Recently built boxcars that I like are the CN 406 000 - 406 499 series of 50' High Cube Boxcars.
The lettering applied was nice and thick.
Recently the CN reporting marks have been replaced with GTW reporting marks on that series.
Andrew
Watch my videos on-line at https://www.youtube.com/user/AndrewNeilFalconer
Bob-Fryml wrote: If any of the readers enjoying this thread are looking for "boxcar heaven," may I suggest the heart of The Overland Route, specifically between Granger, Wyo. (where the Oregon Short Line connects) and Gibbon, Nebr. (where a secondary main breaks away for Kansas City). Between the mechanical reefers, dry-ice-cooled reefers, insulated boxcars, cushioned drawbar boxcars, and just ordinary 50 and 60 footers, there's quite a large volume of this type of equipment moving through these parts daily. Once in awhile there's even a solid, 100% boxcar/reefer train to be seen!The funny thing is this: very few of the boxcars carry UP reporting marks. MoPac, yes. CNW, yes. Lots of NS and CSXT can be seen. RBOX, CN, and brand new CP equipment make frequent appearances. GVSR/VCY, certainly. Even Espee once in awhile and the competing equipment from the "Big New Santa Fe" roll through. But then I guess if you're pouring every possible dime into double tracking the Sunset Route and rehabbing southern terminals, fixing up your own boxcars - when so many others are available - isn't a top priority.Yes, looking at unit coal trains, unit grain trains, and double stacks can get pretty boring!
If any of the readers enjoying this thread are looking for "boxcar heaven," may I suggest the heart of The Overland Route, specifically between Granger, Wyo. (where the Oregon Short Line connects) and Gibbon, Nebr. (where a secondary main breaks away for Kansas City). Between the mechanical reefers, dry-ice-cooled reefers, insulated boxcars, cushioned drawbar boxcars, and just ordinary 50 and 60 footers, there's quite a large volume of this type of equipment moving through these parts daily. Once in awhile there's even a solid, 100% boxcar/reefer train to be seen!
The funny thing is this: very few of the boxcars carry UP reporting marks. MoPac, yes. CNW, yes. Lots of NS and CSXT can be seen. RBOX, CN, and brand new CP equipment make frequent appearances. GVSR/VCY, certainly. Even Espee once in awhile and the competing equipment from the "Big New Santa Fe" roll through. But then I guess if you're pouring every possible dime into double tracking the Sunset Route and rehabbing southern terminals, fixing up your own boxcars - when so many others are available - isn't a top priority.
Yes, looking at unit coal trains, unit grain trains, and double stacks can get pretty boring!
Those trains of 100% boxcars and reefers are the Express Lane trains. Between Grainger, WY and North Platte, NE there should be three daily, one each from Fresno, CA; Hinkle, OR; and Pocatello, ID. East of North Platte there should be two, one to Selkirk, NY and one to Waycross, GA. Of course they may not have only boxcars and reefers every day. I saw the QFRNPP yesterday. In addition to the loaded RBLs and reefers (only 4), it had a bunch of empty Railbox boxcars, a coil car, some empty ethanol tankcars, and some empty grain hoppers. I suspect they must have combined the QFRNPP and QFRNP.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Don't forget, Bob, that anything with UP, MP, WP, CNW, D&RGW, SSW, SP, and CHTT is equipment owned (or leased) by UP. UP really hasn't needed to buy many box cars since the mergers, because a lot of these other railroads had enough cars, in enough varieties, that were probably less expensive to own (leasing agreements, and such) than UP's own cars. With relatively few exceptions, new box cars on UP have carried CHTT reporting marks, if for no other reason than UP can more easily unload these.
One reporting mark that you didn't mention seeing is EEC. The railroad that "owns" these cars is the East Erie Commercial Railroad, a subsidiary of General Electric. But guess who leases most of these several thousand 50-foot plain box cars. Yup--UP!
And those Golden West Service cars that carried GVSR and VCY reporting marks? Those were mostly SP/SSW/D&RGW cars at one time. A lot of them (not sure of the percentages, but I suspect that it's pretty high) have been restored to their original reporting marks and numbers--hence they're UP property now. You can bet that those that haven't been relettered see their primary use in UP service.
I haven't included the mechanical refrigerator cars in this, but probably should mention them. The newest ones, of course, carry ARMN reporting marks, and there are quite a few of those--1500 of the large new white ones. Others, rebuilt with GPS, new refrigeration units, and satellite control and monitoring, have been rebuilt from the existing fleet of PFE cars or from secondhand Fruit Growers Express cars. Except for a few of the ex-FGE "Perishable Express" cars, most have been obtained or rebuilt within the past five years, which makes this fleet pretty modern by any standards.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
SteamFreak wrote: enough talk-lets see some PICTURES!
enough talk-lets see some PICTURES!
