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Boxcar

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
For other uses, see Boxcar (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Bockscar.
This article is about American freight car. For UIC, Australian and New Zealand railway practice, see Covered goods wagon. For the Wild West wagon, see Covered wagon.
A steel-bodied boxcar built by the American Car and Foundry Company in 1926 for the South Australian Railways
A steel-bodied boxcar built by the American Car and Foundry Company in 1926 for the South Australian Railways
A wooden-bodied Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway boxcar on display at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom, Wisconsin
A wooden-bodied Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway boxcar on display at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom, Wisconsin
A double-door boxcar passes through Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
A double-door boxcar passes through Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

A boxcar is the North American (AAR) term for a railroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carry freight. The boxcar, while not the simplest freight car design, is considered one of the most versatile since it can carry most loads. Boxcars have side sliding doors of varying size and operation, and some include end doors and adjustable bulkheads to load very large items.

Similar covered freight cars outside North America are covered goods wagons and, depending on the region, are called goods van (UK and Australia), covered wagon (UIC and UK) or simply van (UIC, UK and Australia).[a]

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North America

North America

North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as a part of North America geographically.

Association of American Railroads

Association of American Railroads

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) is an industry trade group representing primarily the major freight railroads of North America. Amtrak and some regional commuter railroads are also members. Smaller freight railroads are typically represented by the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA), although some smaller railroads and railroad holding companies are also members of the AAR. The AAR also has two associate programs, and most associates are suppliers to the railroad industry.

Sliding door

Sliding door

A sliding door is a type of door which opens horizontally by sliding, usually horizontal to a wall. Sliding doors can be mounted either on top of a track below or be suspended from a track above. Some types slide into a space in the parallel wall in the direction of travel, rather than the door sliding along the outside of the parallel wall. There are several types of sliding doors, such as pocket doors, sliding glass doors, center-opening doors, and bypass doors. Sliding doors are commonly used as shower doors, glass doors, screen doors, wardrobe doors or in vans.

Bulkhead (partition)

Bulkhead (partition)

A bulkhead is an upright wall within the hull of a ship or within the fuselage of an airplane. Other kinds of partition elements within a ship are decks and deckheads.

Covered goods wagon

Covered goods wagon

A covered goods wagon or van is a railway goods wagon which is designed for the transportation of moisture-susceptible goods and therefore fully enclosed by sides and a fixed roof. They are often referred to simply as covered wagons, and this is the term used by the International Union of Railways (UIC). Since the introduction of the international classification for goods wagons by the UIC in the 1960s a distinction has been drawn between ordinary and special covered wagons. Other types of wagon, such as refrigerated vans and goods wagons with opening roofs, are closely related to covered wagons from a design point of view. Similar freight cars in North America are called boxcars.

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 242,495 square kilometres (93,628 sq mi), with an estimated 2023 population of over 68 million people.

Australia

Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi), Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

International Union of Railways

International Union of Railways

The International Union of Railways is an international rail transport industry body.

Use

Illustration of a boxcar being unloaded by hand
Illustration of a boxcar being unloaded by hand

Boxcars can carry most kinds of freight. Originally they were hand-loaded, but in more recent years mechanical assistance such as forklifts have been used to load and empty them faster. Their generalized design is still slower to load and unload than specialized designs of car, and this partially explains the decline in boxcar numbers since World War II. The other cause for this decline is the dramatic shift of waterborne cargo transport to container shipping. Effectively a boxcar without the wheels and chassis, a container is designed to be amenable to intermodal freight transport, whether by container ships, trucks or flatcars, and can be delivered door-to-door.

Boxcars were used for bulk commodities such as coal, particularly in the Midwestern United States in the early 20th century. This use was sufficiently widespread that several companies developed competing box-car loaders to automate coal loading. By 1905, 350 to 400 such machines were in use, mostly at Midwestern coal mines.[2]

Passenger use

In the Philippines, Boxcars were used as additional third-class accommodations by the Manila Railway Company during the early 1900s as there was a shortage of true passenger railroad cars.[3] These problems were considered solved by the 1910s as British manufacturer Metropolitan and American builders such as Harlan and Hollingsworth constructed more passenger cars for the railroad.[4]

In the present day, hobos and migrant workers have often used boxcars in their journeys (see freighthopping), since they are enclosed and cannot be seen by railroad police, as well as being to some degree insulated from cold weather.[5] Hobo Code, a form of hieroglyphs used by hobos, developed as a code to give information to Hobos freighthopping.[6]

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Forklift

Forklift

A forklift is a powered industrial truck used to lift and move materials over short distances. The forklift was developed in the early 20th century by various companies, including Clark, which made transmissions, and Yale & Towne Manufacturing, which made hoists. Since World War II, the use and development of the forklift truck have greatly expanded worldwide. Forklifts have become an indispensable piece of equipment in manufacturing and warehousing. In 2013, the top 20 manufacturers worldwide posted sales of $30.4 billion, with 944,405 machines sold.

Cargo

Cargo

Cargo consists of goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. Cargo was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including transport by rail, van, truck, or intermodal container. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facilities. The term freight is commonly used to describe the movements of flows of goods being transported by any mode of transportation.

