High Brake Wheel Boxcar

[Dough]

I would like some clarification on when railroads lowered the brake wheels on boxcars, and I am also curious as to your speculation on how a Conrail car avoided it.

Their is a shortline spanning from Hartwell to Elberton, Georgia with a spur to Hartwell. On this spur line are MANY TTX cars that are in storage. However the last four cars to be added were boxcars that had just hit the 40 year mark (one had only hit the 30 year mark). You can see where two of the NS boxcars had been converted. However the Conrail still has the tall ladder and a brake wheel up high!

The sun was setting behind the cars so sorry about the poor pictures. I took some more recently in which you can see the conversions, but I have not yet had them developed.

These are from left to right:
NS 465055 BLT 00-63
NS 407024 BLT 1-74
NS 453049 BLT 3-63



Here is 465055 again. It is the only one that has a sign saying, "Do Not Load Car For Scraping." I assume that the others are headed for scrap as well...



And finally Conrail 209514 BLT 11-64. So any ideas why it has the high brake wheel in 2004? And again sorry for the bad pics...[xx(]

[Anonymous]

I would assume that the brakewheel was lowered about the same time as Westinghouse air brakes started to come into widespread use.

It was no longer necessary for brakemen to go from roof to roof to set brakes in order to stop the train.

I am not sure about the AAR rules but chances are if the high brake wheel is still there the car can still be used on the shortline, it just might not be able to go through interchange.

Hope that helps a little.

[CShaveRR]

Air brakes of varying types were widespread by the turn of the last century (and industry-wide well before World War I), but the low hand brakes and elimination of running boards didn't show up until the mid-1960s.

At one point there was a deadline imposed for hand brakes to be lowered and running boards eliminated, but the hand-brake requirement was postponed a time or two, then possibly dropped altogether. The age limit will catch up with the remaining high-brake box cars in the next couple of years. You may still see plenty of hoppers with high hand brakes for a while. Some railroads--Southern was among those--were more agressive in their programs to lower the brake wheels than were others.

Note that the running board had been removed from the CR car...obviously it was easier to remove something that didn't have to be reinstalled elsewhere.

[edblysard]

Whew, Ok, I dug through the fed codes, so here you go.

From the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49, U.S Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration, Office of Safety.
Railroad Mechanical Department Regulations.

Section 231, Railroad Safety Appliance Standards, revised 03/21/01.

(only going to quote a part of this rule, its several pages long)

Rule 231.27 Box and other House Cars without roof hatches or placed in service after October 1, 1966.

Rule 231.27 sub-section 3,

Location.(i) The handbrake shall be so located that it can be safely operated from horizontal end platform while car is in motion.

(ii) The brake shaft shall be located on end of car, to the left of and not less than seventeen(17) inches nor more than twenty two (22) inches from the center and not less than twenty six (26) inches nor more than forty (40) inches above the top of end platform tread.

Section 4 deals with the location and height of the end platform....

Section 4, sub section 2,

Dimision: Width not less than eight (8) inches: length, not less than sixty (60) inches.

Section 4, sub section 3,

Location. One (1) centered on each end of a car between inner ends of handholds not more than eight (8) inches above top of center sill.


When you decipher all the goverment speak, what you come up with is....
The brake wheel height can not be more than 40 inches above the end platform, and not less than 17 inches or more than 22 inches from the center of the car.
The end platform itself can not be more than 8 inches above the center sill, and must be as wide as the car body side to side, which means the brake wheel can be no more than 48 inches above the center sill on box cars built after October 1, 1966.

Whew,

By the way, a box car than does not require repair to the brake wheel can live out its service life with a high brake wheel, but if the wheel or brake ratchet assembly requires repair, it must be brought into compliance with this rule.

Ed

[jeffhergert]

I see a lot of UPFE cars that still have a high brake wheel. Every once in a while will see covered hoppers in grain service with high wheels. Do see a lot of the smaller covered hoppers in cement service with high wheels.

[DSchmitt]

The information below is from THE HOTBOX (Fall 2001 issue) published by North Central Region NMRA and was provided by member Ken Chick.

"Roofwalks

Outlawed in 1964, but roads were given until 1966 before cars in interchange service had to have them removed. Cars not in interchange service could keep them, and many non-interchange cars (MoW is major example), ran with roofwalks for years after this. It is still possible to see one on very rare occasions. The same rule applied to all roofwalks -- cars and cabooses. [Still allowed on cars with equipment which needs to be reached, e.g. covered hopper hatches.]

In 1964, the FRA mandated the removal of running boards (roofwalks) from box cars and reefers. This spelled the end of the dangerous practice of brakemen walking the tops of trains. Railroads were given a 10 year grace period to comply. After 1974, cars with running boards were banned from interchange service. Thousands of cars remained unmodified for years after the deadline. This wasn't a problem as long as the car never left home rails. On occasion, these scofflaws wandered away from home and were caught by vigilant car knockers on other railroads. "

The link below is about CONRAIL X58 boxcars from the period when the walks were removed[:D]

http://crcyc.railfan.net/crrs/box/boxx58proto.html

[TH&B]

I still see lots of cars with the hand brake up high, box cars, hopper cars, bulkhead flats, I saw even a tank car the other day !