There is a semi-restored one of these in my hometown, which I will be able to take pics of soon. Unfortunately it is painted all red instead of in some kind of livery of the road it is representing which is the Condon, Kinzua & Southern. The boxcar is located in Heppner, OR, a town of 1400 which was served by UP rails up until about 10 years ago.
altoona always has a whole siding devoted to storing boxcars. i love when their switcher geeps bring the whole chain of them out to kick them into the rest of the stored cars. there's such a variety to them
boxcars>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>intermodal cars. i never liked those stupid container trains
Your friendly neighborhood CNW fan.
440cuin wrote:Boxcars used to haul coal too, they just filled the cars with coal from the door when short of hopper or gons in some regions anyways.
Wow. Coal in boxcars! Who-da-thunk-it? I wouldn't have wanted to have been inside one of those cars, shoveling out product and scaring up a lot of coal dust. Whadda fire hazard - or maybe even explosive hazard - that would have been!
Some old heads on the Missouri-Illinois told me that the railroad used to ship lead ore in 40-ft boxcars between the mines located in the Rivermines / Desloge / Bonne Terre area up to the St. Joseph Lead Company smelter in Herculaneum, MO. These shipments went the direct route on the old Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railway. Sometime during the mid-1960s the ore ran out and the line was severed between the north end of Bonne Terre and a point a little ways south of Crystal City, MO.
Can anybody give a rough idea of the % of what kind of merchandise is currently in boxcars? Thanks
Wish I was a photographer......I saw a boxcar last night that was so covered with graffiti, that it looked like someone had tried to paint it a different color! You could actually see what looked like marks from a paint roller.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
CShaveRR wrote: clarkbar04 wrote:Another recent notable was the Seattle & North Shore. (south shore?) Seattle & North Coast. They've been gone for a long time, but some of the box cars they obtained in 1980 are still around, operating under their fourth or fifth reporting mark.
clarkbar04 wrote:Another recent notable was the Seattle & North Shore. (south shore?)
Seattle & North Coast. They've been gone for a long time, but some of the box cars they obtained in 1980 are still around, operating under their fourth or fifth reporting mark.
Murphy Siding wrote: iowavette wrote: I kinda like boxcars myself. These days large receivers are requesting boxcar commodities move on other equipment, effectively demarketing a railroad mainstay. What commodities would these be, and what kind of cars are they moving on now?
iowavette wrote: I kinda like boxcars myself. These days large receivers are requesting boxcar commodities move on other equipment, effectively demarketing a railroad mainstay.
I kinda like boxcars myself. These days large receivers are requesting boxcar commodities move on other equipment, effectively demarketing a railroad mainstay.
What commodities would these be, and what kind of cars are they moving on now?
They are probably primarily container cars. Although there may be lumber shifting towards center-beam (I guess you would know more about that).
Fortunately, I still see plenty of boxcars out here. They bring in lumber and cottonseed and haul out tomato products and composite roofing shingles
I've recently seen a Northern Alberta Railway boxcar in the consist of a UP train in Midvale, Utah. There's also a string of U.S. Army 40'(?) boxcars sitting on a stretch of track on Hill AFB's property in Clearfield, UT. that can be viewed when heading north on I-15. The Army boxcars have all their reporting marks painted out, with the initials "DRMO" spray-painted onto their sides. I wonder if that means that they'll be scrapped?
railfanespee4449 wrote: enough talk-lets see some PICTURES!
railfanespee,
Where were the photos taken? The first one looks like she doesn't have long to go before she's dust. Any effort to preserve them?
Nelson
Ex-Southern 385 Being Hoisted
can you top this?
Kevin C. Smith wrote:How long (barring damage/repairs) can one reasonably expect a freight car (box car, specifically) paint job to last?
Probably too many variables to say for sure--the paint used (don't know whether it was specified by manufacturer or purchaser) has a lot to do with it. Some cars look pretty good yet after 25 or 30 years; some other cars less than ten years old have some pretty disgusting-looking paint jobs.
It's probably safe to say that most original paint jobs are going to stand up better than the paint applied by the railroads themselves during a rebuilding or relettering. In most cases, that's the result of the care lavished (or not) on the car's old surfaces before the new paint is applied. I know a certain railroad (that liked blue) that did next to no preparation of surfaces before repainting its cars. Mookie would not want to be related to some of the mangy-looking year-old kittens that resulted from that! And somebody else who owns a lot of box cars is using--and specifying--a kind of paint the seems to just crack up like a dry riverbed. I've seen some of their covered hoppers that have had to be repainted after only about five years.
sbd2702 wrote:Can you tell us where you saw the EL and PRR cars? That sounds like an extraordinarily rare find!
