IRM is always grateful for donations of historic photographs, records, and other documents. Recently we were gifted a small collection of documents from the W.T. Van Dorn Manufacturing Company of Chicago by donor Larry Larson. Van Dorn held a number of patents and was best known for their couplers, particularly their automatic link-and-pin couplers that were very popular with interurban and rapid transit lines in the 1890s and early 1900s. Among the users of Van Dorn couplers were the Chicago Aurora & Elgin and Chicago Rapid Transit, and IRM probably has more cars equipped with Van Dorns in regular use than any other museum.
But most of the photos and documents in this collection date to the 1910-1920 era, by which time interurbans were failing quickly and most new interurban cars sported Tomlinson or MCB couplers. One of Van Dorn's new ventures was to offer all-steel boxcar ends. Boxcar technology had rapidly advanced as the popularization of automatic air brakes in the 1890s made longer, heavier freight trains possible and heavier, stronger freight cars became necessary. Steel center sills around the turn of the century were followed by the advent of all-steel underframes in the 1905-1910 era and then, in the 1910s, by the development of steel car ends. Boxcar structures failed most commonly in their ends, with heavy loads shifting during sudden movements and breaking through boxcar ends from the inside.
The collection donated to IRM consists of photos from the Van Dorn sales department. Most of the photos are adhered to heavy card, to make them more durable in transportation (and for passing around a table of railroad men, presumably). Some have airbrushing modifications. There are also photos of boxcars with wooden ends that have failed, as an example of the problem Van Dorn was looking to solve.
A note on this collection: all photographs are the property of the Illinois Railway Museum. Reproduction is strictly forbidden. IRM management has recently enacted new policies regarding the online publication of museum-owned photographs, so the photos in this article are at relatively low resolution and feature prominent watermarks. Sorry.
Here you'll note that the steel car end wasn't just bolted onto the end of the car where it could easily fall off. Tie rods were installed going back to the second or third body post for added strength. This one looks a bit more like an illustration than a photograph.
Railroads with Van Dorn end cars
The Central of Georgia ordered 500 boxcars in 1914 that were equipped with "double target" ends. The stencil over the coupler reads "Van Dorn Patent End - Patented Aug. 12-1913."
The Chicago Rock Island & Pacific had a small collection of Van Dorn-equipped cars. These were 40' cars from the railroad's 31000-32999 class, built in 1906 by American Car & Foundry. It's thought that the cars modified with Van Dorn ends (the quantity is unknown but is likely around 6-10 cars, give or take) had this installation done sometime around 1910.
These cars are kind of interesting to begin with because each has four truss rods, which is typical, but they're not evenly spaced. Two are side-by-side along the center line of the car and one is about halfway between the car's center line and the side sill, with no truss rods under the side sill. Car numbers visible in these photos include 31385, 31722, 32033, 32111, 32556, and at least one other.
The Pennsylvania Railroad had at least one or two cars in their XL series that were built with Van Dorn ends. The XL was possibly the most-built boxcar ever, with some 37,000 of them being constructed over a decade or so. This car, PRR 63837 (lettered for the PRR Anchor Line), was built at Altoona in 1912 and looks to have been equipped with a Van Dorn end from the start.
The Southern Pacific had one - and quite possibly only one - car equipped with a Van Dorn end. SP 84977, shown here, was a B50-2 class car that was constructed around 1909 as part of the 84930-85279 series. This is another example of a Harriman standard steel-underframe car. Car 84977 was rebuilt in May 1910 with Van Dorn ends following an accident. For whatever reason, the Van Dorn sales department really liked this car and they tracked it for a decade.
Here's car 84977 in 1910 with its new Van Dorn ends and an impressive "Ogden Route" herald.
By 1915, when this photo was taken, the car had worn its steel ends for five years and was showing some wear and tear. But of course the ends of the car were holding up nicely.
And now, enter the 1920 Van Dorn Sales Department. It's not thought that any of these car ends were sold this late, but apparently not for lack of effort. The wording at the top says "The same car after ten years of continuous service. Steel ends in same good condition. A record of merit well worthy of consideration." And at the bottom, "S.P. box car 84977 - Van Dorn Steel Ends applied May 23, 1910 - Photograph taken at Monon, Indiana, May 22, 1920. This car was in service less than one and one-half years before the Steel Ends were applied, the wooden ends having been entirely destroyed in service."
