sandusky Wayne- This whole thing was started after your post showing your mods/upgrades of the old Train Miniature boxcars. I bought two about 30 years ago, just needed a little nudge to do some modeling. Mike
Wayne-
This whole thing was started after your post showing your mods/upgrades of the old Train Miniature boxcars. I bought two about 30 years ago, just needed a little nudge to do some modeling.
Mike
It's good to know that I was able to provide the "nudge".
The Train Miniature double sheathed car is meant, I think, to represent the ARA car, but when I got my first ones, I mistook them for a poorly-done version of the USRA double sheathed cars. I rebuilt three of them into better versions of those latter cars, re-scribing the "steel" sidesills and adding new sills using styrene. I also replaced the ends (the TM cars came with wood, wood braced, or Dreadnaught steel ends) with 5-5-5 Murphy ends from Tichy.
The very nicely-done USRA car from Accurail, not available when I built mine, is a much better choice for that prototype, and such cars saw service well into the '50s.
Wayne
Here's a shot of a double sheathed car in 1969:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=982425
Ed
Wood framed cars with truss rods, and cars with arch-bar trucks, were outlawed from interchange service in the 1930's. Generally older wooden cars with truss rods were either rebuilt by the railroads by having a steel underframe added so they could continue in freight service, or were either retired or stencilled to be used for company or 'on line only" service. Once rebuilt, the cars could (IIRC) go another 25 years in service before they needed another major shopping / rebuilding.
If the car was rebuilt for interchange service, the railroad might also add steel ends, since the ends of boxcars take a lot of abuse. It also wasn't uncommon to see a car with double sheathed sides but single sheathed ends.
If you ever get a chance to get a Walthers woodside boxcars (the ones they made after they bought the Train Miniature line), their instructions have a good history of the different types of cars as built and as re-built, with time frames etc.
sandusky Guys- I am interested in the cars with vertical wood sheathing but with the steel underframe (as opposed to truss rods). Whether the ends are steel or wood is not as pertinent as the steel underframe. As my latest project is the NC&StL and C of G around 1957, it seems like I could sneak some of these cars in without being totally wrong. Thanks- Mike
Guys- I am interested in the cars with vertical wood sheathing but with the steel underframe (as opposed to truss rods). Whether the ends are steel or wood is not as pertinent as the steel underframe. As my latest project is the NC&StL and C of G around 1957, it seems like I could sneak some of these cars in without being totally wrong.
Thanks-
Based on personal recollections, and also watching carefully the freight consists in train videos and DVDs, I think a double sheathed boxcar with a steel frame is plausible for the 1950s - no longer common, but plausible. The steel underframe, AB brake system, and "Bettendord" style trucks would pass interchange rules. Ends would likely have been steel by that time.
I can recall single sheathed boxcars -- what we used to call "outside braced" -- in service into the late 1960s. A mid 1960s Railway Age ad showed a Green Bay & Western single sheathed car that had been rebuilt and was said to have years of service left in it. The single sheathed cars that i remember most clearly, however, were in leather service -- raw hides -- which was just about the lowest of the low for a boxcar before it would be retired. Whether they continued to come to the local tannery after I left for college I do not know, but right to 1970 they were seen. And I recall seeing the 1919 BLT date.
Dave Nelson
Mike, Ted Culotta's Steam Era Freight Cars Reference Manual shows a NC&StL Class XM26 double sheathed boxcar, one of almost 1,200 which were re-built in the late '30s and early '40s with steel sides. These cars were unusual in that they were 36' cars, with inverse Hutchins ends. The rebuilds were assigned to the XM32 class and got the "To and From Dixieland" slogan along with the yellow "cigar band" paint scheme. There's no mention of the more common 40' double sheathed cars, although that doesn't necessarily mean that the road didn't have them. NC&StL also owned 36' Dominion Fowler boxcars, a single sheathed design.
