O Scale Freight Car Guide: Auto Carriers

This is great information, thanks

I always liked these as a kid...

Originally, cars were shipped in 50 footers... must have been a real pain... 

Here is a picture of a flat car variant... and some jeep loading as well.

I shoulda opened this earlier.  I just put a post on asking about the double door

automobile boxcars and how long they were in service, and when they disappeared?  Wonder how many of those auto boxcars exist in O three rail?  Your posting seems

to put the major changeover in the 1950's, which works for me, as I plan to keep on

using the double door boxcars.

How bout these cars:

I have a book on the Seaboard Air Line that shows workers loading a car like this with cars, not sure how many it could hold.  I don't think the photo is of a SAL car though.

J Daddy

Thanks for posting the photo of the Vert-A-Pack car.  For those who are not aware Vert-A-Pacs were dedicated to shipping Chevrolet Vegas.  A standard three level auto rack could handle 15 cars.  The Vert-A-Pac could hold 30 Vegas and helped to cut shipping costs.  They are a part of 1970s auto transportation that is not available in O scale.  ExactRail makes them in HO.  A O scale model would be a nice addition to O scale model railroading.

The other significant missing link in O scale modeling is a model of a two or three level open auto rack.  These are the cars that brought auto traffic back to the railroads in the 1960s and worked on into the 1970s.  They would go perfectly with Turbo charged Geeps, SD40s, SD45s and U boats.  Accurail makes them in HO.

Originally, cars were shipped in 50 footers...

Both 40 and 50 foot boxcars were used to ship automobiles.  With Evans auto loaders inside four automobiles could be loaded in a single boxcar.  Here is an Atlas model of a 1937 AAR 40 foot automobile box car.

I just put a post on asking about the double door automobile boxcars and how long they were in service, and when they disappeared?  Wonder how many of those auto boxcars exist in O three rail?  Your posting seems to put the major changeover in the 1950's, which works for me, as I plan to keep on using the double door boxcars.

Railroads faced serious truck competition for automobile shipments after the war and by the 1950s trucks had won most of the volume.  Three level auto racks won that traffic back in the 1960s.  Many automobile box cars, particularly those built in the 1940s, had plenty of life left in them in the 50s and 60s.  Some went into general service.  Others were used to haul auto parts between plants.  We have automobile box car models in O scale from Atlas, Lionel, MTH and Pecos River.  Automobile box cars will be getting significant attention in the future. 

I have a book on the Seaboard Air Line that shows workers loading a car like this with cars, not sure how many it could hold.  I don't think the photo is of a SAL car though.

Bob

Here is a SAL 40 footer to go with your SCL Vert-A-Pac. 

Fantastic thread Ted!!!

Alan

Ted,

Thanks for this informative topic. I used to see many auto carriers when I lived in South-East MI.

Regarding the car you referred to as the Vert-A-Pac, Pat from P&D Hobby had one of those in the store in O-Scale. It was a scratch-built model made by a late friend of his but it was not for sale. That model even had working individual side doors & models of similar looking long automobiles. Pat was explaining the different kinds of auto carriers when he showed the Vert-A-Pac to me. According to him these cars were not successful with the automotive companies. While it didn’t require any special ramp for loading & unloading as in today’s auto carriers & was convenient to drive up the automobile to the side of the car with the ramp being the side wall of the car, when you closed the sides of car, the automobile would be vertical leaking the fluids & creating a considerable mess, making this design unpopular.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

Trinity Railcar took over Thrall Car in 2002. In 2003 or 2004 they stopped even offering to produce Thrall Car's Articulated Auto Carrier design.

Andrew

Ted,

I have a few of those SAL cars!  I also built this car a while back:

There were made to transport long lengths of wood and rolls of paper, I never could determine if they ever used them for autos but it would have made a good way to get the cars inside.

Pat was explaining the different kinds of auto carriers when he showed the Vert-A-Pac to me. According to him these cars were not successful with the automotive companies. While it didn’t require any special ramp for loading & unloading as in today’s auto carriers & was convenient to drive up the automobile to the side of the car with the ramp being the side wall of the car, when you closed the sides of car, the automobile would be vertical leaking the fluids & creating a considerable mess, making this design unpopular.

Naveen

The Vert-A-Pacs were only used to ship one model of automobile, the compact Chevrolet Vega.  The Vega was specifically designed for vertical shipment without fluid leakage.

There were made to transport long lengths of wood and rolls of paper, I never could determine if they ever used them for autos but it would have made a good way to get the cars inside.