The wording at the bottom is the same as in the previous photo. You may need to open up the photo to see, but this car had lumber doors that were formed to match the contour of the car end. They were sliding doors, so I'm not sure exactly how that worked, but it looks like they just hung from a top track and could hinge out slightly to be opened. The later "double target" end apparently switched to flat lumber doors.
Another nice photo of car 84977 in Monon, Indiana in 1920. I have no idea how late this car lasted in service.
Sales Tools
Along with the photos of Van Dorn car ends, the collection that was donated included several "don't let this happen to you!" type photos of cars with wooden ends that had failed in service. Amusingly, they all have the reporting marks airbrushed out, presumably to save the owners the embarrassment. All of these photos were noted as having been taken in 1920 in Chicago. This car is also shown in the following photo and in that one they didn't do a very good job of airbrushing out the reporting marks, so I can tell you it's a Pere Marquette automobile car built in 1918 by Haskell & Barker. In the background is a CB&Q boxcar.
Here's a photo from the other side of the previously shown automobile car. That's some nifty lettering, a typeface with a bit more dash than your usual run-of-the-mill Railroad Roman.
There's a lot of this neat Spencerian script in the donated Van Dorn files. This is another boxcar whose load has decided to exit the hard way. The railroad is unknown but it's an older car, as shown by the arch-bar trucks with outside brake beams. Over the couplers it's stenciled "Imperial Release Rigging" so make of that what you will. The car on the left is probably a PRR XL boxcar, judging from the protruding end sill and wooden ladder.
Here's a top-down photo, probably taken from atop the XL in the previous photo, showing the lumber load that has pushed the end of the car out.
Here's an inside-stake wooden gondola that similarly had its lumber load try and self-unload through the end of the car. A lot of railroads had cars like this, but another un-retouched version of this photo surfaced in the Van Dorn files that identified the car. It's Big Four (CCC&StL) 35383, a truss-rod-equipped, hopper-bottom wood gondola built around 1900-1905.
And here's another gondola that has failed in service, but this time it's an all-steel gondola. By the mid-teens all-steel gons were becoming very common, especially among Midwestern and western railroads that tended to use them for hauling coal (while eastern railroads preferred the hopper cars that had started to appear around 1900). I'll confess that I'm not sure why showing a picture of a failed steel gondola end helps you to sell steel gondola ends. I suppose the argument is that the ribbed Van Dorn product is stronger than the flat (albeit reinforced) end on the car shown.
8 comments:
It kind of looks like someone took the top off of a can of beans, trimmed the edges, and slapped it on a boxcar.
C Kronenwetter
Do any target ends still exist, or have they all been lost to history?
-Matt Maloy
We're pretty sure that none of these Van Dorn targets still exist. They probably didn't even last past WWII. IRM's McKeen boxcar is one of the very few pioneering boxcars that used steel construction to any great degree.
I think I might have found a video on YouTube that proves Van Dorn end gondolas existed, and after WWII to boot. At 1:55 in, look in the upper right of the screen of this video about the Penn Central:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGk0uQTcIc
The F3 dates the video to a minimum of 1946, as that was when the F3 was introduced, and while the image is panned over, one can see the car with the Van Dorn end is indeed a gondola.
Steve:
As it happens, we looked at this very image a while back, and one of our resident experts pointed out that this is actually a Haskell & Barker design. See the comments.
https://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2022/12/on-target.html
I too was fooled by clever fakes like these, so don't be embarrassed! It takes a sharp eye to notice things like this.
I'ma little late to the party, but I found a picture of a target end car in the wild. The picture linked below is in the History section of the Field Museum website and shows the collection being moved from Jackson park to the present museum location. Tracks were installed right up to the buildings. https://www.datocms-assets.com/44232/1642284139-csgn40538-photoarchives_webexport.jpg?fm=webp
Thanks, Patrick, that's quite interesting. This photo must date to 1920 or 21. And they must have laid tracks right across Lake Shore Drive, as well as constructing that large floor-level platform between the tracks. It seems like a lot of work for a relatively short move.
That picture was published in Rail & Wire as part of Fred Ash's article on the Field Museum move, which occurred during May and June, 1920. See page 29 of issue 268-269, Fall/Winter 2021. The case being moved is of the same type now at IRM in the front of Barn 8, among other places.
R. W. Schauer
Post a Comment