermodal started in 1984, so you can justify that.

You can use patched IPD & Railbox boxcars, patched reporting marks like this example (although you'd might use a bit less weathering - the boxcars were only 10-15 years old at the time). Apparently MDC (before Horizon brought it) was releasing kits of it's colorful IPD shortline boxcar with patched reporting marks, but I couldn't find any images. The new-style Hi-Cube FBOX types were a number of years into the future.

SD50 production had finished, SD60 was the new standard EMD - of course, SD40-2 were everywhere.  For 4 axles, you had GP60s still in production.  No new switchers since 1987, alas.
On the GE side, you have Dash 8-40C, and even some 4 axle Dash 8-40B. 
Of course, Wide Cabs were somewhat rare in this period on US roads

We menioned the 52' gondolas, the covered hoppers (stay away from the monsters like the 6350 cuft Trinitys, stick w/ smaller hoppers - they were everywhere), tank cars (frameless, shelf couplers on hazmat, no reflective strips),  For reefers, you had the White SPFEs and Yellow UPFEs (+ FGE Solid Cold and a few others) - hmm, there apparently were some of the huge Cyro Trans CO2 reefers running around (founded 1986) - so if you can find those Walther's Models you are good to go.
Note I was a bit off, the BethGon (Steel) version was available in the 1980s, it was the Aluminium version which was introduced in the 1990s.

Remember,
BN, Santa Fe, UP, Southern Pacific (Rio Grande), Illinois Central, Conrail are all independant - CSX was formed by 1986, and NS by 1982.  You'll need to look up other railroads yourself to see if they existed or not by the late 1980s.  Of course, there was still plenty of rolling stock labeled with fallen flags like Missouri Pacific or Boston & Maine running around.
And TTX was about 2 years into the future, so everything is labeled 'Trailer Train'

As to actual percentages of road names vs. fleet types vs schemes etc...well, I'll leave that up to you JLK.

[ericsp]

Cryo-Trans may have been around in the 1980s, but the Arcticars were not. They were made in the 1990s.

Also, for much of the 1980s, there were probably more orange than white SPFE reefers.

[chutton01]

ericsp

Cryo-Trans may have been around in the 1980s, but the Arcticars were not. They were made in the 1990s.

You're right on this, I stand corrected - from a lawsuit (yes, a lawsuit) about the Arcticar:

In late 1990, GATC introduced a prototype non-mechanical, cryogenically refrigerated railcar using a bunker-style design...In early 1991, GATC obtained its first order for Arcticar railcars

From Cyro-Trans (MHW Groups) site:

Cryo-Trans, Inc. (CTI) secured a patent in 1986 for a cryogenic railcar which revolutionized the frozen rail industry. Between 1986 and 1995, CTI developed long term leases for approximately 500 of these cars.

I have a 1992 ORER, and for Cryo-Tran (CRYX) the high-cubes are indeed entering the roster in force (again, ths is 1992), but CYRX has a sizable fleet of smaller, ~60ft IL reefrers - in fact, from that lawsuit I mentioned before, and will link to now, there is some key information - "Mr. Weiner personally borrowed $8.5 million in order to purchase used mechanical cars and rebuild them into the first 150 cars of Cryo-Trans' "C" plate fleet.".  interesting, I wonder if those cars used the White/Orange paint scheme of later Cyro-Trans.
Way Off Topic, but the lawsuit was Cyro-Trans suing GATC  for basically copying their Hi-Cube designs for use in the GATC Arcticar (actually, it was GATC suing Cyro-Trans to invalidate their design patent, and Cyro-Trans counter-suing GATC to enforce the patent), and at the end of the case Cyro-Trans won (about $9.7 million in damages). The case brief linked to is fascinating as it goes into extreme depth of the development of cyrogenic reefers, prototypes, designs, problems (exploding roofs!), operation - no images, but still in the old days Mainline Modeler magazine or somebody could have made a good article out of that info. And, BTW, about that lawsuit...eventually it was all for nothing:

. In 2000 and 2001, due to an inordinate increase in the price of CO2, CTI converted the majority of its fleet to mechanical refrigeration

ericsp

]Also, for much of the 1980s, there were probably more orange than white SPFE reefers.