Intermodal container

Intermodal container

An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, is a large standardized container designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different modes of transport – from ship to rail to truck – without unloading and reloading their cargo. Intermodal containers are primarily used to store and transport materials and products efficiently and securely in the global containerized intermodal freight transport system, but smaller numbers are in regional use as well. These containers are known under a number of names. Based on size alone, up to 95% of intermodal containers comply with ISO standards, and can officially be called ISO containers. Many other names are simply: container, cargo or freight container, shipping, sea or ocean container, container van or sea van, sea can or C can, or MILVAN, SEAVAN, or RO/RO. The also used term CONEX (Box) is technically incorrect carry-over usage of the name of an important predecessor of the international ISO containers, namely the much smaller prior steel CONEX boxes used by the U.S. Army.

Chassis

Chassis

A chassis is the load-bearing framework of an artificial object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpart of a motor vehicle, on which the body is mounted; if the running gear such as wheels and transmission, and sometimes even the driver's seat, are included, then the assembly is described as a rolling chassis.

Intermodal freight transport

Intermodal freight transport

Intermodal freight transport involves the transportation of freight in an intermodal container or vehicle, using multiple modes of transportation, without any handling of the freight itself when changing modes. The method reduces cargo handling, and so improves security, reduces damage and loss, and allows freight to be transported faster. Reduced costs over road trucking is the key benefit for inter-continental use. This may be offset by reduced timings for road transport over shorter distances.

Container ship

Container ship

A container ship is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport and now carry most seagoing non-bulk cargo.

Flatcar

Flatcar

A flatcar (US) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on a pair of trucks (US) or bogies (UK), one at each end containing four or six wheels. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry extra heavy or extra large loads are mounted on a pair of bogies under each end. The deck of the car can be wood or steel, and the sides of the deck can include pockets for stakes or tie-down points to secure loads. Flatcars designed for carrying machinery have sliding chain assemblies recessed in the deck.

Coal

Coal

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is a type of fossil fuel, formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

Manila Railroad Company

Manila Railroad Company

The Manila Railroad Company (MRR) was a Filipino state-owned enterprise responsible for the management and operation of rail transport in the island of Luzon. It was originally established by an Englishman named Edmund Sykes as the private Manila Railway Co., Ltd. on June 1, 1887. British engineer Horace L. Higgins was then assigned at the helm in Manila as its first general manager. On July 7, 1906, a separate private entity named the Manila Railroad Company of New Jersey was established. The two companies continued to own the Luzon railroad network until February 4, 1916 when the Insular Government acquired both companies and absorbed them into the new Manila Railroad.

Harlan and Hollingsworth

Harlan and Hollingsworth

Harlan & Hollingsworth was a Wilmington, Delaware, firm that constructed ships and railroad cars during the 19th century and into the 20th century.

Hobo

Hobo

A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps, and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; a bum neither travels nor works.

Freighthopping

Freighthopping

Freighthopping or trainhopping is the act of surreptitiously boarding and riding a freight railroad car, which is usually illegal.

Hicube boxcar

In the 21st century, high cubic capacity (hicube) boxcars have become more common in the US. These are taller than regular boxcars and as such can only run on routes with increased clearance (see loading gauge and structure gauge). The excess height section of the car end is often painted with a white band to be easily visible if wrongly assigned to a low-clearance line.[7]

The internal height of the 86-foot (26.21 m) hicube boxcars originally used in automotive parts service was generally 12 feet 9 inches (3.89 m).[8]

Source: "Boxcar", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, January 18th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxcar.

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Further Reading

Containerization

Railroad car

Intermodal freight transport

Freighthopping

Loading gauge

Autorack

Tank car

Transporter wagon

Flatcar

Rotary car dumper

Rail freight transport

Mixed train

Well car

Goods wagon

Open wagon

Covered goods wagon

Double-stack rail transport
See also
Notes
  1. ^ An exception in Australia was the former South Australian Railways, which adopted US practices and terminologies; it used the term "boxcar".[1]: 1‑129 
References
  1. ^ McAuliffe, Des (1999). "The Snowtown to Port Pirie line". Proceedings of the 1999 Convention. Modelling the Railways of South Australia. Adelaide.
  2. ^ Affelder, William L. (March 1905). "Box-Car Loaders". Mines and Minerals. XXV (8): 372–377. Retrieved May 11, 2018.
  3. ^ "Rolling stock of the Manila Railroad Co. 1904". Railroad Gazette. 35 (48). 1903.
  4. ^ Report of the General Manager for the Year Ended December 31, 1938. Reports of the General Manager (Report). Manila Railroad Company. March 17, 1939.
  5. ^ "Train Hopping: Why Do Hobos Risk Their Lives to Ride the Rails?". BBC News. December 19, 2012. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
  6. ^ Berendsohn, Roy (November 17, 2020). "Those Hobo Hieroglyphs That Appeared on Posts and Bridge Abutments Relayed Important Messages". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
  7. ^ "60 ft Hicube boxcar" (PDF). GBRX.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 14, 2012. Retrieved June 6, 2011.
  8. ^ Chatfield, D. Scott (January 1994). "Athearn HO Scale and Arnold N Scale 86-foot Box Cars". Railmodel Journal. Denver, Colorado: Golden Bell Press. 5 (8): 32–39.
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