Boxcars

As early as the 1830s, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had invented the two-truck car, a design with two sets of trucks or wheel housings that held two axles each for a total of eight wheels on each car, with springs mounted between each side of the truck assembly. The two-truck cars became popular because they distributed weight evenly, handled heavier loads, provided better stability, and offered improved cushioning for freight, and this configuration is commonly seen on today’s freight cars. This boxcar, built in April 1978, was an extra-tall version made to carry rolls of newsprint 1 meter in diameter and weighing 800–900 pounds, and cars like it would have been a frequent sight alongside paper mills and buildings with large printing presses. On a normal freight train, it would not have been placed immediately in front of a caboose because a trainman sitting in the caboose’s cupola would not have been able to see the train ahead. Freight cars display weight data for the car and its contents, including CAPY for intended load-carrying capacity to the nearest 1,000 pounds, LD LMT for the maximum cargo weight, here 155,900 pounds or almost 78 tons, to the nearest 100 pounds, and LT WT for the empty weight, here 64,100 pounds or about 32 tons.

Plainfield, Illinois · United States