Hi Al,

Both market and technology brought about the 50' box car.

In a nut shell "The big railroads wanted to haul more goods and reduce the
tonnage they had to haul. It took 125 40 foot boxcars to equal 100 50 foot
boxcars. The reduction would be 25 less 40 foot boxcars times their empty gross
wait." Source - 40 Foot Boxcars and Their Different Types by _Michael W.P.
Ball_ (http://www.ideamarketers.com/library/profile.cfm?writerid=20596)

Along with the return of hundreds of thousands of the military after WW II,
the consumer market grew demanding more and larger products, especially
furniture and automobile parts. So the RR's had to find a better way to transport
these goods.

Technology helped with the use of welding instead of rivets to build
stronger not only longer box cars, but box cars with a higher inside height and
wider doors. Technology also brought upon the use of fork lifts and pallets to
carry and stack higher loads.

These are just a few of the reasons.

Dick Kashdin
Clarence, NY

Folks,

Do we have the short list of key reasons (such as market and
technology) for the shifting of "standard" NEW and REBUILT steel box
cars becoming 50-ft vs previously 40-ft box cars after WW2 and into the
fifties? Especially in the midwest and east?

Al Kresse

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:

al.kresse wrote:

Folks,

Do we have the short list of key reasons (such as market and technology) for the shifting of "standard" NEW and REBUILT steel box cars becoming 50-ft vs previously 40-ft box cars after WW2 and into the fifties? Especially in the midwest and east?

Al Kresse

The trend didn't start after WWII, it had been ongoing since the time of Stephenson, Allen, et al (i.e., 24' all wood cars to 36' wood or steel frame cars to 40' all steel cars). Capitalism is the ultimate driver: increase revenues while driving down the cost of earning the revenue. In a highly regulated RR industry, the RR has less ability or flexibility to generate revenue with innovation. Therefore, they have to put more emphasis on controlling cost to maintain or increase earning.

Stronger, lighter materials allowed larger cars to be operated. More freight could be hauled in one car for less cost. Chachinggg...

Diesel electric locomotives could pull trains consisting of more, heavier cars for the same operating cost, thus increasing revenue per train. Chachinggg...

Increasing operating costs (e.g., wages, materials.and consumables that included their own cost of increased wages, materials and consumables, etc.) for both shippers and RRs. The increased cost of operating larger freight cars built with lighter materials was not directly proportional to the increased size (i.e., it didn't cost 25% more). Chachinggg...

--

Frank Greene
Memphis, TN

I believe there was a tariff published post war for low weight,
high volume articles like washing machines, boxed cereal, and so on.
There had to be a 30,00 pound threshold reached for this tariff to
apply. I believe I saw this in a 1946-1947 Railway Age. Short blurb,
however it specifically talked about how this was increasing the
pressure for 50ft boxcars.

(Let's see, 15 tons of Special K. Yep, better get a fifty footer)

Jim Dick - St. Paul

On Nov 5, 2008, at 8:48 AM, al.kresse wrote:

Do we have the short list of key reasons (such as market and
technology) for the shifting of "standard" NEW and REBUILT steel box
cars becoming 50-ft vs previously 40-ft box cars after WW2 and into
the
fifties? Especially in the midwest and east?

No mystery here. After WW II box car traffic increasingly shifted
toward lighter, bulkier loads, notably auto parts, for which 50' cars
were better suited. This trend was reinforced by the development of
covered hoppers for grain service, replacing the 40' box cars with
grain doors that had formerly been used. And I would take issue with
your "especially in the midwest and east" statement. For example,
the Santa Fe built their last 40' box cars in 1952; all new box cars
delivered after that date were 50' cars. The same decision was made
by the Southern Pacific only a year later, in 1953.
Essentially, by the early 1950s most RRs owned all the 40' box cars
they needed, while much new rail traffic required longer cars with,
in many cases, DF loaders and other special loading equipment.

Richard Hendrickson

Frank Greene wrote:

Stronger, lighter materials allowed larger cars to be operated. More freight could be hauled in one car for less cost. Chachinggg...

Nope to this one. Cars were still being built out of simple, plain-carbon steel. Certainly design had improved, with far smaller center sills once the ARA design became standard for all-steel box cars. Even the slightly higher strength steels used in the 1960s did not really change dimensions of structural parts. And "lighter?" Nope.

Anthony Thompson
Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
thompsonmarytony@...

Tony,

I agree on the Lt Wt issue. They experimented with 0.075" thk HSLA steels just prior to the war and then re-upped the ga. again. HSLA (then called high tensile) steel was used in side-sheets but at the older std thicknesses.

Al

Richard,

My midwest reference was aimed at focusing on midwest railroads' needs. If universal across the States and Canada . . . great . . . even better.

Al

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

AL Kresse wrote:

I agree on the Lt Wt issue. They experimented with 0.075" thk HSLA steels just prior to the war and then re-upped the ga. again. HSLA (then called high tensile) steel was used in side-sheets but at the older std thicknesses.

This is a subtle point. The stronger steel is no STIFFER, so making it thinner makes it prone to buckling, and that's what happened to some box cars with thinner side sheets: wrinkling, etc. This can be solved by adding intermediate posts between the regular side posts (that's the so-called "Alternate Center Riveting" or ACR box car design), but then the weight of the extra posts offsets the weight saving of the thinner steel.
This emphasizes that much of structural design, including box cars, is based on stiffness and not on strength. The best illustration of that is the dreadnaught end. It is trivially STRONGER than a flat end, but greatly STIFFER. The same goes for underframes, sides and roofs.

Anthony Thompson
Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
thompsonmarytony@...

Folks;



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

"Forklift-proofing" made strength and thickness an issue on box cars. Part of Lt Wt is the addition of DF-type rails. Older 40-ft box cars had bulkheads and floor coverings put in their ends and on their wooden flors to ship heavy iron castings for the auto industry.

ALL GOOD FEEDBACK! Thanks guys. NOW I have to get the C&O Rwy Cost Sheets out and determine typical 40-ft to 50-ft box purchasing cost differentials.

Al Kresse

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
**************AOL Search: Your one stop for directions, recipes and all other
Holiday needs. Search Now.
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=http://searchblog.aol.com/2008/11/04/happy-holidays-from
-aol-search/?ncid=emlcntussear00000001)

Rich;



DSI did indeed do stretches of NYC boxes before the merger, as did McKees
Rocks for some P&LE 40-footers. B&O also did some.



Elden Gatwood





________________________________

From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of
cinderandeight@...
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 8:03 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Re: from 40' 6' to 50' 6" box cars



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
**************AOL Search: Your one stop for directions, recipes and all other

Holiday needs. Search Now.
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=http
://searchblog.aol.com/2008/11/04/happy-holidays-from
<http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212792382x1200798498/aol?redir=http
://searchblog.aol.com/2008/11/04/happy-holidays-from>
-aol-search/?ncid=emlcntussear00000001)