Nostalgia & History > MILW 40 Box Car

Hi IMRL ex MILW 40 foot box can\'t be alot left. In Calmer IA 7/6/03 Scott

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Was that small hatch at the top center of the car used to air it out after use? With those ribs, even their boxcars looked streamlined.

I don\'t think it is going anywhere soon....at least not on those friction bearings....

DaveL

surflinerhogger wrote:

> Was that small hatch at the top center of the car used to air
> it out after use? With those ribs, even their boxcars looked
> streamlined.

That small hatch was called a lumber door. It enabled loading of items longer than 25 feet into a 40 foot boxcar. It was very common on earlier boxcars, but their use on new cars was unusual by the time these ribsided cars were built. Usually only installed on the "A" end of a car, and usually larger than the one in this photo - up to about 18" wide by 24" high.

Milwaukee built much of their own locomotives, passenger cars, and freight cars in their shops in West Milwaukee, and the ribbed side construction was a hallmark of that shops passenger car, boxcar, and caboose designs. The purpose of the ribs was to add structural strength to the carsides, thus allowing the use of lighter construction materials in the frame and sidesheeting.

DaveL wrote:

> I don\'t think it is going anywhere soon....at least not on
> those friction bearings....
>
> DaveL

Not only that, but the car has a fire code placard next to the door, but no placards of a type authorized by the Department of Transportation for Hazardous Materials placarding.

A great catch!! I think that I saw oneof these rib sided cars once! And only once!

Question: How durable were the home-built MILW cars? I knew about the ribs vs. lightweight materials, but how did they do over time?

If I won a bazzilion dollars, I\'d go looking for a MILW Skytop obs and have a private car...

john1082 wrote:

> A great catch!! I think that I saw oneof these rib sided
> cars once! And only once!

I grew up in South Minneapolis, where these things were thicker than flies. Every variation of Baldwin VO\'s, DS4-4-1000\'s, and S-12\'s, plus 8 AS-616\'s and a pair of unique RS-12\'s with type A trucks; ribbed side cabooses; and switching out scads of these ribbed side boxes to the various grain elevators. THAT railroad had character like none other!

> Question: How durable were the home-built MILW cars? I knew
> about the ribs vs. lightweight materials, but how did they do
> over time?

I don\'t have any hard data on this, but many of these cars did exactly what they were intended to do - survived until the end of the Milwaukee. But compared to other, more standard designs such as the PS-1, I have the feeling that they were not as durable, as they did not comply with American railroading\'s basic axiom No. 1, also known as the "Bigger hammer theory."

> If I won a bazzilion dollars, I\'d go looking for a MILW
> Skytop obs and have a private car...

Amen! You need to visit Steve Sandberg\'s collection - he\'s got one!


BTW, I saw a bandit last week on the CP\'s Osceola turn, as the middle unit of a 3 engine consist. The cab door was stencilled "DO NOT OCCUPY".

MTMEngineer wrote:

> > I grew up in South Minneapolis, where these things were
> thicker than flies.

An old time CNW agent told me that working an agency in a town the Milwaukee also served meant they would get the bulk of the grain biz as "they had a lot of boxcars."


Every variation of Baldwin VO\'s,
> DS4-4-1000\'s, and S-12\'s, plus 8 AS-616\'s and a pair of unique
> RS-12\'s with type A trucks;

That Pigs Eye yard engine facility in St. Paul, MN, was a working museum thirty years ago. Hard to imagine the variety of engines they handled.

waybill wrote:

> That Pigs Eye yard engine facility in St. Paul, MN, was a
> working museum thirty years ago. Hard to imagine the variety
> of engines they handled.

Yeah. Would you believe I even saw one of the Rocky Mountain Divisions box cabs there once! (I doubt if they worked on it there - it was likely on its way to West Milwaukee to be scrapped.)

Though South Minneapolis is gone, little has changed at Pigs Eye, and it still looks as it did then. The turntable and roundhouse are used every day to maintain CP\'s EMD and GE engines. The facility is operated by General Electric.

To the best of my knowledge, that is a 1939 built car. The Milwaukee/Soo had it up here in MN for a while. I want to say the exact built date is 7-39. The full length ribs were not used after 1939.

john1082 wrote:
> If I won a bazzilion dollars, I\'d go looking for a MILW
> Skytop obs and have a private car...

If you hurry, you may still be able to get these before they either sink or get scrapped in Erie.
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?f=2&i=122473&t=122473

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This is exactly the one that I would want. it has the large lounge at the back and the corridor style windows on the side facing the camera. My understanding is that it is on a barge.

john1082 wrote:

> This is exactly the one that I would want. it has the large
> lounge at the back and the corridor style windows on the side
> facing the camera. My understanding is that it is on a barge.

You can hardly tell from the photos but there are two of them there. The barge was a restaurant and is being rebuilt again (and again) with countless financial and timing problems. It would be a very expensive labor of love to restore these cars to rail operation ...but you would really have something quite nice when completed. In a worst case scenerio you would have about 15 min warning before they were cut up for scrap.

Yes, these two cars from the Milwaukee are the Gold Creek and the Arrow Creek. And unless things have changed with the city, the Port Authority canceled the restaurant\'s lease due to the slow progress of the project. http://members.roadfly.com/my1stcamaro92rs/ErieRRdiner.doc

I\'m curious of their status since I saw them in March, 2003.