Nostalgia & History > Santa Fe Freight Car Type?

I have a newsprint pic of a Santa Fe freight car No. 70450 being loaded with sugar beets in California presumably in 1930s or so. Can't tell from cutoff photo if it was a hopper or gondola, but would like to know from anyone with knowledge about such particulars.

It was called a "Caswell" car. I haven't heard that term before, so I guess we still don't know.

CShaveRR Wrote:
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> It was called a "Caswell" car. I haven't heard
> that term before, so I guess we still don't know.

Is this it? :

http://www.westerfield.biz/8501.htm

Basically a drop bottom gon. Western roads tended to favor drop bottom gons instead of hoppers for handling certain bulk commodities.

SteveD Wrote:

> I have a newsprint pic of a Santa Fe freight car
> No. 70450 being loaded with sugar beets in
> California presumably in 1930s or so. Can't tell
> from cutoff photo if it was a hopper or gondola,
> but would like to know from anyone with knowledge
> about such particulars.

It was a 40-foot "composite" (steel frame and support structure, wood sides) Caswell gondola, class Ga-4, one of 500 cars of that class built by American Car and Foundry starting in 1920. Caswell was the name of the drop-bottom door system, named for its creator and patented by the National Dump Car Co. Caswell was one of several drop-bottom systems, and Santa Fe was a big user of it, ultimately owning over 8000 Caswell-equipped cars by the 1930's. This total included some stock cars, believe it or not. Santa Fe wanted to minimize empty backhauls by shipping cows one way and coke the other, hence the drop-bottom. Caswell gons were also used in sugar beet service, though they apparently weren't well liked in that service due to their limited capacity without extensions. In later years, many Caswells, including some Ga-4's, were rebuilt with solid floors. The last Ga-4 fell off the revenue roster by 1961, though some may have lingered longer in company service.

References:
_Santa Fe Listing of Freight Cars by Class and Car Number, 1906-1991_ by Larry Occhiello.
_Santa Fe Modeler_ magazine, Second Quarter 1991, Richard Hendrickson article on Caswells.
_The Warbonnet_ magazine, Third Quarter 2005, Gordon Bassett article on Santa Fe and the sugar beet industry.