 

Bob

It is highly unlikely that any automobiles where ever shipped in those unusual box cars.  By the time they came along there where for more cost effective ways to ship automobiles.  However, many old 40 foot automobile box cars had seen their auto loaders removed, been overhauled and were hauling forest products in the 1960s.

Don't forget the introduction of the Automax by Greenbrier/Gunderson in 1999.  It was the first prototype to allow tri-level loading of higher-profile autos/suv's.

I always thought that the Lionel and K-Line models of this type of open auto car were a fantasy model.   This is the first photo that I have seen of an actual car.  I learn something new every day on this forum.

Thanks for posting this thread and these photos.   Joe

I found the MTH corrugated auto rack quite disappointing when released; it was too short, rode way too high on the trucks, and looked silly with the trucks incorrectly mounted at the car ends. Later, I reconsidered it as a few of us started lowering the car and moving the trucks inboard. I suspect that's what prompted MTH to at least fix the truck location. I acquired a small fleet of these, which I modified and converted to Kadee couplers. The served me well, but now I've started collecting the Lionel cars (also converted to Kadees). They are full scale, and nicer models. (I'm not sure what I'll do with the MTH cars). Here is a Lionel car converted about January, 2013:

At some point, I'll fill in the missing flat car ends. Here it is coupled to an MTH car I converted. The Lionel car here is now on Atlas 70-ton trucks, which lowered it just so slightly. The MTH car had the "new" inboard trucks from the factory, but rode too high. I modified it to lower the body and use Kadees:

Here are a couple of Santa Fe "vehicle" trains built using the MTH cars:

"V-BACH":

And another, a solid block of racks:

Here are a few more pictures. 

Actually the autos in the vert-A-pack cars had fluids added at the dealer ship.

Is there any stock MTH rolling stock that doesn't ride way too high on the trucks?

Martin

All MTH freight cars with underframes including Kadee mounting pads ride at the proper height for mounting the Kadees without shims when riding on MTH 2 rail trucks.   

Actually the autos in the vert-A-pack cars had fluids added at the dealer ship.

 

J Daddy

That would have made driving the cars on and off rail cars and trucks for delivery problematic.

According to Collectable Automobile...

The Vega was delivered topped with fluids, ready to drive to dealerships, so the engine was baffled to prevent oil entering the number one cylinder; the battery filler caps high on the rear edge of the casing prevented acid spills; a tube drained fuel from carburetor to vapor canister; and the windshield washer bottle stood at 45 degrees.

Ted,

I agree with Martin. I have converted modern MTH Premier Coalporter, Auto Carrier & Husky cars to 2-rail & seem to ride higher especially after seeing the prototype cars.

I don’t think Kadee mounting pads should be the only criteria to determine the proper ride height of these freight cars. By that logic, I could theoretically have O-scale equivalents of 47” wheels on a Coalporter & use the Kadee 742 overset shank coupler & still align with the 11/16” center of the Kadee Height Gauge. The car would look ridiculously high but it would still couple with the other cars using Kadee couplers.

To me the issue with MTH Premier freight cars is that they are designed for the worst case in regard to ride height, usually for clearing the oversize flanges on 3-rail wheels from the underside of the car. And conversion to 2-rail or even 3-rail is made convenient by just swapping the trucks.

But there are benefits for this higher ride height on long cars like in clearing switch machines & other obstructions close to the inner side of curved tracks. These O-Gauge / O-Scale trains are supposed to be suitable for operation in addition to looking right. That is a trade-off. I love intermodal trains & I recently bought 1:50 scale die-cast containers sizes from the same manufacturer, made around the same time & the holes wouldn’t line up but they had sharper details than an Atlas container looked good as individual paper-weights.

These are just my opinion.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

How would one propose to have the correct ride height, and still accept the huge wheel flanges used on 3-Rail rolling stock?

I don't have any of the modern auto carriers.  They are too big and too bland for my taste.

As another person posted above, I would also buy these if someone made them in O gauge.  It would be fun to change out the auto loads for variety.  Hopefully, it would come with plastic autos to keep down the weight.  I could see different cars with Ford, Chrysler and GM autos. 

Joe

a favorite

I remember counting these auto carriers go by at multiple crossings in Plymouth Michigan when I was a kid. Little did I know they were short lived. Due to vandals, side shields had to be added, then the next step was to completely enclosed them. 

Usually you would see all the same make on one auto carrier as they were loaded from the plant. My Father said all the keys were kept in a door trim panel of one of the cars.

