Those are all in service cars my friends. Those are not the RIP tracks in South Boston Freight Terminal. Look over by the brick smokestack and sand tower to see two switchers – the S-1 is working and smoking, the HH660 probably idling. Now, since Boston was a terminal, there is no telling how long the foreign road cars lingered before returning home.

There are three NH box cars in the photo;

McGinnis scheme (black with large “NH”) behind the Superior reefer

Script herald (BCR, very faded lettering) coupled to the right of the Superior reefer

The storage car that is on the ground to the right of the script herald car and to the left of the RI box car.

Notice there is a phone pole directly behind the script herald boxcar described above.

The storage car is one of the NHs old boxes, possibly 70200 series (I have a photo of NH 70218) which were rebuilt in 1935 with steel underframes from earlier NH 170000-170999-series 30-ton box cars.

The 40’ steel boxcars arrived beginning 1942 but there were still over 120 wood box cars in service in Sept 1948.  Beginning post-war many of the wood cars were converted to non-revenue service, which is the fate of the car in this photo. A white “NH” is visible above the “W-series” work car number.  Some cars were grounded and used for storage which appears to be the fate of this car. The yellow visible on the side is a patch of paint only so a black lettered stencil could be applied. This could have been applied while the car was still on trucks or not.  Could have said anything from “sand service only” to “property of mechanical dept.”

Peter Ness