In addition to the Santa Fe cars which Ed mentions, they also owned several classes of true ARA double sheathed cars, from Bx-7 to Bx-10. Many of these were re-built as steel cars between 1944 and 1951. The old Train Miniature double sheathed ARA car can be built into a credible, if not 100% accurate, representation of the original cars:
Florida East Coast and Savannah & Atlanta both used 40' double sheathed cars similar to the USRA 40-ton design, and there's a photo of an FEC car in-service in 1956.Another double sheathed car with a steel underframe (and truss rods) was Southern's SU-class 36' boxcars. With almost 15,000 built, many lasted into the '50s with only minor changes, and some were sold, in the early '50s, to the Atlantic & Danville and Lancaster & Chester. With a fair amount of work, the Model Die Casting car makes a decent representation:
I think so.
The title you chose would normally describe a car with wood side-sheathing inside and out. The structure that this sheathing is applied over (in your case) is steel framing. Steel framing appears to me to have come in around 1925, replacing the wood framing typical in cars like the USRA boxes. This date is awfully approximate--suspiciously similar to a guess.
Looking over some old Train Shed Cyclopedias, I find that the A. R. A. standard 40 and 50 ton double sheathed car fits this description. Santa Fe had some that were similar or identical. There were several groups. If we choose the group 121500-122999 (built May 1927) there were 1491 in January of 1939, 369 in October of 1947 and none in July 1956.
DL&W also had steel framed double sheathed cars that lasted a bit longer. The group 45000-45999 (built in May of 1925) showed 989, 975, and 284 for the same dates as above. Further, there were 3 left in January of 1965 during Erie Lackawanna days.
From the above, you can get an idea how long these cars lasted. With a lot more time, things could be tightened up more.
You ask about geographic area. Good question, but I think the distribution also depends on individual railroad choices, too. The GN, for example, favored wood sheathing for quite a while; but neighbor NP didn't. Also, keep in mind that cars roamed all around the country. At least, boxcars. Maybe not so much for N&W hoppers. And REALLY not for Virginian "battleship" coal gons.
GN wood double sheathed steel frame boxes lasted into BN times, and they also fit your title description.
The USRA single-sheathed design boxcar might also be called outside framed or outside braced. It had a steel underframe, horizontal wood sheathing and a steel truss frame which held the wood sheathing but also served as the FRAME/ structural strength of the car..
The USRA double-sheathed design boxcar had a steel underframe with a monster heavy deep-fishbelly steel center sill. On top of that, horizontal interior sheathing and vertical exterior sheathing. I see these described or ORER as steel UNDERFRAME. (but not usually called "steel framed")
What would a "double-sheathed steel-framed boxcar" be?
I guess the Santa Fe class BX-3 and BX6 would fit, a design as far as I know used only on the Santa Fe. But they had thousands of them. Starting in 1923.
Steel underframe. Horizontal interior wood sheathing, steel ends. Exterior vertical wood sheathing in panels, with a steel "U" channe; between each wood panel. The cars had diagonal steel braces sandwiched between the interior sheathing and the exterior panels, so that was a kind of steel-framing.
These lasted into the 1950s and later, and many were converted to stock car, used to mid 70s in that form.
No mass-produced plastic models of these unusual cars. I intend to scratchbash a couple someday.
Depends on what you mean by "steel sheathed" I guess....??
Double sheathed all-wood boxcars in 34', 36' or 40' length were built with trussrods into the 1900's. By about 1910-15 cars often were being built of wood but with steel underframes. BTW many early boxcars were only about 8-1/2' high, though taller 10' cars were beginning to be built by the WW1 era (like the USRA wood boxcar) but that didn't become the norm until the late 1930's.
Later in the 20's-30's, some cars were built with double or single sheathed woodsides but steel underframe, roof and ends. In the later 30's into the 40's some older cars built with wood except for the steel underframes were rebuilt with steel ends and roofs. Some of these cars with steel roof and ends (either new or rebuilt) lasted into the 1960's.
During WW2, steel was in short supply, so some new boxcars were built with steel roof and ends, but wood sides. These too sometimes lasted into the "diesel era", although many were rebuilt with steel sides after the war.
I'm trying to determine when (what years) these would have been in common usage, when they were in the minority, and when they ceased to be seen altogether. Also wondering if there was some variation in this related to geographic area.
Mike Sayre