Spicing Up our Boxcar Fleets, Or What's Out There?

Outside braced wooden boxcar - Premier line by MTH 

This is purely anecdotal evidence, so take it for what it's worth. 

As a kid, back in the Fifties, my friends and I spent many an hour watching the long mixed freights on the PRR mainline.  An old wooden boxcar would have stood out like a rabbit in a cabbage patch, but I can't recall ever seeing a single one.  Maybe on other railroads it was different.

I saw outside braced wood boxcars on the B&O during the late 1950's.  I remember the brake wheel placement.  My father would take me to the B&O team track nearby and at times there would be one of these cars waiting to be unloaded.  

Although with a diminished presence wood sided boxcars, both outside braced and double sheathed, could still be seen in operation into the 1960's.  As were woodsided reefers and composite hoppers.

Rusty

Many boxcar types from the 30s and earlier lasted into the 50s.  Here are some photos of trains from that era with many different sizes of boxcars in tow:

I'm trying to recreate that type of freight on my layout.  I have several pre WWII style cars, including the MTH car Patrick has, but most are from Atlas O.  Here are some of my pre WWII Atlas O cars.

Outside Braced

O X-26

O X-26c (X-26 rebuild)

X-29X-29 REA

Wow, pleased to see so many responses, and models that I didn't think were out there in O Scale! I guess I have been in the semi-scale end of the pond for too long and not seen all the neat modern offerings. Perhaps, using the article I have to hand, I'll try and categorize some of the more traditional sized boxcars out there. 

@trumptrain Somehow, I knew you'd be all about this thread! I have always admired your layout. Don't you have a B&0 wood caboose from MTH that lurks in the background of many a photo? IIRC it is based on the same chassis as MTH's 34 ft boxcars.

There were still some wooden-side boxcars running on the Nickle Plate during the last years the Berkshires were running. I'm not from the Midwest and the Nickel Plate wasn't a prototype that interests me, but I try to pay attention to what's behind the tender when I watch railfan-oriented videos. My thanks to the old-timers who shot movie film back in the day and the people who subsequently transferred the images to video.

As for me, I'm modeling a ten to eleven year period stretching from the late 1930's to the late 1940's, and there were still a lot of wooden-side boxcars as well as reefers operating back then.

I would like the era, especially the introduction date into use, of every car on the box, whether built-up or a kit, so l would know whether l can use it or not..l can't use anything that did not exist in 1940, so..Quonset huts, most diesels, etc,, are out.

Redshirt214 posted:

Wow, pleased to see so many responses, and models that I didn't think were out there in O Scale! I guess I have been in the semi-scale end of the pond for too long and not seen all the neat modern offerings. Perhaps, using the article I have to hand, I'll try and categorize some of the more traditional sized boxcars out there. 

@trumptrain Somehow, I knew you'd be all about this thread! I have always admired your layout. Don't you have a B&0 wood caboose from MTH that lurks in the background of many a photo? IIRC it is based on the same chassis as MTH's 34 ft boxcars.

Redshirt214 - Thanks for your kind words about my layout.!  I'm happy to hear you like it.   I do have two B&O wood cabeese, one is a full sized Railking 4 axle and the other is a Railking bobber which I have weathered. 

@trumptrain Ah yeah that RailKing was the one I was thinking of. I do admit to having a love of Bobber Cabooses as well... something about small prototype cars or locos, and trains with slight size differences in rolling stock appeals to me greatly. Somedays I wish Ohio hadn't led the charge on getting bobbers banned... but from a workplace safety perspective I can see why they did it. It's a shame though, some of those W&LE Bobbers would have looked cool in NKP colors.

So getting a bit back on topic, for those of us who operate on the smaller end of the O Guage side of scale, dose anybody have a comparison shot of an MTH RailKing 34 foot boxcar (pretty close to a turn of the century era wood car) up against a typical, 6464 style car (representing cars of say the 1930-40s, of all steel)? Looking at the dimensions of them online I suspect the wood car would tower comically over the steel car due to funky scale compression, but might be wrong on that count? It is hard to visualize when you are just looking at numbers on a screen.

Well this is what I ran one time the wood reefer is a K-Line the plug door reefers are Lionel standard O the tank cars are Kusan ( who remembers those) and the last one I Custom built using a old AHM Boxcar (steel) which has that low profile look like in the 40s I repainted it and used Tichy Train decals and put Lionel trucks on it and at the rear is a Lionel standard O wood caboose hope this helps I always like this  manifest  

Yes the MTH 34" car does look more than a bit "comical" by a 6464. While its a very nice car as I'm traditional for the most part it had to go.

Pecos River Brass 50' double door express boxcar

MTH Food Service 50' boxcar

Pecos River Brass 50' double door boxcars

Lionel 50' double door boxcar with doors at one end.

John in Lansing, ILL