True, BUT, none of those got the cool Paint Shop article "Shiny white reefer for the SP"  by Bob Smaus (MR - July 1989) - so if your're at the end of the 1980s, go for the neat-looking whites, but remember to throw in some beat-looking ex-PFE.

One of the more amusing things is that the Best roster shots of rolling stock nowadays seem to be in photo-sharing sites dedicated to showing off Graffiti shots.

[riogrande5761]

chutton01

JLK:

Thank you for all the helpful replies. I am thinking of modeling the mid to late 80's,

Late 80s might be rather good, you can make use of 72' Centerbeam while retaining 60' bulkhead flats for packaged lumber.  Also, double stack intermodal started in 1984, so you can justify that.

You can use patched IPD & Railbox boxcars, patched reporting marks like this example (although you'd might use a bit less weathering - the boxcars were only 10-15 years old at the time). Apparently MDC (before Horizon brought it) was releasing kits of it's colorful IPD shortline boxcar with patched reporting marks, but I couldn't find any images. The new-style Hi-Cube FBOX types were a number of years into the future.

SD50 production had finished, SD60 was the new standard EMD - of course, SD40-2 were everywhere.  For 4 axles, you had GP60s still in production.  No new switchers since 1987, alas.
On the GE side, you have Dash 8-40C, and even some 4 axle Dash 8-40B. 
Of course, Wide Cabs were somewhat rare in this period on US roads

We menioned the 52' gondolas, the covered hoppers (stay away from the monsters like the 6350 cuft Trinitys, stick w/ smaller hoppers - they were everywhere), tank cars (frameless, shelf couplers on hazmat, no reflective strips),  For reefers, you had the White SPFEs and Yellow UPFEs (+ FGE Solid Cold and a few others) - hmm, there apparently were some of the huge Cyro Trans CO2 reefers running around (founded 1986) - so if you can find those Walther's Models you are good to go.
Note I was a bit off, the BethGon (Steel) version was available in the 1980s, it was the Aluminium version which was introduced in the 1990s.

Remember,
BN, Santa Fe, UP, Southern Pacific (Rio Grande), Illinois Central, Conrail are all independant - CSX was formed by 1986, and NS by 1982.  You'll need to look up other railroads yourself to see if they existed or not by the late 1980s.  Of course, there was still plenty of rolling stock labeled with fallen flags like Missouri Pacific or Boston & Maine running around.
And TTX was about 2 years into the future, so everything is labeled 'Trailer Train'

As to actual percentages of road names vs. fleet types vs schemes etc...well, I'll leave that up to you JLK.

Basically everything mentioned above is a big part of why I like to model the 1980's.   If I had to lock down to a particular year, I could say around 1989 since that gets you double stack operations (SeaLand/Trailer Train etc), TOFC/COFC, Thrall Gon and 4-bay coal trains.  Lots of 50's box cars, 61' beer cars.  You can even thow in a few cabooses although most were off mainline trains by then.

[fwright]

JLK

Thank you for all the helpful replies. I am thinking of modeling the mid to late 80's, and yes I still exist! 

And I was hoping you meant 1880's....and a few of us still exist, too  

Fred W

[chutton01]

fwright

JLK:

Thank you for all the helpful replies. I am thinking of modeling the mid to late 80's, and yes I still exist! 

 

And I was hoping you meant 1880's....and a few of us still exist, too  

After re-reading JLK's initial OP, I realize now he meant the 2080s, where all freight was is delivered via the NA standard 20 metre cabon-fibre van/tank/bulk container-modules (both transloadable for off-line delivery and side loading for use on manufacdustry access sidings), traveling on full-coupled spline-spine chassis (yellow-diamond encrusted for full vision reflectivity) over graphene-stainless alloy track (with non-ground superconductivity to support 1mm passive positioning and clasp-platter braking) capable of 80t/axle loading (no, wait, it was will be 85t?).  Hey, you guys can will remember how surprised we all will were when NRE finally became the largest North American builder of new locomotific power, right?
While rather few of us exist yet, those of us who don't really look forward on it fondly...

[riogrande5761]

I always do the same thing when I see 1880's and think, hey, darn it, I was hoping it was 1980's, a time that I really saw trains.