[Rustyrex]

Alot of older Coal/ballast cars still have the high hand brake including those "gawd awful" IMRL ex Mo-Pac open top gondolas and a select few CN bulk head Flats[:(!] (speaking from experience).

[dknelson]

My slide collection suggests that foreign road boxcars with roofwalks were still common in the late 1970s so I wonder how diligently the rules were really followed?
I have been faked out by the way -- ordinary looking foreign road boxcar with roofwalks, high ladders and high brakewheel -- only when I saw the car from up above did I see that it was a modified boxcar with roof hatches -- I think for Kaolin clay service (covered hoppers in Kaolin service are commonly seen here in Wisconsin because the Kaolin is used in paper making).
Dave Nelson

[Anonymous]

I remember back in my braking days, one day we were switching and I needed to ride a box into the track with the handbrake to stop it. Much to my surprise when I swung aboard the car, I found that this 40' boxcar still had the old stemwinder horizontal non-geared handbrake. The screamer was this was a jade green NYC box looking like hundreds of jade green NYC and PC boxcars that were very commonly in use in the early 70's. It was really funny because the B&O stopped issuing brake clubs several years before, and you could not apply an effective stemwinder brake on a car without a brake club. [Stemwinders were still quite common on tankcars in this period.]

[Big_Boy_4005]

Is the rule the same for hoppers? I would think that it would be, though I have seen a number of them with high wheels recently. The thing that is different about hoppers is that some have walkways on the tops so that a person can go from car to car and open and close the hatches for loading. These cars often have a small platform next to the ladder, which I'm guessing would bring them into compliance with the 1966 rule.

[edblysard]

Hi Elloit,
No, it dosent apply to hoppers or box cars with roof hatches, although most car builders suscribe to it anyway, ACF and Trinity now follow the reg for boxcars placement of the hand brake.
One of the reasons for the high brake wheels on hoppers was because people would be on top of said hoppers, loading them, and needed a way to apply the brakes from up high.
Still see a lot of grain hoppers with them, mostly CNW, NW and ATSF three bay hoppers in grain service.
I will see later this afternoon if I can find the part about placement on hoppers in the regs, but this stuff is real dry reading!!!

Ed[:p]

[Big_Boy_4005]

No need to pour over the regs on my account Ed, I think we are in pretty good agreement over the hopper situation. It kind of boils down to, who do the manufacturers cater to, the railroad workers, or the people who fill the cars? Is it possible that the buyers of new hoppers have an option of high or low?

[edblysard]

Not a problem Elliot,
Same regulation, different section
.
Reg 231.2 Hopper cars and Highsided gondolas with fixed ends.
(cars with sides more than 3 inches above the floor are high-sided cars.)

Everything reads the same except location.
Section (a) subsection 3, part (ii) The brake shaft shell be located on the end of the car to the left of, and not more than 22 inches from center.

And part (iv) Carriers and not required to change the location of brake wheels and brake shafts on cars in service July 1, 1911, where the appliances are within 3 inches of the required location, except that when cars undergo regular repairs they must be made to comply with the standards prescribed.

Reg 231.3 Drop end high sided gondola cars.
(same as house and boxcars)

Reg 231.4 Fixed end, low side gondolas and low side hopper cars.
(same)

So to answer Dough's question, it looks like the feds decided natural attrition should remove the high brakes from service, as opposed to ordering them to be changed en-mass.
As long as the brake itself didnt need to be replaces, it could be left in place, which accounts for the Conrail box still having it's high wheel, it didnt break, so no one fixed it!

Ed

[Big_Boy_4005]

Thanks for the info Ed, and thanks for starting the topic Dough. This is some interesting trivia from a modelers point of view. Now I have an easy way of determining what cars should stay on my layout, and a good cutoff point for buying only "modern" models.

I just happen to have a model of a cylindrical ACF hopper sitting on my desk. The markings on the car have a built date of 12-63, and the car has a high wheel.

A couple of weeks ago, I forget why, I was on a website dedicated to Great Northern history, and saw rosters of ex GN equipment still in service. Some had been repainted, some had not, but I was surprised at how many old cars were still riding the rails.

So, in addition to being a hopper, the model on my desk is OK because it was grandfathered in. This model will definately need some rust.[swg]

By the way, did anyone notice that the rules favored right handed people by locating the wheel left of center?

[Dough]

Thanks for all of the info guys. I was just curious as to why that thing was still riding the rails. Unfortuntly I think that it is eventually headed for the scrap heap...

And yes Big Boy, one of the reasons that I was curious is for modeling. If I ever get back into modeling I like being able to have a high brake wheel on a modern boxcar. I also had to go back and get pics of those NS cars that had been modified, but still showed signs of the original placement.

I also like that if you look hard enough, you can justify just about anything in model railroading. This same shortline has almost ten diffrent fallen flag engines in original paint, a tank car and gondola from the late 30's, and as you can see an odd assortment of other junk. It makes it fun to mess with the rivit counters...[;)]

[edblysard]

As do the placement of the cut levers, to the left if your facing the end of the car, because you pull the pin with your left hand, and use your right hand for radio or hand signals, facing in the direction of movement with the engine behind you.

As for old cars, we have a scale test car running around down here, old SP car, from 1925, and one from CNW, from the 40s.

Ed