Pere Marquette revenue freight cars: the Automobile box car

[Convicted One]

Spied this book for sale at Ollies.   And upon thumbing through it, noticed that the automobile boxcars have an internal trapeze like fixture that holds autos  suspended up in the air above other autos sitting on the boxcar's floor.

 

Is this commonplace or was Pere Marquette unique in this regard? 

[dknelson]

Assuming the reference is to the Evans holding rack system, it was fairly common.  There are good interior shots of the device as installed in Union Pacific and Chicago & North Western automobile boxcars in the Train Shed Cyclopedia No. 17 which in turn is a reprint of portions of the 1943 Car Builder's Cyclopedia.

Dave Nelson

[ndbprr]

PRR had them too. That was how it was done. Cars were a lot smaller then and transporting four cars instead of two made sense. The auto industry still has cars dedicated to specific parts like painted fenders with specialty racking installed.

[CShaveRR]

Pssst...look at the name on the freight car roster.  They didn't give me credit for the layout or captions, but it's a good book anyway.