Freight Car Photos From the Van Dorn Files

Around 1920, the Van Dorn Sales Department was hard at work trying to sell Target Ends for boxcars and gondolas. Proposals and quotations from the Van Dorn records that were donated to IRM by Larry Larson contain numerous quotes for boxcar ends provided to both manufacturers and railroads, the latter presumably for use in modernizing older cars, but history tells us that they didn't have much success.

Among the sales materials that were donated were a number of photographs of freight cars with older-style ends that had failed in service. As freight trains and freight cars both got longer and heavier following the universal adoption of air brakes in the 1890s, the design of boxcars (and other types) had to improve. First came improvements to frame strength: steel center sills to combat increasing buffering forces appeared in the 1890s. These were followed by all-steel underframes around the turn of the century, which by WWI had mostly replaced traditional truss-rod construction. The next common failing of traditional boxcar construction to be addressed was failure of car ends. It was not uncommon for car loads to shift if a train stopped suddenly, and in some cases that meant the load was pushed out through the wooden end of the car. During the early 1900s, boxcars that were still of wooden construction from the floor up began to be fitted first with steel-reinforced ends and then, in the 1910s, with all-steel ends. This was the market that Van Dorn was looking to join.

The below photos, while they do not directly involve Van Dorn products, are still an interesting glimpse into freight car construction and practical considerations of operation around 1900-1920. The photos in the first group are believed to have been taken in Chicago around 1920, mostly in May of that year. The date of the second group of photos is uncertain but are likely closer to 1910 or so. Some additional photos, including some retouched versions of the below shots, can be found at the Van Dorn Target End page.

All of these photographs are the property of the Illinois Railway Museum and may not be reprinted or reproduced without written permission.

Here we see a trio of men working on making repairs to Pennsylvania Railroad 54087, a class XH boxcar about 36' long that would have been built around 1898-1900. The Pennsy rostered more than 7,000 of this specific type along at the time of WWI. The car in the background, possibly also an XH, still has prominent "AIR BRAKE" lettering on its door, a hallmark of earlier decades when air brakes were a rarity instead of a nationally-mandated expectation.

This is just a closeup of the previous photo showing the workmen. It's not clear precisely what happened to the car but it took some kind of damage at this corner and now has some new tongue-and-groove siding along with a repaired or replaced end sill.

Another "action shot" is this man working, apparently alone, on jacking up a Frisco boxcar. The car, Frisco 32811, is a standard 36' truss-rod car of generally similar construction to the PRR XH. It was one of 950 identical cars built around 1905 for the SL-SF. It appears to have had its entire draft gear ripped out of this end, losing some siding at the same time.

Another photo taken a few moments before or after the previous one.

The Cleveland Cincinnati Chicago & St. Louis Railway was better known as the Big Four and by the time this photo was taken in 1920 it had been owned by the New York Central for nearly 15 years - hence the NYC oval visible at the far end of the car. This particular car is a 1903-vintage inside-stake, wood-frame, truss-rod gondola of a type that was very common on railroads all over the country in the first decade or two of the 20th century. Gondolas like this were often used for hauling coal and this one is equipped with a hopper bottom for quick unloading. It's not coal but a load of steel angle iron that has made kindling of the car's end though.

The car on the left in this photo is unidentified, but on the right, the car that has had a failure is Union Pacific automobile car 170389. In fact it's the car's end doors, designed to ease loading of automobiles, that have been pushed out by whatever load shifted. This car was part of a series of 500 40' long auto cars built for the UP and was originally numbered 75091 (that visible "patch job" may date to its renumbering). The lettering on the end says "First loosen door bar on inside of car then open doors." The auto car has modern T-iron Bettendorf trucks, a contrast to the more common arch-bars under the car on the left. The boxcar in the background is from the St. Joseph & Grand Island, a UP-affiliated road.

The car on the left in this photo, with a slightly convex end, is a 36' long Fowler boxcar built in 1913 (according to the side of the car). The only part of its reporting marks visible is a trailing "K" on the end but that's enough to speculate that this is probably a Grand Trunk car. The Grand Trunk ordered no fewer than 9,000 cars of this same basic design in 1913. The Fowler boxcar was one of the earliest designs for a single-sheathed, outside-braced boxcar. On the right in the photo is an Atlantic Coast Line ventilated boxcar of the 36185-43734 series, a group of nearly 7500 ventilated cars. The ACL was one of a couple of railroads based in the southeast that rostered more ventilated boxcars than "normal" boxcars because of their extensive fruit traffic. And barely visible between these cars is what appears to be Fort Dodge Des Moines & Southern boxcar 10160, a 36' boxcar and one of only about 200 cars of its class rostered by that Iowa interurban line.

This picture in the Van Dorn files had been copied by some device, so the quality is much poorer. But it shows a CB&Q boxcar on the left that has had its end pushed out by a typical load shift. It's impossible to say what type of boxcar this is, as the Q had several series that looked very similar to this.

