Boxcar to Center Rail Flatcar?

I believe center beam bulkhead flat cars came into being around 1970, give or take.

Rusty

The Center Beam or Center Partition flat car concept was first conceived of back in 1966 by people at the Canadian National.

A formal version of the Center Beam Flat Car was built by Thrall Car for the Northern Pacific in 1969 and Burlington Northern in 1969.

The first large scale production of the Center Beam Flat Cars by Thrall Car was in 1977.

There is a Mainline Modeler article about the Center Beam Flat Car development.

Andrew

I got some real nice lumber loads; 2"X4"X8' and 4'X8' sheets in "O" Gauge and I want to know if I load them in boxcars or on center rail flats? My layout is late 50's era.

Paul

For lumber coming out of the Pacific Northwest in the late 1950s go with box cars.  In that era the GN, NP, UP and Milwaukee were scrambling to come up with double door boxcars to allow forklift loading of 8 foot lengths of lumber and plywood.  The railroads had plenty of single door boxcars but they required hand loading.  Lumber mills and yards didn't want to pay post war wages to hand load and unload a box car of lumber.

One of the first answers was the combination door box car.  They combined a standard 6' sliding door in the center with a plug door to the left.  With the plug door closed the 6' sliding door could be coopered for fall grain shipments.  With both doors opened it could be fork lift loaded with lumber.  This was a great innovation in the late 50s for the Northwest roads that handled large volumes of both lumber and grain.  Unfortunately we don't have a ready to run model of a combination door boxcar in O scale yet.

Many older 40 foot boxcars with 6 foot doors were rebuilt with 10 foot doors in the 1960s.  Brother Love scratch bashed a model of a GN rebuild.  You can see it on this thread.

https://ogrforum.com/t...n-waffle-side-boxcar

Another solution was to use existing double door automobile boxcars for lumber loading.  By the late 1950s auto makers no longer wanted to ship in boxcars.  That left thousands of relatively new double door boxcars available for lumber shipments.  The 50' Lionel, MTH, Pecos River steel and Atlas Trainman single sheathed boxcars are all good candidates for lumber service.  The Trainman car is available lettered for the GN, NP and Milwaukee. 

Atlas has also produced models of the 40 foot 1937 AAR double door boxcar to represent former eastern road automobile cars that were refurbished and leased to the GN and NP in the early 1960s specifically for lumber service.

This Atlas model even features accurate lease stenciling in the upper left corner.

Bulkhead flat cars for lumber shipments came into wide use in the 1960s and center beam cars became common in the 1970s.  By the 1980s boxcar lumber shipments were on their way out.