These cold winter day's being indoors are great for catching up on things in the preservation world and after reading and seeing the photo's of the old wood sideframe KCS boxcar down in La. i got to wondering how much other RR equipment is still out there forgotten along some RR or just left sitting out in some private barnyard or pasture across the US and if any of it is worthy of preservation due to really being something old and rare?

There's probably countless freight car bodies scattered across the west but has anyone actually kept tract of whats out there and where? Here in Northern Ohio there used to be a few interurban trolley car bodies that were sold to farmers in the late 1930's wich were used as farm outbuildings for storage and even some being converted into cottages.One could still see a few of those left up to the early 1980's but most of those were in poor shape and the better ones had been rescued years before.I remember seeing several 40ft. steel Erie box cars on farms down around the Marion,Ohio area.Most if any steel freight cars that were left have probably been scrapped during the past few years with the high scrap prices.I was wondering if anyone else had any photo's of some neglected freight car,caboose,or trolley bodies still around maybe waiting for that last chance to be rescued or just live out their last days until the elements slowly take over.

I've attached a few pictures of a old tank car at Sheffield,Ohio
that i took about 10 years ago.I have no idea if it is still there? It was shoved to the end of a old industry track on the L&WV Ry.That remaining 5 miles of track is still owned by NS but the tank car is on private property.The old main has tree growth growing up thru the rails since the line was abandoned and so does the industry spur.The industry has since built an addition over that industry track and now the tank car is or was stranded on the remaining 100 ft. or so of track on the southwest high bank next to the big trestle over the Black River.It was kind of a neat old tank car,the wooden side and end walkways were rotted and some parts of it were falling off,trees were growing up all around it.One wheelset had those real old cast ribbed wheels,the other set had the smooth backsides on its wheels.It still had lettering DUPX 5116 and a build date of 4-20.

I don't see it ever coming out of there in one pc.but i guess anything is possible but it's probably cut up and gone now? It's kind of neat seeing old stuff like that and you don't see it very often.About 7 years ago a friend and i were walking some of the old abandoned B&O grade East of Chilicothe and over to the side of the row on the side of the hill was a collapsed shed made out of wooden box car doors.I wish i would have had a camera to take a photo of that because even though collapsed it had character with the surrounding scenery.The rotted doors still had some of their hardware left on them like the handles and latches.I found one of the door lock latches laying on the ground and it had B&O RR cast into it with raised letters.I'm sure there's probably not much left of that shed now but at one time maybe it was a trackside section shed or something from years gone by.

Fritz -

It looks about as good, and maybe a little better, than the single dome tank car we acquired some years ago for restoration. Ours was just about completely covered in vines, sitting on the remains of a disconnected siding. Fortunately, one of our members spotted it, and the next week, the company advised us that we could have it! Some times you have to be in the right place at the right time! Maybe DUPX 5116 is still there, just waiting for someone to give her a good home!

Les

You are right, there is tons of freight cars set up as storage sheds out west.

Just on my old commuter drive, there was a farm that had two wooden sided boxcars, two streetcar bodies, and now a depot. I think they are supposed to be part of a future railroad museum.

Several miles down; there was a wooden boxcar at an industrial site that has since disappeared. Still further down the highway, there is what appears to have been an old wooden passenger car; a roof and leanto has been constructed on it; so it is hard to tell for sure it that is really what it is.

Just down the street right here in town is an old Santa Fe baggage car on the ground and incorporated into the side of a building. It is a steel car with a wooden clearstory roof; the roof itself is nearly completely rotted away.

In a field near the old Santa Fe Cleburne Shops are a pair of what appear to have been wooden cabooses converted to MOW cars. A Santa Fe caboose that was once displayed next to a museum in downtown has since been moved to a spot next to the Amtrak station.

That is just from memory, and along about a thirty mile corridor of highway. Most of them have no visible markings on them; so identity will require poking around the underframe or interior for a number.

The stories above are very interesting. I have found there to be so, so many abandoned railcars that it can boggle the mind. I have shared a couple of my interesting finds on RYPN, but as an option you might consider joining Rumorweb for engaging this sort of discussion in general. The more the merrier!

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/rumorwebdiscussion

Here is my pictures of stuff around Cheyenne waiting for our time and money !!

Mike Pannell
http://mikepannell254.fotopic.net/c1616093.html

Well Mike. Looks like you have plenty of restoration projects ahead! I don't think I've seen that many abandoned cars in one locale.

