I want to add some high cube boxcars to my N scale layout to support the auto industry in late 70's. Having trouble finding info to accurately defines what boxcar would be promanent in the late 70's. Info I have found indicates the 86' high cube would be a likely boxcar but I also saw info indicating that shorter high cube boxcars also existed and may have been in active use in late 70's.
I also saw info that suggested the 86' boxcars were concentrated on a few railroads and that some of the major RR's had none. Looking for info on which RR's would have a significant fleet so I can look for the correct cars. My layout is ATSF but that is not important for this task. I have no problem with cars from other RR's who had significant fleets of the high cube cars.
Paul D
N scale Washita and Santa Fe RailroadSouthern Oklahoma circa late 70's
My understanding (which seems to be on the right track according to the link below) is that the 86' cars were primarily used for moving auto/truck parts between plants...so like Ford sending boxcars filled with pick-up truck chassis from Detroit to their assembly plant in St.Paul MN.
http://trains21.org/2016/01/22/living-legends-the-history-of-the-86-foot-boxcars/
40' "baby hi-cubes" were often used in dedicated service hauling appliances, like ovens, refrigerators, etc. in the Midwest.
The 86-footers were for auto parts, but primarily lighter parts such as body stampings. Frames tended to move on flatcars and in gondolas in racks built for the purpose.
A new Jeff Wilson book on the auto industry goes into more detail.
It will be available in February.
Eric
Athearn has done some 60' auto parts cars:
http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=60%27+Auto+Box+ATHG&CatID=THRF&OA=True
These would have been for parts heavier than sheet metal stampings.
Ed
Auto parts cars were pooled based on the railroads over which the cars traveled, so in the late 70's you could see cars from all the railroads that served the upper mdwest and all the railroads in the SW (CSX, MP, ATSF, N&W, SOU, CR, GTW, CN, etc). There were a lot of 60 ft cars with 10 ft doors or double doors.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Southern Pacific had a signifigant number of 86 t Hi Cube boxcars. They serviced two plants in the Bay area. One was GM and the other was a Ford. The ywere located in Fremont and Newark near the south ef the east bay.
Thanks all. Your responses educated me and convinced me that I was on the wrong track concerning the auto cars. I was assuming that the cars were used by suppliers to ship larger parts to the auto mfg. Did not realize that most traffic was between the auto mfg plants themselves rather than with their suppliers.
I need to revise my plans.
PED Thanks all. Your responses educated me and convinced me that I was on the wrong track concerning the auto cars. I was assuming that the cars were used by suppliers to ship larger parts to the auto mfg. Did not realize that most traffic was between the auto mfg plants themselves rather than with their suppliers. I need to revise my plans.
Paul, no that is true.
The big boxcars carry large, bulky lightweight parts like steel body panels from the stamping plants to the assembly plants. Modern plants tend to integrate these, but for some older plants the stamping plants were separately and centrally located. The racks and pallets that the parts are shipped in are often considered part of the car and are shipped back to the stamping plant for reloading, so these parts cars will be in dedicated service between the stamping and assembly plants. If the route between the stamping plant and the assembly plant travels over more than one railroad, each of those railroads provides a percentage of the cars into that pool.
Smaller, heavier auto parts like engines, transmissions, axle assemblies etc. were/are shipped in 60' and even 50' cars.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
And while many automakers stamped their own body parts, not all did. the Budd Co.'s main business was auto parts, specifically stampings.
There were plants in Philadelphia and the Detroit area, and maybe others.
Budd also made some of the first steel wheels for cars and trucks.
The railroad cars were a sideline.
PED,
I am not an N scaler, but I have seen a few auto parts trains in the late 1970s-1980s on the Southern Pacific's Sunset Route. The symbol was APLAA--Auto Parts Los Angeles, which linked the plants of the upper midwest with assembly plants in California. This train was kept to around 70 cars in length, carried no empty cars and operated at 70mph. It was every crew's hope that when they got the call, it was for the "APW" as they called it. It had 4+ horsepower per ton, SP's best power and stood eye to eye with the "Blue Streak" in precedence over everything else on the road.
Because your question was about high cube auto parts box cars in the 1970s, I offer the following. Most of the roads that ran 86 footers also ran 60 footers with single 10 foot or eight foot double sliding doors. There was also a strong presence of older standard cube double sliding door boxcars, mostly from eastern roads. Motor vehicle frames stacked high on 89 foot Trailer Train flat also rode APW. As stated earlier, auto parts cars tended to cycle between the same pair of plants because each model year change might require different loading equipment that would make the car unsuitable for components of another make or model. It would be possible to see the same car going back and forth like a streetcar--on a 3 or 4000 mile loop.
Most of the railroads that had 86 footers also ran 60s. Major players in the 1970s would be Penn Central with NYC and PRR still to be seen. B&O, C&O, Erie-Lackawanna, Detroit, Toledo & Ironton, Detroit & Toledo Shore Line, N&W with cars still in Wabash paint, Grand Trunk Western, L&N, Southern, were the most prevalent east of the Mississippi railroads. The western roads were the usual players--ATSF, SP, being the big ones with smaller representations by CNW, MP, WP, SLSF, SSW, etc. One point That must be made is that cars in auto parts service sometimes displayed paint schemes of fallen flags long after the deed was done. It was not uncommon to see 50 foot double door boxcars still wearing the Erie diamond and even bearing Erie reporting marks more than 20 years after the EL mereger. Or, how about a Pennslvania X-29 variant boxcar still wearing a circle keystone herald? An auto parts train could often fill up to its tonnage limit with TOFC, or loaded mechanical reefers if the auto parts were light, as long as nothing interfered with it making its 70 mph.
