Service Life of A Boxcar

I always figured a boxcar was good for about 35 years. This would include an extensive overhaul just prior to 20 years old. It depends on the service it is in.  Some go longer, some not as long. The weak point in a boxcar is usually the doors.  That excludes any interior equipment it may have. The doors are the weak link because they are so abused by the shippers.  The life is tracked by watching billing repair cards, bad orders, field inspections, etc.,  the same way the condition of most cars are tracked. On assigned cars, the shippers may have input into condition and needed maintenance.  They may request a fleet wide overhaul at some point, but they are well aware that the cost of providing cars goes into the rate.  

I understand that the legal interchange life is 40 years, but many survive within their home roads for many, many more years.

Jan

Freight cars have a 40 year life, if a private car owner or railroad wants to extend the car life an additional 10 years for a maximum useful life of 50 years they must adhere to the AAR Rule 88 Rebuild requirements. The Field Manual of the American Association of Railroads Recommended Practices and Standards has the Rule 88 requirements. Many times the useful life of freight cars is substantially less that 40 years because of derailment/collision damage or chemical service interior tank corrosion of tank cars. The decision to repair derailment/collision damaged cars or inserting replacement tank panels in a tank car in a general sense involves the age of the car and remaining life after repair, cost(material and labor) of the repair, type of car and demand for revenue use by the private railroad or private car owner or leasing company. The 40 year or 50 year (Rule 88) effective car life is a interchange requirement, cars exceeding 40/50 years from built date are commonly used in non-interchange service or MOW (maintenance of way) cars by railroads in the track department, cars typically are gondola, open top hopper cars with ballast gates and flatcars to carry railroad ties or rail sections. The MOW cars are in the captive service of the railroad, both these cars and the interchanged cars are subject to FRA mandated regulated safety standards.

It has been a number of years since I did the Rule 88 Rebuild calculations and drawing submission to the AAR for an additional 10 year life for a lot of tank cars, also as I recall in 6/74 the AAR Standand of Recommened Practices and Standards Design Requirements changed. There are other Sections to this Standard, I remember Section C Freight Car Design and Section C1 Tank Car Design requirements, cars built to these revised Standards in 6/74 have a 50 year life from built date and cars built prior to 6/74 Standard has a 40 year life from the built date, if Rule 88 Rebuild was applied the life was extended 10 to a maximum service life of 50 years.,  

Air Brake equipment has to be cleaned and tested periodically, and new wheels are also applied several times within the service life of a freight car, usually because of being slid and incurring flat spots of condemnable size.  But a major shopping would not be done unless the car was being modified.  Most freight cars are simply repaired as needed, repainted about every ten years, and used and abused as much as possible.  Tank cars are exceptions to this, and normally are shopped at intervals depending on what kind of tank car.

I think that record keeping / tracking for boxcars used in interchange service must be a complex task, thus it is difficult to perform.

How is this done and managed?

Who pays for the parts and labor of services rendered to a boxcar by a non-owner railroad?

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) tracks all freight car movement, and most locomotive movement, in North America.  Every freight car has an RFID chip on it and they frequently pass scanners that let the AAR know where they are.  When a freight car is off its home road, the railroad with the car has to pay rent by the hour and a mileage fee.  This is calculated by the AAR based on the data it collects. Railroads and shippers can also use this data to track the progress a car is making toward its destination.  

Off line repairs to freight cars are covered by the AAR Interchange Rules. They define what repairs can be made to an off line car, what the repairs will cost, and who is responsibility the cost of repairs.   These rules cover everything up the the total value of a car if it is destroyed in an off line wreck.  These rules and the costs are updated quarterly. 

What a great topic!  If have also been curious about how long cars are used.  I am also curious about how companies make money with freight cars.  What I mean is, I assume the railroads pays for the cars to be made...right? I come to that conclusion because I see different railroad names on the cars.  However, the cars go everywhere.  I see cars here in North West Florida that have road names that don't operate anywhere near here.  For instance, I saw a mixed freight yesterday pulled by two CSX locomotives.  There were cars in that train from railroads all over the country.  So who is making money...is it CSX pulling the train? Or, each individual company who owns the freight cars?

Dear People,

The engineering rule for the life of boxcars/railcars is,

Any Railcar built before July 1st, 1974 is a 40 year car for interchange. As stated by John Ochab above, these cars can qualify for a 10 year life extension. So, as of July 1st, 2014, (40 years) if you did not have your paper work on the extension for a particular car into the AAR before the end of the yr, you either have to scrap the car of only use it/them on non interchange service. 

Some flat cars from the above, 89'ers were extended 15 years (55 years) and to even 65 years! These would have auto racks on them. 

Any Railcar built after July 1st, 1974 is a 50 year car. So these cars, being built in lets say, in 1975, will be end of life, unless there is a life extension on the car. But we don't know this yet... 

Dan

Clint:

Each railroad participating in the movement of a loaded car collects a division; i.e. their share of the revenue earned.  Divisions are negotiable between the railroads involved.  In his earlier post above, David explains how car service rules work when a railroad owned car is on a "foreign" line so there is no need to revisit that aspect.

Loaded private railcars controlled by a shipper are subject to the same revenue divisions as a loaded railroad owned car.  Private railcars are not subject to the same car service rules as railroad owned equipment, however.  

Shippers using private railcars may collect a mileage allowance from each railroad involved in a loaded move.  It has become far more common for shippers using private cars to accept a theoretically lower rate in return for zero mileage compensation from the railroads handling the loaded move.

Curt

IIRC some DM&IR ore cars made it to over 70 years.

wjstix posted:

IIRC some DM&IR ore cars made it to over 70 years.

But they were not in interchange service.

I just came across this article on the Progressive Railroading website about a proposal to increase the life of boxcars from 50 to 65 years. I wasn’t able to find any justification for this increase other than the concern of the paper industry that new boxcars are too expensive & trains might lose market share & trucks might be more competitive if this increased life wasn’t approved.

Progressive Railroading - Increased Car Life article

These are just my opinion,

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

There have been advancements in non-invasive testing and predicting catastrophic fatigue failure, as well as the inexpensive ability to measure stresses real-time. Calender life in itself should not represent retirement criterion circa 2016'

There are some GTW, CN, SP, and UP High-Cube 86' box cars in service that have been rebuilt and are over 40 years old.

It depends on the type of box car and if the box car has been rebuilt and repaired.

Andrew