So THAT'S why the tape player smoked when I went to play it... here I thought is was just typical chicom junk.

I think Dave Vago has as good a proposal as any; the C&NW "Fowler" boxcars have straight center sills and would not be a supply of pressed roof or end panels, forcing a non-railroad shop to get creative in fabricating those items. I do note with interest, however, that in the Frank Hicks photo of the brake rigging diagram plate, the plate appears to be bolted to a CASTING... the thickened edge surrounding the hole is a dead giveaway. Castings are pretty rare in freightcar underframes, other than cast body bolsters. Maybe Frank can tell us what frame member the plate was riveted to? That might be the clue that someone with a set of C&NW equipment diagrams (I don't have any) could use to pin down which cars were the donors of the underframes.

Unfortunately I didn't get any wider shots of the underframe (oops) but I did get a couple of close-ups. The casting to which the diagram plate was attached was one of the cross-bearers (terminology?). I've included a photo of that cast cross bearer - note the wheel and journal box in the background - and also a close-up of where it bolts to the center sill, which caught my eye because of the Illinois Steel mark.

Frank -

Thanks for the additional photos. Didn't take a close up of the reporting marks on that car at OERM by any chance, or the "herald" up on the right side of the car?

BTW, Illinois Steel had five plants, most of them in Illinois (North Chicago, Joliet, etc.), eventually acquired Carnegie Steel and finally ended up as an integral part of U.S. Steel when it was formed.

Les

I live about 6 miles from that car in Maumee. Once the ground conditions get a little better over there, I will try to do a little more "exploring" around the car.

The original underframes may be older than we were thinking. Illinois Steel Co. merged itself out of existence in 1901. Now I would suppose that the rolling mill rolls remained in use until they wore out, and I'm sure I've seen the ILLINOIS mill mark in interurban car underframes built in the 1906-1908 time frame, but those dates fit solidly into the era of freightcars with wooden body frames.

I also did some searching in the older issues of Car Builder's Dictionary scanned and available on the web. As I said earlier, cast steel components were rare in steel framed cars. They were rather common, however, as components for wood framed cars; first as cast body bolsters for use with wood sills, then as both bolsters and crossbearers with structural steel center sills intended to strengthen wood underframe cars. Both the 1906 and 1909 Car Builder's Dictionary show photos of the Ralston Patent Steel Underframe for Freight Cars, which has cast crossbearers, although not the exact same pattern. I'm sure there were competing products offered by others. These typically did not have side sills; the cars still had wood side sills.

Which would mean that NONE of the body above the frame is original. If someone is out taking pix of the cars either in Maumee of Perris, it would be useful to see the crossbearer/side sill connection, and the underside of the side sill.

Was checking on an old RyPN thread on short flats (or gun flats) and happened to find this photo in that thread taken by Marty Bernard at Orange Empire;

http://railfan44.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... id=2904540

And HEY!; there's one of the "mystery" box cars in the background! I can't quite read the OERM number that was put on the car and perhaps it's that 25828 number mentioned in the photo that Frank Hicks submitted. Or it could be the OTHER car. Anyway, the Desser Tire & Rubber lettering is very visible in Marty's photo.

Les

I rambled in my LHS and by gums Accurail has a fowler wood boxcar, I peeked at it and it had the wood end framing. There was no road name just data on it, almost bought it, maybe next time.

perhaps a question to accurail is in order.

https://cprailmmsub.blogspot.com/2016/0 ... d-out.html

this will explain the end supports which eliminated the outer end wall.

I think we have a good near design match, it almost looks like the end verticle supports are reused in the rebuild.
From the first page photos it looks like you can't get to the roof from from that side end but other grabs around the car you can wobble around to get to the roof.

This thread goes back to 2017/2018 and concerns a boxcar in Maumee, Ohio. There were six pages of comments! Going back through all of these rather quickly, it seems we never did find out for sure the actual heritage of the little yellow boxcar in the photo at the beginning of the thread. One thing I noticed is that Dennis Storzek mentioned in page 2 of a photo of the car painted as Wabash, but that photo never got included in the thread. Today I ran across a photo from 1988 on the Lake Shore Railroad Historical Association website of the Maumee car painted for the Wabash. Can't post it here, but the car was WAB # 6179 and the lettering looked pretty authentic. Anyway, didn't mean to resurrect this old thread but I thought that this additional information should be posted.

Les