wood panel boxcars

[TED NUGENT]

maybe ese, kabar or cracked could help me with this one.When where the last wood pannel boxcars fazed out?i have some models of some and they have the panels spaced out it looks like if you hopped in them you could still see out side threw the spaces...kinda cool.anyway just wondering if anybody has any knowledge they wish to share about them.

thanks

[Ski Mask]

those sound like cattle cars, not boxcars. Wooden boxcars were phased out pretty early from what I understand. like the 40s-50s were the end of the road. I know the first mass produced PS-1 40-50ft steel boxcars were being produced back in the 40s, so by the end of the 50s wooden cars were probably very scarce. This is just a guess on my part...I dont really know the exact dates...just an educated guess....

[KaBar]

The only wooden panel boxcars I ever saw were when I was a young kid, maybe 1956 or 57 and they were sidelined, rotting away. The boxcars that are running have been steel as long as I can remember, my earliest recollections are from the early '50s. I do remember diesel-fired steam locomotives, from the early, early '50s, riding a passenger train from Houston to the San Antonio area with my grandmother.

 

All the boxcars I have ever ridden were steel. There were still a lot of boxcars with walkboards on the roof and ladders and grab bars that allowed access to the roof back as late as the mid-'70s , early '80s, but nearly all boxcars today have been re-built or re-fitted to remove the roof access ladders and grab bars. There's really no reason for anybody to need access to the car tops these days. Those old designs dated from a period when brakemen ran the tops of the car with a brake staff, applying and releasing brakes by hand. Nobody has needed to do that since Westinghouse invented the AB air brake.

 

Sometimes the older boxcars had a wooden floor. I preferred wooden-floored cars because they were warmer and "softer" riding. Modern boxcars are designed to haul freight, not people. The newer plug-door boxcars and the deckless container well cars like the DTTX may prove to be the end of trainhopping as we knew it. I can see people maybe carrying home-made netting/hammock devices to rig in DTTX cars or something like that, maybe. Tramps will adapt, but as the cars become more efficient and less accomodating, the heart of the thing is slowly slipping away from us. You know, nobody herds cattle to Kansas to the rail head anymore, either. Some things just fade away.

[TED NUGENT]

thanks for the info guys...