40 foot boxcars??

Hay all,

Last nite 9/14/04 around 8:30p.m. I caught a west bound CSX General fraght with the following locos in order CSX C40-8, CSX AC4400CW, CR SD50, CN SD70I, LMX B40-8. I'm guessing about 150+ cars maybe more about 50% of this train was a mix of Grand Trunk Western, Southern Pacific, Cotton Belt, and NOKL 40 foot signle Door and 40 foot Hi-Cube Single Plug Door Boxcars. Where on earth did these odd cars come from? Whos useing them? Are 40 foot cars makeing a come back in today railroad industry? I always thought that 40 foot boxcars disapired in the early to late 70's.

Hmmm.
I have a 12 year-old OER, and it lists only 3 40ft boxcars for GTW (not sure if it was merged out of existance by then - apparently not), and 0 40ft boxcars for Cotton Belt (St. Louis SW RR) - are you sure these weren't really 50ft ones mixed with some 60ft boxcars (thus making the 50ft ones look smaller).
I find it rather hard to believe that Union Pacific dug up some 40ft boxcars (I know of only a handful of new ones, built for Mexican RR hauling bagged cement) restored them, and then painted them for Cotton Belt (even with the licensing contraversy raging...)

BTW, ladies and gentlemen, I present a recently built new 40ft (well, 43ft) boxcar: http://www.trinityrailcar.com/products/box/cement.html

I've seen several CSX general freights roll through the CNY area with similar cars also. They probably are 50 footers but I'll try to grab some car numbers next time I get a chance. Hopefully, someone can identify the car sizes from the numbers.

Yea, I would only know by the numbers, I have horrible perception of length with rail cars. 40ft, 50ft, all looks the same to me. (unless there are side by side )

I'll try to get a few car numbers as well. I saw this train at nite in the view of high beam head lites. the train was moveing at about 15m.p.h. under a speed restriction that has been going sents the middle of March. in the Weedsport, NY area.
All of these 40' cars that I saw were like a seaid were mostley GTW, NOKL, and SSW cars I'll try my best to get some numbers next round.

SRS125 wrote:I'll try to get a few car numbers as well. I saw this train at nite in the view of high beam head lites. the train was moveing at about 15m.p.h. under a speed restriction that has been going sents the middle of March. in the Weedsport, NY area.
All of these 40' cars that I saw were like a seaid were mostley GTW, NOKL, and SSW cars I'll try my best to get some numbers next round.

Actually, the interior width is likely to be written on the side of these boxcars, usually twice:
Dimensions are somewhere on the side of the boxcar, usually (but not always) under the Owner's initials/Car Number - look for letters "IL" - not always easy to read, though.
And also on the - well, I forgot the offical name, I think they were once called lube plates or FRA data plates - the black rectangles with white data on the lower left corner of all interchanged boxcars (and other cars). This obviously is even tougher to read, and I can usually only read this info when the freight car is stationary.

The black rectangle with information on air brakes etc is called the Consolidated Stencil and does not provide car length. On some cars it will have brake pipe length but that is quite different from the car body length.

IH is Inches High and IL is inches long. They have the feet marked plus the inches for both marks for the IL and IH marks.

Not quite. IH is "inside" or "internal" height, "IL" is inside or internal length.

i was working a 3rd trick pulldown 2 years ago at frontier and for about a month or so the was 40' box cars coming into the yard. i also thought this was odd and after looking at the markings on the length on the side of the car was 40'. they also was atleast 20 or more cars in a row of them on most nights. i think most of the trains were going west on either q363, q641 or q391. i havent worked nights since so i dont know if they are still coming into frotier yd

the 40' cars that I have seen are in west bound trains as odd as it is is it possable that a few railroads have some kind of odd track restriction that dose not permit cars over a certin weaght or langth or could it be that cars like this are being used for LCL Lots??

LCL boxcar traffic has been gone for probably 40 years.

Is it possible these are the cement cars I mentioned before?
The 40fters could be hauling something very dense, so that the load rapidly approaches the max load limit (286Klbs nowadays, I guess) well before the cubic capacity (space) of a 50 or 60 footer is approached.
One of the last major bastions of 40fts were grain cars on light weight rail(Canadian) branch lines, but I think they have since upgraded those lines and can use covered hoppers now.
Next time, check to see if these boxcars have roof hatches.

Well most of these 40' Boxcars are lettered for Grand Trunk Western. CN still has 60LB rail in service in Saskatchewan. Will look for hatches on cars as well.