Truss Rod end freight cars

from Car Builder’s Dictionary, 1906

It’s time for another freight car resource file. Ray Breyer has compiled information on truss rod end freight cars. We think of truss rods supporting freight car underframes but they were also used in other applications. Ray presents lots of photos and data covering these uses in a handy document.

Ray’s resource PDF is available on the Freight Car Fleets page. We hope modelers find it useful to build early wood boxcars for their fleets. We have more railroad fleet data and details coming soon.

Many thanks to Ray for pulling the data and images into one document.


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8 thoughts on “Truss Rod end freight cars”

  1. The Great Northern truss rod boxcar fleet of some 20,000 and the Northern Pacific’s fleet of truss rod boxcars were not incorporated into the list.

    1. Gary, thanks for your notes. I just looked thought my photos and found many GN and NP boxcars with truss rods on the underframe but there were no cars with this feature on the car end. I’ll check with Ray for a second look through his collection. – Eric H.

    2. Hi Gary,

      I’ve got over 400 photos of GN and NP double sheathed boxcars, and don’t have any evidence of trussrod ends on any of them. Granted, I don’t have photos of every single NP or GN box, so if you know of any that I can add to my list, please let me know!

      Ray Breyer

  2. SP and UP Associated Lines had some box cars with truss rods across the ends.

    Some SP CS-6, CS-14 and 14a, CS-31, CS-33, B-50-1 had end truss rods. UP B-50-1, 34′ furniture NCS FU-30-1, FU-30-2, FU-40-1, as did SPLA&SL B-50-1. Also UP S-40-2 had end truss rods.

    And there may have been a few more classes with end trusses.

    Thompson vol 2 (stock cars) and volume 4 (box cars) are good references.

    Dave Allen

  3. Thank you both for sharing this document. Southern Pacific and the Harriman lines adopted truss rod end freight cars. In Southern Pacific Freight Cars Volume 4: Box Cars by Anthony W. Thompson are numerous examples between pages 65 through 106. I just happened to have this volume open on my desk from looking for information on the SP’s B-50-2 through B-50-6 this morning
    Fred Swanson

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