Later!
Mr. Ed

I was surprised by the number of former D&RGW SG and NG boxcars used at storage sheds and chicken coups and the like that still populate the San Luis Valley north, south, east and west of Alamosa, CO. You could assemble quite a train with the carbodies I've seen during two trips through the valley in the past 5 years.

Rob Gardner

When I was a youngster I found a long deserted station siding that was next to a small depot that had been gone for decades. At the end of the siding under the honeysuckle was a pile of scrap...2 arch-bar trucks and some brake rigging, truss-rods, couplers...odd stuff to leave sitting near the main line in the weeds. Years later they were tearing down a nearby barn and when the got the siding off the barn, there was a big SR logo on brown vertical boards...Holy Handbrakes!!! That barn had been a 40' wooden boxcar all these years and I had never known it. The question in my mind still remains...was it worth buying that boxcar...taking it apart and then dragging it 1/2 a mile just to form part of a barn? It seems hardly worth the cost or the effort.

T7

You're kidding, right? Where else could one get a completely serviceable shed for what, maybe a hundred bucks, back in the day. Railroad carbodies used as sheds, and sometimes houses, were a fact of American life until replaced by old truck trailers in the sixties, and shipping containers today. The use of railroad cars seemed to fall off dramatically in the fifties... my guess is the steel cars had too much scrap value to make them enough of a bargain, considering the cost to move them. Truck trailers also had scrap value, but could be moved to location for a lot less.

It's been my experience that railroad cars weren't delivered "on the hoof", so to speak. Not sayin' it never happened, but most railroads wanted to reclaim the valuable material, such as brake equipment, and that made the car unsuitable for further movement by rail. Most sheds seemed to originate at places on the railroad that had a major shop or at least a large RIP track operation that could prepare the body. I live about fifteen miles from the old CB&Q Aurora shop, and there used to be at least a dozen carbodies on farms within ten miles of my house, although the number declines each year. NONE of them were worth trying to save, because none of them had underframes... the Q stripped as much heavy melt from the cars as they could, then shored up the floors with lengths of used bridge timbers wedged into the side sill channels. There was even one of these car bodies at an elevator in Malta, IL, right alongside the C&NW mainline. Local fans said it was a C&NW car, but as the paint weathered off, the CB&Q mark became plainly visible.

The railroads would also sell old equipment, and buildings, for salvage. The lumber used in railroad work was generally high quality, and often old depots and freight houses, sometimes even cars, were dismantled for their lumber. I have also heard of finding railroad markings on the lumber used as sheathing under the siding on old buildings.

Dennis -

You are quite right. We have two Cudahy 36' long wood ice bunker refrigerator cars made into a building that is now on museum property and neither car has an underframe. BUT, the Monon Connection Museum north of Monon, Indiana has two old wood cars that they put onto two frames from other cars. One of the cars is a M&StL single sheathed boxcar (a lot of those M&StL cars seem to have been sold for sheds) but the other car is a Kinsman Refrigerator car. I am sure that this is the ONLY piece of equipment still in existance from that company! The problem is that the cars don't quite fit. You can see that they sit just a bit too high on the frame. Maybe someone will post photos some day.

Some steel boxcars were sold for sheds. We have an old Pennsy X29 boxcar that was at an old grain elevator in Thornehope, Indiana. It was the first piece of rolling stock to be donated to HVRM after the museums move to North Judson. I believe that the underframe is still under the old girl, but it has been sitting on the ground for so long, I am not 100% sure just what appliances are still on the car.

Les

When I was last thru Alamosa.... in '09....over by the wye there were at least 9 steel Rio Grande stock cars (no trucks of course), as well as a dozen or so NG wood stock cars and a couple box cars as well. Not sure who owns them.... but they are located next to several old buildings, looked like someones collecting them....

Out in the desert in california old UPFE reefers seem to be popular as sheds still....

In the south, with steel cars, they usually don't do much more than pull the brake valves and trucks.....of course, I've yet to see a wood car that has survived here, due to the climate.
What little is here in Florida is fast disappearing due to developers that seem to want to pave over the entire state.
In the past 5-6 years there's been at least 8 ex seaboard, ACL, FEC and SCL cars scrapped....most of them had all the brake equipment and trucks still in place.
granted, some of them weren't worth saving, but the parts would have been useful to someone.