Re: from 40' 6' to 50' 6" box cars
|
Gatwood, Elden J SAD
Folks;
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
While I know that the P&LE also did a stretch job on some of their 40-footers, the PRR never tried it. Since the PRR had big problems with even their 40-foot box cars bowing (the '44 AAR cars they got were especially bad), they seem not to have wanted to go down that road. I suspect after seeing some files earlier this year, that the use of their 40-foot boxes for forklifted coil steel shipments was causing a lot of the problem. Like you stated earlier, the last 40-footers, (X46) built in the early 50's, were meant for special shipments (appliances and the like), and were not numerous. They were vastly over-shadowed by the many new classes of 50-footers. The early "lightweight" 50-footers (X41, X44, X45) turned out to be weak, and were not repeated. After the lightweight X45's, the solution to the bowing problem was to stop buying AAR designs and add a big, heavy channel side sill to all new designs. Elden Gatwood ________________________________ From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of water.kresse@... Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2008 3:39 PM To: STMFC@... Subject: Re: [STMFC] from 40' 6' to 50' 6" box cars Garth, The C&O bought plug-in kits in the late-50s from Youngston Steel Co (blt up in southern Indiana ?) to stretch 40-ft cars into 50-ft cars (mostly P-S 1's) at their Raceland and Wyoming Shops. Al -------------- Original message --------------
From: "Garth G. Groff" <ggg9y@... <mailto:ggg9y%40virginia.edu> > Al, How about customer preferences? On the Western Pacific (admittedly not a mid-western or eastern road), 50' boxcars became the norm by the mid to late 1950s due to customer demand. WP 50-footers were largely used for auto parts and for lumber. In both cases, it was not only car size, but also large door openings which were handy for forklifts, that made these cars attractive to shippers. Once the WP (and subsidiaries Sacramento Northern and Tidewater Southern) began buying 50' PS-1s in 1954, they never looked back at 40' cars, except for a few specialized cars for appliance loading (which might again have been customer preference). Indeed, in the early 1960s, many of WP 40' PS-1s were returned to Pullman for lengthening (but that's beyond the STMFP boundaries). ;-) Kind regards, Garth G. Groff al.kresse wrote: Folks, |
|
|