Freight Car Varieties

Paul:  The mix of freight cars has varied over the years and also is dependent upon the locations served.   Take the case of stock cars, when they were in common use, they were most always found on Western Railroads because their main use was to ship livestock to slaughterhouses and where were most located?  Out west, of course.  In some areas, stock cars were actually used seasonally as well.  At the end of the summer months, annual livestock drives required whole trains of stock cars.

Regarding hopper cars:  Most coal mining in the older days took place in the East.  So, most of the hoppers were used on Eastern Railroads.  Exceptions were always common and ALL railroads did need hoppers if for no other reason than for use on their own lines.  And they were used for coal, gravel and stone as well as other bulk commodities. 

Nowadays, the most common freight car type, I would think, would be the deep well double stack cars.  Times have changed and trains look a lot different than they did when i was a kid.

Paul Fischer

It's very hard to come up with a breakdown of freight cars by type for each railroad in the prototype world, because roads differed so much in their specialties and because certain types of cars, notably tank cars and reefers, were owned by specialist companies like URTX and UTLX. Many reefers were leased to the railroads by the owners; tank cars not so much. 

For my own collection, basically I have no idea of a percentage breakdown. I'm reasonably certain that what I have the most of is boxcars, followed in order by reefers, tank cars, flatcars, covered hoppers, gondolas, and open hoppers. What is important to me is that I can reach into the closet and pull out whatever consist I want, whether it's a regular drag freight, a reefer block, a string of tankers, or whatever I feel like running on a given day. 

Well, I went and counted, just for grins.  Paul, you're right that boxcars are the most numerous, but I have several other variations from your inventory.  My own looks as follows:

Boxcar-26%

Flatcar-8%

Reefer-2%

Open Hopper-7%

Tankcar-11%

Gondola-12%

Caboose-23.5%

Stack-0

Specialty-8%

Stock Car-2.5%

Covered Gondola-0

Very true.  I spent many a pleasant hour watching PRR trains as a kid, and long, long coal trains seemed to account for at least half of the mainline traffic.  They were often hauled by roaring Baldwin sharks, Mars lights gyrating, but also by MU sets of whatever else was available at the time.  (As an aside, the longest MU set I ever saw on the PRR was twelve units of mixed EMDs and Alcos).

The second most common car was the ordinary 40' boxcar.  Hauled by steam at first, and later by first-generation diesels, there were strings of them that seemed to go on for miles, representing every railroad in the country.

All other types of car were very much in the minority, usually led by gondolas.

 Times have changed and trains look a lot different than they did when i was a kid.

Sad but true. 

I model three railroads, and am still adding boxcars for the MKT diesel freight, so the percentage of boxcars will increase.  As of now:

Boxcars:  29% (this will increase to about 50%)

Tankers:  41% (mostly three dome)

Reefers:  6%

Closed Hopper:  6%

Open Hopper:    6%

Cabooses:         12% (only one for each freight consist)

Well cars are also the most under-modeled prototypes in o-gauge today.

Only if you're modeling contemporary railroading. For those of us who model the steam and transition eras, well cars are of no interest whatsoever. 

My scale cars break out as: 

Reefers: 35 

Boxcars: 2

Tank cars: 1

Flatcars: 11

Gondola: 1

Open hopper: 6

Schnabel car (its sort of scale) - 1

Cabooses: 7

I have a number of traditional cars shorten to my less-than-the-length-of-a-BEEP rule on my BEEPWorld loop:

boxcars: 4

hopper cars: 4

tank cars: 3

open gondola: 1

log cars: 4

cabooses: 4

And 22 traditional flatcars of my "war train" with toy/diecast armor on it, plus a military caboose.

I am certain that I have an equal amount of Covered Hoppers, box cars, and Trailers on Flat Cars.

Andrew

Lionel and MTH have both produced the most recent GE ES44AC and EMD SD70ACe diesel-locomotives, but have not produced recent intermodal containers and intermodal well cars that match the time period of the new GE and EMD locomotives.

Andrew

While I am too lazy to dig them out and count them, since I am modeling 1940, I

have no well cars, covered hoppers, high cube cars, etc.  I have box cars, auto box

cars, drop bottom gons (but not enough, I need a lot more, for ore and sugar beets),

a few regular gons, coal hoppers (have coal mines so need more of those, too),  stock cars, and lumber flats, a quantity of reefers (too many) for the brewery, and early tank cars for the oil depots and wells.  And way too many and growing...cabooses.

Growing up in monroe nc I got to see.The boxcar that was still king.Some boxcars was 50ft and 40ft some still had roofwalk.I saw a fear number of gon wood with steal bracing.And a huge amount of pulpwood cars and hopercars for ballest.I have mostly boxcars some 40 to 60ft.Flatcars 50ft with tailer lumber,steel,pipes.Gon with lumber and other stuff.Hoppercars covered and uncovered with coal.Tank cars oil and coke,milk.I have 3 cabooses.

Hey Paul, I had to do a little digging to find the old topic. I knew I had answered this before, but just for kicks, I recalculated the numbers to see if they had changed from what I got almost a year and a half ago.

The old numbers:

Box cars 15 %

Covered hoppers 35%

Intermodal  20%

Flat cars  5%

Gondolas 5%

Refrigeration  cars 5%

Tank cars 10%

Passenger cars 5%

The new numbers:

Box cars 15%

Covered hoppers 25%

Intermodal  20%

Flat cars  5%

Gondolas 5%

Refrigeration  cars 5%

Tank cars 15%

Passenger cars 5%

Specialty 5%

I'm still just taking an educated guess on this. I've done a fair amount of buying, but I'm slowing down, and just trying to fill in "perceived holes" in the fleet.

Or am I missing something here?  

My point is that concepts like "under-modeled" or "needed" are entirely questions of personal taste. What is absolutely essential to one person, the next guy wouldn't bend over to pick up.