The image is of Tangent's model of the boxcar. I have never seen a quad plug door version of this prototype. The paint scheme is early 1990s I believe. No matter.
Does anybody have info on what was carried in this quad plug door version of the boxcar, (perhaps the same products just easier to load) and when they left the rails? Any other info would be interesting as well.
- Douglas
Auto parts too. My understanding is that the door arrangement is simply a preference by the plant. Whatever automaker received them liked having that many openings.
I'm planning to model auto parts train Ford FAST which ran over the D&RGW from the late 60's to the early 80's. The Ford auto parts were shipped in the two door 86' auto parts boxcars and GM used the quad door auto parts boxcars. These long box cars carried light weight auto parts.
The 86' auto parts cars lasted a long time but my understanding is that in the past 20 years many that are still running have been repurposed for other loads.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I saw plenty of those cars at the Ford and GM plants in Milpitas and Newark, CA in 60's when I went out to visit my sister and her family. A lot of SP cars since this was their home road, but a lot of other roads showed up as well. Carried auto parts in, not sure what they backhauled though.
riogrande5761still running have been repurposed for other loads.
I remember seeing a derailment photo somewhere that had one broken open and pink foam insulation was everywhere.
I also recall having heard of them carrying enormous amounts of tissue paper. Pretty much anything that is way skewed out on the "cubes out" end of the weight-volume relationship.
As usual... I am not sure how accurate this is...
I read something that showed how an 80+ foot long boxcar like this with four doors on each side could line up with doors spaced for either 40 foot or 50 foot boxcars when the building was built.
The single car could then be loaded by forklifts from two doors in the same warehouse.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
caldreamer I saw plenty of those cars at the Ford and GM plants in Milpitas and Newark, CA in 60's when I went out to visit my sister and her family. A lot of SP cars since this was their home road, but a lot of other roads showed up as well. Carried auto parts in, not sure what they backhauled though.
The ones I were familiar with had racks and other load holding equipment and didn't back haul anything. Some were stenciled " Return to such and such when empty." I remember seeing Twinsburg on a couple being loaded with body parts stamped from sheet steel. There were fenders, hood and trunk lid frames, and quite a few smaller stampings. I hauled steel sheet to the Twinsburg stamping plant a few times. There were at least a half dozen forklifts loading the cars. The plant had a rubber tired loader with a coupler on the back spotting cars at several doorways. This was way back in 1978.
Pete.
Typical 86' boxcars for the Ford FAST that delivered to Milpitas were SP, DT&I, Southern, N&W, GTW, ATSF, PRR, PC, WP, etc. There were quite a few roads participating in the pool of boxcars.
There is a good article about the auto parts trains in one of my magazines - it discusses the Ford FAST and GM ARRO. The FAST rotated between RR's between Michigan and California alternating back and forth every 90 days. IIRC the Milpitas plant closed in 1982.
Sounds right.
Tangent does not do foobie freight cars or paint schemes, at least not for any product under the Tangent name (by special arrangement they are doing a few custom runs for others).
For these 86' boxcars, if you dig a bit you can find prototype photos. Also, on Tangent's own website, there are prototype photos mixed in with the model images of just about every single paint scheme, including the ones that are sold out--the photos are still there, just in a different part of the website.
There is also a numbers book about the 86' boxcars by David Casdorph; it has a few photos but is mostly text. It rosters every single 86' boxcar still in service as of 2012? or so, and tells you from what original railroad and number series they came from for most of the survivors.
It is amazing how many survived for so many years.
John
PRR8259Tangent does not do foobie freight cars or paint schemes, at least not for any product under the Tangent name (by special arrangement they are doing a few custom runs for others).
Actually Tangent has done a couple foobies under their own name. One example is the quad coal car. I don't remember which road, but Dave mentioned it was offered by popular demand. Another example is the fantasy gondola for the Allegash model RR.
But as a rule, Tangent only offers models that closely replicate real freight cars and show photo's matching them, much like Moloco also does.
It's the Illinois Central open hopper, but very close to the Tangent model, and too close to offer a separately tooled body variant.
Generally speaking the Tangent cars are extremely accurate.