The train was on the Buffalo to Syracuse chicago main line heading west from Selkirk New York to Elkharrt Indiana
There were still READING Plug-Door Boxcars in the totally original scheme in 2004 and 2005. The paint has held up very well over the past 30 years, so that must be why it was never repainted.
I did see a Burlington Route CB&Q Boxcar just 2 years ago, but it was so rusty that I could barely make out the reporting marks and logo.
The former Penn Central KELX Boxcars have paint over the name and logo which is fading away.
iowavette wrote: serial merging
serial merging
Serial merging! I like that phrase.
I kinda like boxcars myself. These days large receivers are requesting boxcar commodities move on other equipment, effectively demarketing a railroad mainstay. Most Class Is are significantly downsizing their boxcar fleets to better fit the market as well as to standardize their fleets. As a result of serial merging, many large carriers found themselves with literally hundreds of different boxcar versions. There's been a major effort since 2001 to move towards more uniform types. TTX has been the engine of change acquiring the 50' high cube FBOXs, originally only to be equipped with 12' single plug doors. There are a few hundred with 10' single plugs as a bow to their eastern owners but now hunting loads. The TBOXs are the 60' high cubes with double 8' plug doors, 16' opening. These are the new Cadillacs of the boxcar universe. There is a prototype floating around you'd be lucky to catch, the IBOX which is an insulated TBOX.
Start taking pictures of WP [Western Pacific] boxcars. There were never many and they're now being scrapped for components.
Limitedclear wrote: cr6479 wrote:Today i saw LHV,NYC,EL,NW,PRR,C&O,B&O,CSXT,NS,CN,CNW,UP,BN,BNSF and Big blue boxcars. Do the EL boxcars still have "EL" reporting marks or are they "CR" or "PRR" or "NYC"? LC
cr6479 wrote:Today i saw LHV,NYC,EL,NW,PRR,C&O,B&O,CSXT,NS,CN,CNW,UP,BN,BNSF and Big blue boxcars.
Do the EL boxcars still have "EL" reporting marks or are they "CR" or "PRR" or "NYC"?
LC
Limitedclear. YES the some of the boxcars still say EL,PRR,NYC and conrail on them.
ericsp wrote: CShaveRR wrote: ericsp wrote: I also saw a UELX 60' RBL(?) that appeared to be a former Conrail car. UELX? That's an ADM reporting mark, and they have only covered hoppers and tanks, that I'm aware of. I've seen some KELX 60-foot box cars (not RBLs) that are ex-PC or CR, and some HLMX 60-foot reefers that probably originated with Conrail. UELX 6200 series. I never thought about UELX being an ADM reporting mark until I was typing the original post. Then it hit me, ADM boxcars seem a bit odd. There is a ADM oil repackaging plant in the area. I suspect they are hauling in drums of oil not used in enough quantities to ship via tankcar. My source says that UELX 6200-6207 are R610s.
CShaveRR wrote: ericsp wrote: I also saw a UELX 60' RBL(?) that appeared to be a former Conrail car. UELX? That's an ADM reporting mark, and they have only covered hoppers and tanks, that I'm aware of. I've seen some KELX 60-foot box cars (not RBLs) that are ex-PC or CR, and some HLMX 60-foot reefers that probably originated with Conrail.
ericsp wrote: I also saw a UELX 60' RBL(?) that appeared to be a former Conrail car.
I also saw a UELX 60' RBL(?) that appeared to be a former Conrail car.
UELX? That's an ADM reporting mark, and they have only covered hoppers and tanks, that I'm aware of. I've seen some KELX 60-foot box cars (not RBLs) that are ex-PC or CR, and some HLMX 60-foot reefers that probably originated with Conrail.
UELX 6200 series. I never thought about UELX being an ADM reporting mark until I was typing the original post. Then it hit me, ADM boxcars seem a bit odd. There is a ADM oil repackaging plant in the area. I suspect they are hauling in drums of oil not used in enough quantities to ship via tankcar. My source says that UELX 6200-6207 are R610s.
Wow! I never would have expected that. What's especially surprising is that there haven't been any "new" UELX cars in more than twenty years, until these came along earlier this year. Congratulations--you stumped the chump!
clarkbar04 wrote:I live in a heavy forest products area so there are lots of boxcars around all the time. Boxcars are my favorite too. I recently saw an old one at a paper mill that had the old UP "map" scheme on it, armor yellow with the "automated railway" slogan. Like this:Another recent notable was the Seattle & North Shore. (south shore?)
Clarkbar,
I used to have the Tyco version of that car from the 70's. Aside from the thick detail, it looked pretty accurate, without their usual neon paint job, though they painted the doors silver if memory serves. It's long gone now, but I still remember the "Automated Railway" map. This is the first time I've seen the prototype.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.