I am trying to track down the history of a wood UP boxcar that our group has in Boulder Colorado and not having much luck finding a roster of UP freight cars.

The car in question is a 40' long car with a steel fishbelly underframe and steel ends, with a wood body. Car number is 11_04 (the only place we can find a number is inside of one of the doors and the center digit is missing/covered with tar)

Thanks

Jason Midyette

For what it is worh here are a couple of photos of the car in question. (photos date from 2005)

Jason Midyette

The 1930 Equipment Register shows a 40 foot boxcar series as 10500 to 12499. They are XM cars with insde length 40', inside width of 8' 6" and an inside height of 8'. Exterior height of 13' over the running boards, exterior length of 41' 10" and exterior width of 9' 5". The car had a 50 ton capacity which means it was on 5 1/2 by 10 journal trucks. Side door was 6' wde and 7' 6" high. The car had a small end door. This looks like the car you have. More information should be available from the Union Pacific Historical Society or the Union Pacific Msueum in Omaha. There are a lot of books on Union Pacific cars if you can find a good railroad library.

I found a LITTLE more information about this type of car.

They seem to be Harriman-Standard B-50-1 or B-50-2 boxcars, originally built by Pressed Steel between 1904 and 1909 (a total of 19,000 cars were built for all the Harriman roads; the SP, IC and Alton all had virtually identical cars when built). This preserved car technically ISN'T a Union Pacific boxcar; the number series 10300-12499 is for the OWR&N subsidiary, which always carried ORN reporting marks. This car (ORN 11x04) was rebuilt with steel ends between 1926 and 1927. In 1936 the UP started adding the "Road of the Streamliners" slogan to all boxcars, including these, and in 1939 started using their "modern" gothic lettering. There were still 39 cars of this type in revenue service in the 1950 ORER.

Hope this helps!

Thank you guys for the responses, definetly gives us a lot more information on the car than we had. Also turns out the car was older than I thought it was.

The rebuilding in 1927 is confirmed by a stencil inside referenceing a new roof being installed at Omaha in 1927. While I don't doubt that the car was lettered for the OWR&N, it is interesting that the stencil on the inside of the door says "UP 11_04".


Thanks again

Jason Midyette