50' Offset Double-Door Box Cars.

[G Mack]

Does anyone know the reason these cars were made with offset doors? I tried to find a photo of one, but had no luck. Which brings up another question; didn't Railpictures.net use to have photos of rolling stock? I looked there and found nothing. Anyway, I did happen to find a HO scale model representation in BN colors and they (the model magazine) say that it comes in BN road numbers 223493 or 223665. Whether these are true road numbers or not, I don't know. The car looks like a standard outside braced boxcar but with the doors positioned more towards one end than the other.

Gregory

[wjstix]

Well one door would be located where it normally would be, the other was to the left of it as you looked at the car broadside. I would think it would be easier to add the hardware etc. for the second door rather than re-doing everything to make the two doors meet in the middle. Plus with that arrangement, the car could be loaded or unloaded just using the 'normal' door in the middle, with the other door staying shut, if for some reason you needed to do that.

[ericsp]

These cars were built with the doors offset. They did not have a door added later. They appear to be FMC cars, which built identical cars with the doors centered, so there must be some reason to offset the doors.

There are several photographs of BN 223000 series cars at the link below.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=BN&cid=2

[TH&B]

lnteresting question.  Have you ever seen those CSX box cars with very offset single doors?  lndeed why are they offset?

[G Mack]

 

It's been a while since I've seen one of those cars, now that I think about it. I keep picturing some type of cargo that was too long to fit through the doors of a standard boxcar and couldn't be exposed or even shrink-wrapped. Something along the lines of big rolls of textiles or something similiar.

Gregory

[edblysard]

Newsprint in rolls.

Lets you fill the short side, then the long side and the center.

[CShaveRR]

The offset in double doors added to the flexibility of the cars' use--especially in cases where the auxiliary door (the one that wasn't centered) was a plug door--when not used, it functioned as part of the cars' wall.

Not being an expert on actually loading box cars, I can only assume that certain long products could be maneuvered into the car by opening staggered doors on both sides--and apparently this couldn't be done with doors directly opposite each other.  Most of the double doors on box cars built through the 1970s had a total opening of 16 feet.  Your modern high-roof box car has plug doors with an opening of closer to 20 feet, IIRC--and apparently that's wide enough so that the openings don't have to be centered.

Now, the offet single-door box cars that originated on Chessie System (B&O, specifically) were "Canstock cars" in their original guise, used for transporting heavy rolls of tin plate for making cans,  The door openings were designed by a computer program to be positioned for the maximum number of coils that could be safely loaded and positioned for security.

C&O and B&O had prior experience with single staggered doors, in some of the insulated box cars they leased from Fruit Growers Express.  Since most of the FGE cars had centered doors, these cars (operated by C&O, B&O, and DT&I; later some by PC and others) really stood out.

The most staggered doors I can think of existed on a series of Seaboard Air Line box cars, of which I saw one example in the late 1960s.  There had to be fewer than ten of these:  they were forty-foot box cars with twenty-foot door openings--and the openings were staggered all the way to the left end of the car sides!

[G Mack]

Newsprint in rolls.

Lets you fill the short side, then the long side and the center.

Newsprint. That makes sense. Got to see a car of paper rolls at a R.R. Donnelly plant being unloaded, they were HUGE.

The loading scheme is similiar to how we load freight on the 727 aircraft. You load the front cans first to help out as a ballast load, then proceed to fill in the back and then position the cans in the cargo doorway last. Unloading goes in the exact opposite order, if not, you end up with a plane sitting on it's tail looking like it's taking off right there on the cargo ramp area!!

Gregory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[G Mack]

The offset in double doors added to the flexibility of the cars' use--especially in cases where the auxiliary door (the one that wasn't centered) was a plug door--when not used, it functioned as part of the cars' wall.

Not being an expert on actually loading box cars, I can only assume that certain long products could be maneuvered into the car by opening staggered doors on both sides--and apparently this couldn't be done with doors directly opposite each other.  Most of the double doors on box cars built through the 1970s had a total opening of 16 feet.  Your modern high-roof box car has plug doors with an opening of closer to 20 feet, IIRC--and apparently that's wide enough so that the openings don't have to be centered.

Now, the offet single-door box cars that originated on Chessie System (B&O, specifically) were "Canstock cars" in their original guise, used for transporting heavy rolls of tin plate for making cans,  The door openings were designed by a computer program to be positioned for the maximum number of coils that could be safely loaded and positioned for security.

C&O and B&O had prior experience with single staggered doors, in some of the insulated box cars they leased from Fruit Growers Express.  Since most of the FGE cars had centered doors, these cars (operated by C&O, B&O, and DT&I; later some by PC and others) really stood out.

The most staggered doors I can think of existed on a series of Seaboard Air Line box cars, of which I saw one example in the late 1960s.  There had to be fewer than ten of these:  they were forty-foot box cars with twenty-foot door openings--and the openings were staggered all the way to the left end of the car sides!

Thanks for the reply Carl. I was hoping you would chime in as I know you have an interest in rolling stock.

BTW, do you, or anyone else who is on this thread, happen to know what the largest size boxcar is? I seem to recall reading somewhere about an especially large boxcar that was produced but never put into continuous service. I think the article said it was sitting by itself on a out-of-the-way track in a abandoned yard. Any info??

Gregory

[CShaveRR]

You must be thinking of that one-of-a-kind hi-cube box car (I can't remember all of the details) that Norfolk Southern received and tried out.  It was 86.5 feet inside--same as the other hi-cubes--but was much taller and a bit narrower, in order to better accommodate the shipping pallets or whatever the parts-makers use for shipping.