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  2. Greetings, a new guy.

Re: Greetings, a new guy.

Bruce Smith
 

Mike,

Single sheathed boxcars (aka “outside braced”) are certainly not “all wood”.  All wood boxcars were eliminated from interchange service prior to WW2.  This was due to the inability of the wood underframes to withstand the forces applied to them by heavier trains.

The next iteration would have been wooden superstructures with steel underframes.  These also lost favor in the years prior to WW2 and were mostly eliminated from interchange service prior to the start of WW2.  Refrigerator cars often had completely wooden superstructures as well.

The next iteration would be cars with steel superstructure and steel underframes with wood sheathing, such as the single sheathed car that you mention.  These began to be built prior to WW1 and lasted in service past the time frame of this list.  As for the MILW, they were likely not in interchange service at that time, but rather were in company service or MOW service.

Regards

Bruce


Bruce F. Smith            

Auburn, AL

https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."



On Mar 2, 2015, at 12:00 PM, Mike Bauers mwbauers55@... [STMFC] <STMFC@...> wrote:

I'm a so-so modeler that is falling into lower cost modeling due to the economy.

I have a question about all-wood boxcars.

I remember seeing a couple of the older outside braced wooden boxcars on the side of the Milwaukee Road main shops for several years starting around 1970. So some wood cars survived years beyond the years this group is following.

My question is about when did the older all-wood boxcars get pulled off of the mainline?

I'd like to photo-real model several of the older all-wood boxcars in higher-tech card-stock, of sorts. I understand many of the surviving in service wood box cars would have metal ends and up to date metal under-frames.

I'm puzzled about when all wood body boxcars would be forced off of the Roads.

I'm unsure if circa 1952, wooden sided boxcars would still be somewhat common.

Does anyone have knowledge of mandated elimination dates for the all-wood box car bodies, or the wooden sided-only  boxcars ?

Best to ya,
Mike Bauers
Milwaukee, Wi
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