Everyone,
The last 40' 6" box cars on the PRR (new built) were the X54/X54A classes
of 1960. They were built to haul can good, were insulated and had plug
doors. Campbell's Soap in Camden, NJ was the primary user of these cars.
While the PRR itself never stretched 40' cars to 50', PC had 50's
stretche car. I think these were done shortly after the merger at the Sam Rea shops
in Holidaysburg, but prehaps they were done by DSI shopss before the merger.
Does anyone know? These cars were former NYC lot 968-B box cars built in
1948/49. The resulting cars were given class X85 by the PC (although some cars
seemed to have kept their 968-B lot numbers). I recall that some of these cars
were stenciled for explosives service. I saw one bad ordered car with a huge
gapping hole in it side sheets at one end of the car...bang? One interesting
feature of these cars was that they had two types of roof panels. The original
roof panels had Stanray retangular panels, while the added panels at the car's
center were Stanray triangular panel ones. It would make for an interesting
looking model. In later times some of them were leased, and lettered for AUG
(Augusta Railroad Co..) in the 144000 series. I haven't been able to find an
ORER listing for these cars.
Rich Burg
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