On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 08:07 AM, Schuyler Larrabee wrote:

Well, I agree that it’s not tight to the floor above it, but . . . it’s also appearing to be bent, and on a wrecked car, I’d be cautious about generalizing from the condition of this particular diagonal to say that all diagonals on PFE reefers are the same.  Once bent, that channel has lost a good bit of its integrity.

All the way at the left edge of the second photo https://dl.library.ucla.edu/islandora/object/edu.ucla.library.specialCollections.losAngelesDailyNews%3A1053
is another car that shows both diagonals and neither is bent. I'd say the cars were built this way. the 1910 era NYC 36' steel underframe boxcar I tooled a couple years ago also had the diagonals below the floor stringers; they are on the Pullman builder's drawings. Those diagonals run the more conventional way, from the center of the bolster out to the car corners, likely to reinforce the frame behind the poling pocket. I'd say the purpose of running the diagonal in the opposit direction is to keep the body bolster from bending when the roping staple was used to move too many coupled cars. 

Dennis Storzek