PennsyK4,

Who made these cars?  Scratch built?   They look great.   Joe

Joe

It started out as a  rail brass model.

Martin

 

All MTH freight cars with underframes including Kadee mounting pads ride at the proper height for mounting the Kadees without shims when riding on MTH 2 rail trucks. 

 

Martin replied:

So, basically all the 3-rail people have to suffer high-riding rolling stock for the small minority of people who will convert them to 2-rail with MTH trucks?

And HW asked:

How would one propose to have the correct ride height, and still accept the huge wheel flanges used on 3-Rail rolling stock?

 

And I wondered the same thing.  For those of us who have wheels with 1/10th of and inch tall flanges and unrealistically tight curves I don't know how you get around having cars that ride at least 1/10 of an inch too high.

This isn't an issue exclusive to any one manufacturer.  When I lowered my Milwaukee Road rib side box cars from weaver and added Kadees but kept three rail wheel sets the flanges were hitting the underframe on O-72+ curves.  Those cars lost some of the underframe so they could operate at 2 rail height on 3 rail wheel sets.  We all make our choices and accept the consequences and compromises.

Charlie

Thanks for sharing the photos of the open 3 level auto rack.  That is just the type of model I would love to see in O scale.

As another person posted above, I would also buy these if someone made them in O gauge.  It would be fun to change out the auto loads for variety.  Hopefully, it would come with plastic autos to keep down the weight.

Joe

How about diecast autos on the lower deck and plastic on the top two! 

With 15 autos to a 3 level auto rack 1/48 scale automobile sales could be a growth market. 

Simple, just change the MTH trucks to Weaver 3-rail trucks.  The flanges still clear the underside of the rolling stock.

 

Or maybe MTH could just get the design right in the first place.  Lionel, Weaver, and Atlas all successfully put large-flange wheelsets on their 3rail rolling stock without having them ridiculously high-riding.

 

Martin

Perhaps you missed my past post about my Weaver cars that came out of the box in "ridiculously high-riding" stock 3 rail configuration.

This isn't an issue exclusive to any one manufacturer.  When I lowered my Milwaukee Road rib side box cars from weaver and added Kadees but kept three rail wheel sets the flanges were hitting the underframe on O-72+ curves.  Those cars lost some of the underframe so they could operate at 2 rail height on 3 rail wheel sets.  We all make our choices and accept the consequences and compromises.

You can have over scale flanges, tighter than prototypical curves or underframe detail.  But you can't have all three at the same time.

Weaver 3 rail trucks are easily adaptable to 3RS.  Lionel and MTH make 3 rail trucks with much nicer 3 rail couplers, they actually close quite reliably when switching, but they are not a easily adapted to 3RS.  The Lionel 89 foot auto rack is a nice exception with its pivoting body mounted 3 rail couplers.

I have a question for Rich Montague.

Did you retain the pivoting feature when you mounted Kadees on the Lionel auto racks or mount directly to the car body?

Simple, just change the MTH trucks to Weaver 3-rail trucks.  The flanges still clear the underside of the rolling stock.

You don't need to. Just modify the MTH plastic subframe. 

The other significant missing link in O scale modeling is a model of a two or three level open auto rack.  These are the cars that brought auto traffic back to the railroads in the 1960s and worked on into the 1970s.  They would go perfectly with Turbo charged Geeps, SD40s, SD45s and U boats.  Accurail makes them in HO.

 

Actually Quality Craft has a wood kit out in the secondary market for an O scale open autorack.

Here's a photo of a B&M autorack, 1983 or 1984.  It is a tri-level open rack.  Many railroads, like B&M, added corrugated sides to protect the vehicles in transit.  This type of flat/rack was introduced in 1968.  In addition to TT yellow, which I think this flat is, B&M had others that were mounted on freightcar-red TT flats.  The tri-levels were only useful for shipping sedans and convertibles on the two lower levels due to low clearance.  The SUVs/pickups/vans had to ride on top. 

I am in the process of simulating this car.  I say simulate, because I am splicing together two Lionel tri-levels and adding appropriate corrugation, but the spacing of uprights will not be right.  Also, I decided not to do the inclined end decks, so will assume that these were not raised after the cars were loaded.  I am using an Atlas 89' flat; I back-dated the paint color and lettering, but it is not the same as the prototype, which has exposed cross-members.

So far, the biggest expense has been the nine 1984 Corvettes.  I should be using 15, but I think the corrugation will hide the fact that the lower levels are not completely filled with cars.  I am hoping the "cool factor" will outweigh the deviations from prototype.