I hope you can move ahead on your project. An auto parts train could really add interest to a railroad with its priority handling.
Here's an older discussion in Trains forum regarding the eight vs. four door High Cubes:
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/184454.aspx
An interesting operational aspect for modelers might be to occasionally run one of the "make-up" trains. I don't recall exactly what these were called but if some cars didn't make it to the regularly "scheduled" train, an additional train was run, sometimes with a single car, IIRC, in order to meet a delivery commitment.
I remember seeing these runs occasionally while train-wathcing in the Cleveland area throughout the 1970s and'80s. It was expensive to operate but I guess there was a "fine" if the specified cars weren't delivered on time so the railroad (Penn-Central and Conrail, in my example) would bite the bullet and call a crew for these "special deliveries.
I think some plants were looking at cost savings of JIT (Just-In-Time) delivery of supplies and timely deliveries of these parts was critical. I think I heard of similar circumstances for newsprint delivery in NYC, maybe others.
Good Luck, Ed
Eric White A new Jeff Wilson book on the auto industry goes into more detail. It will be available in February. Eric
A new Jeff Wilson book on the auto industry goes into more detail. It will be available in February.
Jeff Wilson also touched more briefly on the automotive industry and associated freight cars in Kalmbach's first volume of Industries Along the Tracks. It seems to be out of print but is commonly seen at swap meets.
And Walthers published a very extensive book on the topic, "America's Driving Force. Modeling Railroads and the Automotive Industry" in 1998. Jeff Wilson might have had some involvement, but Jim Hediger definitely did. It is out of print but still seen now and then at swap meets - albeit at collector's prices.
Dave Nelson
There were a variety of cars used in supplying the Final Assembly plants.
Railroads supplied many 40' and 50' cars into the 1960's for this purpose. Ford in 1962 along with the Wabash and other railroads tried to come up with larger cars to handle the parts so they did not have to have so many cars tied up in servicing the auto industry.
The first cars they came up with with the 60' Double Plug Door cars that were made by Greenville and modeled using the Robbins Rails/A-Line/ConCar whose major short coming was the die maker used the running board as the top of car instead of the roof of the car. Exactrail then did a High Cube version of the car that is also still available. Pullman Standard also did an outside ribbed car and Thrall also made a clone of the Greenville car with welded side sheets that can be made from the ConCor car. These cars were mostly used for heavier items like engines, bumpers, window cranks, etc.
After that car they then came out with the 86' car for major body stampings, like hoods, quarter panels, trunk lids etc.
At this point Chrysler and GM wanted the same type of 60' cars, but did not want the plug doors that Ford preffered. So Pullman Standard came up with the 60' Interior Post Cars referred to as Fisher Body cars with either 10' Sliding Doors or two 8' Sliding Doors depending on what they wanted to haul in them. Similar cars were also produced by ACF and Thrall.
GM also preffered the 8 Door 86' Cars while Chrysler and Ford used the 4 Door Cars.
50' Cars were still used for example the combination door boxcars of the AC&Y were used to haul tires from the factories in Akron to the various assembly plants. The NKP had a number of flats that carried either one or two rows of parts bins for various small parts. Also Gons and Flats were used to haul frames to the final assembly plants.
An example of the a train that was ran was called the Ford Fast, the DT&I would collect various 50', 60' and 86' Cars in the Detroit area and run them down to the N&W (Wabash) at Delta, OH, from there they would be forwarded with other cars the N&W had from Toledo and Cleveland to theKansas City Ford plant and some to the Milpitas, CA Ford Plant, that was via either MP or Rock Island to the Rio Grande and finally to the WP, all these railroads supplied cars for this pool.
There were also a train that ran parts to the Erie Lackawanna to supply the Ford Plant in Mahwah, NJ.
The GM had trains to their final assembly plants in the same way, but I know more about the DT&I and their operations.
Rick Jesionowski
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!
PED:
I worked in a GM parts Fabrication Plant from 1981 until 2004. All of our out going shipments were in dedicated cars, with a painted placard on the side instructing the car to be returned to Oshawa Fab plant.
The purpose was so we would get shipping containers back, as they were steel and therefore too expensive for one time use.
At one time we supplied ALL the wheel houses for two platorms of cars produced in North America. Other parts were supplied by two or more plants, the difference being determined by volume (numbers) required, and the cost of dies or in other words tools to make the parts.
Dave
Thanks all. Since I was just looking to add some cars for visual interest and I don't have a specific hi-cube car type requirement to fit into my operations, it sound like I could use just about any type of hi-cube car and be prototypical. I think the 86 ft cars have a more unique look so I will probably shop for some of those. Headed to the annual OKC train show tomorrow so I will keep my eyes open for some.