Open doors

to allow the hobos and those "flipping boxcars"      ....... air

The doors should be closed, especially if the car has a load. 

If they're open, it's because somebody didn't close them or there are some non-paying "passengers."

Rusty

Moving part not well maintained.  Bent door track, rust, road dirt etc., often the doors required a truck or fork lift with tow chain to open.   Same required to close.   Ice, snow and freezing temperatures another problem   IMO.   Mike CT. 

It was not unusual to see  boxcars with open doors in Baltimore's  PRR   B&O Bayview Yards in the 1960s and 70s.  Those yards were close to my home and I often walked down to them to look around.

Joe

you get better mileage if you drive with your windows rolled up, which i imagine is about the same principle that would apply to an open door on a boxcar, so my guess is that the railroad itself would likely be against the practice of leaving them open.  the only thing i can think of would be an attempt to air out a previously foul smelling load.

Rusty's correct--there's no real "reason" the doors are sometimes left open, other than no one closed them after opening them.

Some loaded box cars did indeed move with their doors open. Loads of bricks moved with open doors. Loads of limestone didn't even have doors. So, there is always the exception to what one may logically think. 
Empty box cars more often than not moved with open doors. Here the exception was "Plug Door" box cars which were always to be moved with doors closed.

If it is a plug door, by rule it is to be closed, secured, with the hasp in the fitting BEFORE MOVING.

Conventional doors, no such rule. Conventional doors aren't the easiest things to close. Sometimes human power cannot close them (must use a fork lift or come-along). That so, when I worked the ground and was picking up an empty car with a conventional door that was open, and I couldn't close it with reasonable effort. Too bad. As long as the door was in the runners and usable, it got picked up/whatever and sent on its way. No rule infraction (at the time).

Depending on lading, picking up a loaded car with a door opened (even if partially) is a different matter. It needs to be closed and secured. If you're switching the industry after hours, then a note is made on your switchlist, and you leave the car in place. (Turning it in at the end of your shift.) IF during business hours, IF you can find a dock worker, have them secure it. IF not, then if the Car Dept is on duty, radio the Yard Office and inform them of the situation. IF you pull the loaded car with the door opened, THEN the RR is liable for the damages. THAT is a no-no.

Sure, empties SHOULD have their door(s) closed, but many, many times, they're not for reasons like the above.

Sarah:

Having some conventional doors opened on your empty models, even if partially opened, can provide you a bit of visual relief and it is prototypical. Happened often when I was railroading.

Andre

Sarah, when I was a kid a lot of the empty box cars passing by at grade crossings had open doors. (Now it's just those someone has broken into?;-) Love your work!

Sarah posted:

Dear friends,

this might be a bit off topic but I hope you don't take it too exact here – I am sure many of you know the answer. I am asking a question about freight car doors in the 1940's. On some photos you can clearly see open doored cars.

Sliding boxcar doors are somewhat difficult to open and close.  When left open it was mostly laziness on the part of the consignee, and the switch crew who picked it up.  Sometimes, cars are cleaned after being made empty.  Unless otherwise specified, the consignee who emptied the car was also responsible for removing wood scraps, cardboard, metal bracing nailed to the floor, etc., and -- after having been loaded with a loose commodity such as grain -- swept clean.  The doors were not closely monitored once the car had been picked up.  If the consignee did not clean the car as required, the railroad would do it and charge the customer, and, in that case the railroad would have closed the doors*.  It would be unlikely that hoboes would open a boxcar door from the ground.  That's real work!  

As plug doors began to replace sliding doors in the 1950's, railroads required plug doors to be closed, because they slide on their rollers much easier than conventional doors, and can move when the car is in motion.  If they hit the end stop on their bottom rail, the doors can be lifted off of their track and fall flat onto the ground.  Plug doors are very heavy, and both the public and employees have been killed by falling plug doors.

* If it's meant to be open, what are the reasons and what open / closed door ratio would be a good idea? 

They were never meant to be open.  In more recent times, railroads have refused to accept boxcars released by a customer, unless the doors are closed, both for safety and for fuel conservation.  There is a lot of wind turbulence and drag caused by open boxcar doors.

