Gene,

Actually I think Frank Hodina & Martin Lofton have taken a lot of
flack over the years for this, and last year at Naperville I was
surprised to hear Frank talk about scribing his own board seams.
So hopefully the days of Evergreen horizontally ribbed wood box
cars are behind us! Now if we could just get rib of the vertical
Evergreen V grooves, we'd be all set.

Are you sure the T&P box car is wood? SP bought some cars (A-50-10)
at that time that were single sheathed, but all steel.