Conrail Rolling Stock


M

MikeJ

Member
Hey Everyone,

Lately I've been back on the wagon (had a slower end of the winter, because I was switching jobs and I'll tell you what switching jobs can be a drag beyond comprehension at time.)

Any how I have a question about Conrail Box Cars, is there a web site or somewhere that talks about the different kinds of box cars and what commodities they were used for. Like I know the 40ft box cars were not that common, but 50 foot were plentiful same with 60 and 86 foot.

Which is my other question did the 86 foot box cars do anything else but haul auto parts? Like did they use them to ship appliances or light things like Styrofoam cups or potato chips?
 
By the time Conrail was formed, most 40' box cars had been retired, and certainly none were still being produced. It'd be interesting to know if there was ever one that was inherited and actually repainted into Conrail livery because it seems like it wouldn't be worth the cost for a car you knew you were going to scrap.

According to an article I read, there are 18 40-ft. box cars still registered to an active railroad. One was moved from point to point in 2012, and before that the last one that moved was in 2009. A few more were moved around in the late 90's and early 2000's, most likely just moving from one parking place to another. There was a decade or more where none were moved anywhere, and I remember the stat that one was moved in in all of 1981. Just a bit o' trivia.
 
MikeJ said:
What was the deal with the 40ft cars why did they end up as economically obsolete?
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Well, the first thing would simply be space. There's not a lot of weight difference or cost difference in an empty 50-ft vs. 40-ft., but they can haul more of a load. As locomotives got more powerful and could haul the larger loads it made sense to just have the bigger box for more capacity rather than have to haul two 40-ft boxcars loaded to 55% of capacity. On that same note, four 50-ft could replace five 40-ft, or later on four 60-ft could replace a whopping six of the 40-ft. Besides the cost savings in the actual purchase of the cars, all of that means sets of trucks, wheels, brakes, couplers etc. that don't have to be maintained. Lower maintenance for the same haulage capacity, and actually lighter overall weight of the rolling stock for the same amount of cargo hauled.

I believe one thing that also hastened the 40' box departure was the removal of roofwalks and shortening of ladders that was required (in the mid to late 60's if I'm not mistaken), and also just the fact that a car has to be rehabilitated at some point in its life just because of normal wear and tear. When you start thinking of refurbishing, repainting and modifying an old worn out box car versus buying a new one that will actually save you money in an operational sense, the new box would just make more sense in a lot of cases.
 
I know BN still had a fair number of 40' boxes on the roster into the 90's. They used them to haul grain and lumber.

Generally speaking though, most standard 40 and 50 foot box cars hauled LCL freight, lumber, grain, food, etc. a lot of cars would also be labeled "for food service only" The 50' high cubes were used to haul paper products. BN had several 60' boxes to use on their coors brewery trains. Then you can break it down to insulated boxes that didn't have a/c generators for food service that was temp sensitive but didn't have to be kept frozen. I think most of the 89 foot cars though were pretty dedicated to Autoparts service
 
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BN8002 said:
I know BN still had a fair number of 40' boxes on the roster into the 90's. They used them to haul grain and lumber.

Generally speaking though, most standard 40 and 50 foot box cars hauled LCL freight, lumber, grain, food, etc. a lot of cars would also be labeled "for food service only" The 50' high cubes were used to haul paper products. BN had several 60' boxes to use on their coors brewery trains. Then you can break it down to insulated boxes that didn't have a/c generators for food service that was temp sensitive but didn't have to be kept frozen. I think most of the 89 foot cars though were pretty dedicated to Autoparts service
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BN in fact still had some on the roster as of 2013, actually. I found some more information from 2013 that I'll paste here. It's not quite as clear-cut as I remember regarding overall numbers, though, because it actually only addresses the movements of the ones still on an active roster. You can infer, though, that if these were just sitting around idle any others in service after 1980 probably weren't exactly burning up the rails:

In the spirit of the American freight train, here’s an interesting fact, courtesy of friends at the Association of American Railroads: Of the 1.55 million freight cars in service in North America, we’re down to 18 or fewer 40-foot boxcars that are still listed in UMLER, the service that tracks freight cars in revenue service in North America.

Of the 18, eight carry Burlington Northern reporting marks, seven carry Canadian Pacific, two carry Ferromex, and one is listed at New England preservation railroad Naugatuck. Dozens of others are also preserved at museums or tourist railroads, but just not listed in UMLER.

That’s pretty amazing, considering that most 40-foot boxcars left the railroading scene about 30 years ago and that the peak for these boxcars goes all the way back to 1942.

The AAR shared details with us about the cars, which are all too old now for interchange service.

All of the BN cars, save for one condemned to scrap, are listed as active. The last one moved in June 2012 when No. 200147 was switched in Everett, Wash. Before that, the only movement of any of these cars was in 2009 when two were active, and one went to a steel mill in Pueblo, Colo., most likely for scrap. Prior to that, two cars moved in 2008, one in 1996, one in 1997, and one in, O.K., get ready for this, 1981. The other seven are BN 200112, 200161, 200184, 200194, 200223, 200294, and 281467.

All seven CP cars are shown as inactive, and the last move was in 1985. All are or were (if they still exist) in Quebec, save for one in Detroit. Again, they may be ghosts, but if you’ve seen them, they are Nos. 50020, 52525, 53496, 53547, 54849, 55587, and 55709.

Only one of the two Ferromex cars is active, and if you can believe it, No. 850007 moved earlier this month on May 2 to Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, and actually appears to have been under load. So this one appears to be the last active 40-foot boxcar in North America. Reporting marks are FXE and the other car is No. 850034.

Naugatuck’s car, No. 445, last moved in 2002 from Montpelier Junction, Vt., to the tourist line and museum in Connecticut.

Boxcars have been around since the 1830s, and the height of 40-foot boxcars was in 1942, when the fleet peaked at 754,322.

“After 1949, you were beginning to have a very significant number of 50-foot cars joining the fleet,” says AAR’s John Gray. “Before 1940, the Great Depression kept the number of cars depressed and before the Depression you were in the 1920s when there were a very large number of 36-foot and smaller cars still in the fleet.”
 
Well there you go...I didn't follow BN equipment after the merger but that makes sense. And I think a lot of BN 40' boxes were also in MOW service with their roof walks intact up to the merger date and beyond.
 
MikeJ said:
What was the deal with the 40ft cars why did they end up as economically obsolete?
Click to expand...
Also the huge drop in "less than car load" shipments that the trucking industry took over. Smaller cars weren't needed as much. Then also the rise of the cargo specific cars. Covered hopper are most notable as they took over the grain loads, and the open frame flats that took over the lumber loads.
 
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