Favorite Box Car

Living near the Burlington has a lot to do with it:

Rusty

My Milwaukee ribbed side box car . The prototype, were built In the Milwaukee Road  Car erecting shops in the Menomonee valley, and several hundred were built. The Model is brass and currently in primer waiting for, paint decals and Kadee's, I wish I hade a couple of dozen of them!

I am torn between two boxcars as my favorite. Though I don't have a pic of them as the focus of the pic, I have two Atlas Trainman NC&StL boxcars:

My other favorite is the box car pulled by AWVR #1206 that was destroyed by AWVR #777 in the movie Unstoppable:

My Lehigh Valley boxcar that I bought with my daughter (many years ago now) we washed it and put it against the electric base board heater to dry and forgot about it.  It melted so I put a hobo in the car and has been on the rails for over 20yrs. First car on the rails and last to come off during moves or new layouts.

God Speed, Thank a Vet.

My favorite is Jade Green New York Central....you can see a few in this picture....PennCentral count, too....

Here's the real thing, which I photographed in May 1984 in Rochester< NY.

Peter

Railbox, by a mile:

The Lionel #6468 B&O Auto Boxcar has always been my favorite, and came with my 1954 set 2227W. Still looks great, and I always liked the color.

Peter, I think I agree with you or possibly the NYC Pacemaker Car

I have always liked this Great Northern.

A have a favorite car, a Lionel Stroh's reefer, but no single boxcar that has any sentimental value for me.

So, if by favorite boxcar you mean the car most represented on my layout it would be the Atlas O X-29.  Really nicely detailed, heavy, tracks well, and just a great car.

@Arnold D. Cribari - I agree with you.  I love the cars that make noise.  At first, I was like who would want more noise?  Aren't the engines "loud" enough?  I started with the NYC Vision line passenger cars.  Those were on blow-out.  I then got a set of 3 UP/SP cars, and those are great.  The squeaks are fantastic.  Yesterday FedEx delivered the Armour stockyard 3 pack to me.  I unpacked them last night but didn't run them yet.  Today will be a good day for that since it snowed here in Chicago.

To answer the question - My favorite, Lionel Southern 6565 wave boxcar.  It's just a pretty car.   I am also a big big fan of the Atlas 40' billboard reefers.  All of them.  No one of them in particular stands out as THE car, but I have about 30 that I love to pull in a long steam led freight.

Nice topic.

John

Greg

www.youtube.com/trainbros89

All great contributions so far. All the other box cars shown in them have a lot of charm IMO.

I agree with Jay Jay that B & O boxcars are particularly attractive. Will post a photo of my favorite one shortly.

Arnold

Here it is:

Great topic Arnold, you've gotten some good answers for it too.  as for me, I have two favorites and probably more but I can't think of them right now but these two come to mind.  The first one is an Atlas Steam Era Classics, which if I'm not mistaken and someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this, are the old InterMountain or Red Caboose molds, Southern Pacific Outside Braced 40' cars.  The 2nd is also an Atlas Steam Era Classics, SP/UP PFE Steel Reefer.  To me, Atlas has the best tooling in the hobby.  Thanks for starting this topic.

You're very welcome, JEM.

Regarding the Lionel box car with Real Sounds, it's the orange box car in this train with a quiet running Williams F3 on the point. You can hear the squeaky brakes sounds with other sounds coming from this orange boxcar as the train comes around the bend in this video:

Well, there are lots of box cars. But my favorite is this one, because it reminds me of my childhood years growing up in eastern Idaho in the 1950s. My house was within a block of the Union Pacific mainline, with a few sidings off it. So a next-door neighbor friend and I would climb up the ladders of parked and braked box cars like this one when no one was looking. We didn't make it all the way to the top though, because we'd chicken out about halfway up, then come back down. 😳

I like the special run Atlas cars...this one commemorates the  Narraganset Brewing Co. in Cranston, RI from the '50's and 60's.  As a kid growing up not to far away, I could smell the "hops" on warm summer nights...

Not sure I can narrow it down to just one.  Here are my favorite Flyer tinplate boxcars

One more, a shorter version, made with 2 different numbers, 1112 and 1115

NWL