This photo is unique in the Van Dorn collection of freight car photos because it depicts a car that is, by all appearances, undamaged. Southern 198822 is a USRA standard composite gondola, part of a series of 2,000 cars numbered 198000-199999 and built in (according to its lettering) September 1919.

This is another copy of a photo, so the scan is of rather poor quality, plus the car is unidentified. It's certainly taken a beating.

The following photos appear to be from a different, second set and were not necessarily taken in Chicago in 1920, as were the above pictures.

This picture shows Wisconsin Central 30738, a 40' boxcar of somewhat typical design. The WC didn't roster a lot of cars at the time so there were only about 160 cars in this series (IRM has a WC boxcar dating to 1914, but according to documents from c1920, our car was listed under parent company Soo Line rather than WC at the time). One interesting aspect of this car, and several of the ones following, is the method of strengthening the end of the car. The boxcar was fitted with a truss rod that wrapped around its end, with stubby queen posts on either side of the car's center line and the truss rods anchored to the body corners. In fact this car is pretty unusual in that it has two truss rods at each end, one in the middle (which was more common) and one at the letterboard.

Here's another boxcar with end truss rods, though unfortunately this one cannot be identified. It has evidently sustained some damage close to the floor level.

And another boxcar with an end truss rod that has failed to work, this car unidentified except for a "NO" in the railroad name. It's not hard to understand why Van Dorn wanted to communicate that other methods of reinforcing boxcar ends were insufficient; only a steel Van Dorn end will do the job. And to be sure, end truss rods like these were not terribly common and enjoyed only brief popularity to any degree.

I am pretty sure that this is Mobile & Ohio 8175, which would make it an older 34' or 36' car (it's old enough to have body-hung brake beams, for one thing). It's got a radial roof, which is pretty unusual. It also shares something in common with the others in this second set of Van Dorn photos, namely that I'm pretty sure they were not taken in 1920. The reason is that interchange freight cars were required to have extra safety appliances starting around 1914 and these included ladders on the ends (which these cars lack) and stirrup steps at the left end of the car side as you're looking at it broadside (not visible on this car, but on several of these there's obviously only a stirrup at one corner per side). So it seems likely that a bunch of these photos were taken prior to 1915. Perhaps these photos were taken on a fact-finding mission around the time William Van Dorn was initially developing his steel end, rather than snapped after WWI for use as sales tools.

Here's another boxcar with an end truss rod, except that in this case, the end of the car was badly damaged enough that the truss rod itself is missing. The car is Chicago & North Western 7688, which as far as I can tell is a rather old 34' long boxcar from a series that was nearly gone from the railroad's roster by WWI. Other details: the coupler knuckle is removed and sitting on the ground at right; there's no stirrup at this corner of the car, again suggesting the photo was taken before about 1915; and the car used to have a lumber door at this end as evidenced by the orphan door stop.

This is another unidentified boxcar; it doesn't look like it's taken much damage but there's a big plank nailed across the end so something unfortunate must have transpired. The car number, barely visible, may be 20644. The most interesting thing in this photo may be the wooden side-dump ballast car at left, which is basically identical to IRM's own collapsing ballast gondola, Chicago & Western Indiana 1185.

Here's another boxcar whose end has turned convex. The car in the background is lettered for the Milwaukee Road and the damaged car is numbered 55498 with the number centered over the lumber door - a Milwaukee Road trademark at the time - so it appears that it's a 34' car from the 51900-58899 series of cars owned by the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul. One of the earliest, and simplest, forms of reinforcing car ends was to bolt steel straps around the corners, and here you can see that the straps in the middle have pulled the last few boards outward along with the car end.

Delaware Lackawanna & Western 34943 has taken a real beating. It's a standard 36' car of the railroad's H-7 class built around 1905. This is a good example of a car with the 1904-mandated safety appliances like stirrups at all four corners and a ladder on the end of the car. It's missing its coupler knuckle and I'm not sure whether that thing resembling a British screw coupling is some sort of tow bar or whether it's just leaning against the coupler. The B&O gondola in the right background dates to 1899 and is an early example of an all-steel gondola.

The railroad name on this photo was blanked out when the photo was processed, but fortunately for us the Wabash Railroad used an extremely distinctive typeface for its cars (plus you can see the very top left corner of the distinctive block-serif "W" at far right). Cars 71000-72999 were built for the Wabash by AC&F on their order #4295, I believe around 1905.

Most of the cars in the Van Dorn photos are boxcars but this one, Fruit Growers Express 21662, is a reefer. The most common reason for boxcar end failure was load shifting, and that wasn't a big problem for reefers, but it's possible that this car had its draft gear try to pull out of the car. It's an old car, judging from the body-hung brake beams and the split knuckle.

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