I tried to resist responding to this but the flesh is weak.

Grain doors nailed all the way to the top of the doors would trap inside the car the guy who nailed them up. Besides, how could the car be loaded?

That said, after World War Two the M&StL was buying box cars with a 10'-0" inside height when many other railroads were buying 10'-6" IH box cars.

As was mentioned in another message, there were lines stenciled on the box car sides showing the level to fill the car with various grains.

In the M&StL's cars (and no doubt those of many other railroads) wheat was the lowest line. About 4 inches above that was the line for corn, rye and flax. The barley line was 7 or 8 inches above the corn-rye-flax line. The line for oats was very near the top of the car's side. That suggests to me that the M&StL bought all those 10'-0" IH box cars with grain hauling in mind.

Gene Green

The grain doors nailed inside the car door can't extend all the way up, anyway. Load could only be
up to about two feet below the door top.

Skip Luke

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Thank you Steve. I had asked a guy who'd work at an elevator for car capy in bushels, but they don't grow wheat around here.

I did get a kick out of some replies. It's like we used to say at work "Ask an engineer for the time and they'll tell you how to build a watch".

Thanks again all!
Clark Propst

The general rule that I learned years ago was 2,000 bushels of wheat in a nominal 50-ton boxcar, 1,500 to 1,600 bushels of wheat in a 40-ton car.

I don't know about other roads' cars, but CN 40' steel box cars had wheat, oat, and barley loading reference lines stencilled on the boards lining the inside of the car.

Steve Lucas.

A bushel is measure of volume, so at 1 US bushel = 1.2445 cubic feet, you can figure it out for any car or any grain. Converting to pounds will depend on the grain.

KL

Clark Propst aked:

Anyone know the bushel capacity of a box car? I know they had grain

lines inside, but I know a guy wanting to know the bushels of wheat a
car could hold.

Edward Sutorik replied:

A typical boxcar for grain was 40-6 inside length, 9 inside width, and

10-6 inside height. This yields 3827 cubic feet. This converts to 3076
bushels with the car filled. Weight would be about 92,000 pounds. A
boxcar completely full is hard to believe, so you've got to guess how
un-full the car would be.

Ed,

I haven't checked your calculations, but all the grain lines markings I
have seen were well below the top of the door openings considerably
below the maximum height. I always assumed the loading levels were
established to indicate when the car reached its load limit for a
particular type of grain and that volume was determined by the bulk
density of the grain.

Bob Witt
Indianapolis, Indiana

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Clark and Eileen" <cepropst@...> wrote:

Anyone know the bushel capacity of a box car? I know they had grain lines inside, but I know a guy wanting to know the bushels of wheat a car could hold.

Clark Propst
Mason City Iowa

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

A typical boxcar for grain was 40-6 inside length, 9 inside width, and 10-6 inside height. This yields 3827 cubic feet. This converts to 3076 bushels with the car filled. Weight would be about 92,000 pounds. A boxcar completely full is hard to believe, so you've got to guess how un-full the car would be.


Ed

Edward Sutorik

Anyone know the bushel capacity of a box car? I know they had grain lines inside, but I know a guy wanting to know the bushels of wheat a car could hold.

Clark Propst
Mason City Iowa