Thanks! 
Sarah

*  You see the difference here?  The railroad did not make any money by merely closing boxcar doors, but the generous fee charged back to the customer for cleaning a car and closing the doors was profitable.

This is not the place to post pictures of your model trains in this thread and category.  This is the "Real Trains" category.  We welcome your model pictures in the appropriate forums...

As a kid growing up around Plymouth Yard in Michigan. A lot of cars that were empty and waiting to be staged to industries were moved with their doors opened. Some were being loaded in the yard with LCL (less than Car Load) right in the yard.

User failing to close the door might explain one open door, but how often would it explain both?  I wonder if sometimes a road would use a boxcar with open doors for LCL short haul freight.  Placed near the engine or caboose it would be relatively secure, and leaving the doors open would save the crew the hassle and delay of having to open and close the doors at each station.  

Hot Water posted:

Farmer_Bill posted:

 

Back to the topic on hand -- boxcars doors were frequently left open as seen in old prototype films. Don't know the true reason since I wasn't there.

Right. I remember an occasional boxcar door being left open, back in the late 1940s through the late 1960s, however it wasn't the norm.

 

 

Indeed it was the norm. I hauled them like that every trip for forty years!

Thank you for all the replies! I just realized that I posted this into the wrong forum! Sorry about. Thank you, Alan for correcting that. I'll take better care about that in the future. 

I was not aware of how hard sliding box car doors moved. 

Just to understand the physics: The lower clamps / brackets carry the weight of the door so it sits on the lower sliding rail, is that right? The lever to the lower right would give pressure on the sliding rail so it can be secured when open. Right? A newly shopped and greased door would slide easily and get stuck once rust and corrosion reaches the mechanism. The door would then jam after every inch of movement - so they invented the plug door that was hang down.

Corrections welcome :-)

Sarah

Sarah, we have boxcars like shown in your picture on our tourist railroad. Honestly, I have no idea what the "lever" does. Ours don't move. Sometimes I use it as a "handle" to grab on to open or close the door. The door is so hard to move I don't know if it needs to be "secured." To open the door, I wedge in a piece of steel bar or a tie plate between the door and the jam to get it moving. They are a bear to open and close. I'm not sure grease would help.

Thanks Steve, 

I guess it's a kind of T-groove where the door brackets slide along into. I am sure these doors operated more easily in 1937.

I'll have to look more closely when I'm back out there. The lower "rail" is really a channel that the door slides along, just like a model boxcar. I don't think the two brackets at the bottom support any weight, but I could be wrong. Not really sure what they do. I open and close our boxcar doors every time I'm at the railroad, but I never really thought to study the mechanism.

Speaking of Plug doors,,,,, Toronto Yard crew switching a storage track  (mostly junk)  and the brakeman is back  a long way from the engine   making a cut and instructs the  Engineman to back up with the radio.   On the reverse move, a Plug doors falls off the car and the brakeman  bring the movement to a stop, Next on the radio the crew hears," Help! get this thing off of me"    Here's what he had done .Took off his works boots and had them sticking out from under the plug door  and was hiding with the radio someplace .  True story, The only true about the story is that the plug door fell off but the other part could have been true, maybe it was knowing some of the crews I worked with.  Yes I  know if a plug door falls on you you're probably a goner. (summer time story)

"Back when" (1970s) the Frisco at Fort Smith lost a car man to a falling plug door.  A single plug door weighs about 1200 lbs as I recall.

Andre

EDIT: I think I had a memory jog. The weight has been revised.

laming posted:

"Back when" (1970s) the Frisco at Fort Smith lost a car man to a falling plug door.  A single plug door weighs about 1200 lbs as I recall.

Andre

EDIT: I think I had a memory jog. The weight has been revised.

Years ago, a retired P&LE carman told me about seeing a man get killed by a falling boxcar door at McKees Rocks, PA.  I don’t know if it was a plug door, but probably 20 years after the fact he was still horrified.

As recently as just before Christmas, I saw a box car spotted on a customer siding with the door wide open. There lading was some sort of brown paper on really large rolls. It was plainly visible. I wondered if the customer filed a claim over it since rain could have gotten in a damaged the paper.