So, basically all the 3-rail people have to suffer high-riding rolling stock for the small minority of people who will convert them to 2-rail with MTH trucks?  How democratic!

 

I just stopped buying MTH rolling stock entirely.  Problem solved!

 

Originally Posted by Ted Hikel:

 

 

All MTH freight cars with underframes including Kadee mounting pads ride at the proper height for mounting the Kadees without shims when riding on MTH 2 rail trucks.   

 

I agree. In my opinion, Lionel and Atlas make much better rolling stock than MTH. 

In the Summer of 1965, the B&O experimented with "Chessie Take-Your-Auto-Service." 

I believe the auto carrier was actually built for Volkswagen in the mid 50's and could carry 10 VW Beatles.  Given that bugs were 160" (13'4"), I'm guessing that flatcar must have been somewhere around 72' in length.  I believe that the two cars were returned to VW service in the Fall of 1965.

Does anyone know anything about this particular car, either for B&O or VW service?

Jim

Maybe I missed the info. in previous posts, but were double door box cars, regardless of length, only used as auto. carriers, or were other commodities shipped in them?

Thank you,

Ralph

Ralph - they were used for both at one time.

All of the MTH Premier Covered Hoppers have realistic ride height. If they were lower the discharge gates would be rubbing against the middle rail.

Andrew

There were lots of variations in auto racks.  What i have not seen mentioned here is that tri level auto racks use a low deck flat car with trucks that have 28 inch wheels.  The standard 70 ton wheel is 33 inches in diameter.  On these cars the draft gear and coupler are above the deck.  There is a ramp that the autos drive down to get over the draft gear and down to the deck of the rail car.  The autos at each end on the A deck sit at an angle.  The B deck has a hinged deck about ten feet long.  It is up when the A deck is being loaded and lowered and locked into position to load the B deck.  The hinge deck uses the space over the hood and trunk of the first and last A deck auto to lower to a level position. The C deck is rigid.  

There were two different hight auto racks.  The Ford assigned racks were 18' 6" to the top of rail form the top of the roof  All other auto racks were 18' 10 1/2" from the top of the rail to the top of the roof.  Some auto rakes had the roof slightly higher at the ends and lower in the middle to help accommodate loading.  About 1990 there was a study done to determine what clearance restrictions still existed on auto rack routes.  With all the work that had been done clear double stack cars, it was hoped that all auto racks could be standardized at 19' 0" height.  I do not know how this effort came out.  

The early bi and tri level cars were open.  Due to damage to the autos, these cars were retrofitted with the corrugated sides and were known as screened cars.  The later fully enclosed cars had stamped sides, roofs and end doors.  There were also modern cars with out roofs and end doors.  The lack of a roof allowed loading vans, and pickups on the top deck.  The lack of doors resulted in a lower shipping rate.  The trailer train report marks, the letter part, identified all these differences so the proper type car could easily be identified.  The reporting marks did not identify the different height cars.  The pool assignment sorted out between the Ford and GM cars.  

Most auto racks are built on a free standing flatcar.  The auto racks have a shorter life than the flat car and the same flat may carry two or three different racks in its life.  There were some auto racks built as integrated cars where the rack and car were built and the car depended on the rack structure for some of the cars strength.  These cars were difficult to modify as changes came along and soon disappeared.  There integrated racks were all railroad owned, TTX was not involved.  Santa Fe may have been the largest user of these cars.  These cars may have been called Safe Packs.

The auto racks we see today are built on flat cars with cushion under frames.  There were some auto racks built on 85' cars with conventional draft gears.  These racks were designed to slide back and forth on the deck to absorb switching shocks.  They had a little hydraulic cushion unit in the middle of the deck.  I think there were also centering springs, but memory is a little foggy on that detail.  it looked like a small center of car cushioning system on the deck, but in miniature.

There was a design for high value autos where there was a small container for each car and these containers were stacked on flatcars.  As i recall the idea was the car would stay locked in the same container until it was delivered at the dealership.  These containers made great sheds when the concept was abandon.  There were several of them at Roseville.

Ford T's and earlier models

I have 7 Lionel auto racks and they are quite beautiful. I am quite happy with them as they are. They are light, realistic and pretty robust. By accident, my new Santa Fe Dash 9 ran hood long right into the consist at a pretty fair speed. Nothing happened and they did not even derail.

The end doors open realistically and if one wants, they can place vehicles within the cars.

Also, they look impressive as far as adding length to a consist.

Pete