Mike, N&W may have been a coal road but,it handled several thousand boxcars a week.. Even today NS handles between 14-15,000 boxcars per week.
90% is high it would be more like 55% coal and 45% general freight for the N&W. You see N&W switched a lot of industries plus handled overhead traffic between the South-East to Columbus and Cincinnati and vice versa.
Nation wide around 70% boxcars would be right. .
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
What I am going for is the general feel of the late 1930's, even though things like the S-1 diesel were first sold in 1940, they existed in 1939, just not up for sale yet (what you think they just started producing it with no testing etc.). Also I am OK with an S-4 as iit was mainly the same but different truck which was avalible in 1939 if they had wanted to use it.
The % of each car types in the national fleet as well as the % owned be each railrioad are useful starting point, but basing the number of cars of each type and railroad will usually not be prototypical. Real numbers depend on the location of the railroas and segment of the railroad modeled, connecting railroads, online industries servered, where and who products are shipped to/from, and overhead traffic carried on the line.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Ya for boxcars that's probably pretty close as far as how many were woodsided single sheathed, double sheathed, and how many were steel, and the lengths...although by 1940, it had been 25-30 years since any new 36' boxcars were built (although some 38' meat reefers had been built more recently), so it might be the pct. of 40' cars should be higher and 36' - 38' ones lower.
Most housecars (boxcars, reefers, stock cars) would be 8-1/2' high. The 40' long, 10' high steel boxcar so many of us think of when we hear "boxcar" only started in production in 1936.
But 90% of all cars being boxcars seems high, though it would have been higher than today. A lot of things now carried in covered hoppers were hauled in boxcars back then.
Remember too a lot of new regulations came in during the 1930's, so you wouldn't see cars in interchange service that had archbar trucks, or truss rods (unless they had a steel underframe), and private owner / leased "billboard" reefers would be very rare.
What would you say the right numbers would be?
Those numbers sound about right EXCEPT 90% boxcars is wrong. Yes, a much higher percentage than nowadays, but if that's a national average that doesn't sound right. For one thing, look at the N&W, where the hopper was king, as it was on many coal-hauling RRs.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Looking for more of a broad average, type of car by area differs alot in that era.
The Official Railway Equipment Register is your friend. Published annually, it lists railroad-owned equipment in interchange by car type, listing dimensions and road mark number ranges and other info.
Car builders manufacturing reports for the years in which you are interested are often helpful, as can be annual reports from prototype railroads even if you don't model that particular railroad; it's still an indication of the sort of foreign equipment that'd be interchanged. For the same reason, Technical and Historical Society material from other railroads that existed in the time period you're modelling can be informative, as well as downright fascinating.
I ran across an article on a forum that addressed this but would like coments on what they said. They said in this time period that 65% of cars were 40', 30% 36' to 38' and 5% were 50'. Of the these 20% were double sheathed, 35% single sheathed and 45% all steel. It also stated that around 90% of cars, were boxcars. Trying to see what I need and what to downsize as I am going for generic as far as local but right for the era average.