Sky's the limit

While trucking and intermodal has captured quite a lot of traffic particularly for low volume industries, still pretty much anything goes.

Paper and related products (fine papers, newsprint, kraft papers, cardboard, wood pulp, etc.) are common high volume boxcar users (good condition cars with clean interiors and plug doors for paper, standard cars for carboard/boxboard and woodpulp, although modern woodpulp service cars usually have body vents added to allow moisture from the wet pulp to escape), so are forest products (especially plywood, OSB, MDF, particleboard and fine hardwood or milled lumber that should be protected from the weather - generally in cars with large door openings (i.e. double door cars)), boxed or canned foodstuffs in standard cars although insulated cars might be preferred for canned items that shouldn't freeze in the winter, bricks, any other sorts of packaged and palletted products, even liquids or bulk commodities in low volume containers or totes.

The old railway freight sheds are a thing of the past but some freight forwarders and warehousing companies might still consolidate and load miscellaneous less than carload freight at their own operations.

"Can someone help point me in

   If you are modeling today or recent years I'd think that Google Earth or similar site with street view would be the most useful( next to going there in person) to see what kind of industries and what kind of cars are visible? Youtube videos of the area also should be helpful, as lots of rail fans record and post this kind of stuff....DaveB 

What industries?

What industries do you have?  The type of industry determines the type of commodity and the commodity determines the type of boxcar.   Most industries use a fairly narrow range of cars because most industries produce or consume a narrow range of products.

Or ......

Tell us what types of cars you have and we may be able to tell you what commodities they haul.

break bulk facility

Over the years, prototypes have tried break bulk facilities with what seems to be limited success.

Since we are doing sort of a fantasy thing, one thing I am trying to design is a break bulk warehouse that will receive carloads from one manufacturer that will be spotted, unloaded and reloaded onto trucks for delivery to the retail store. Of course, so many electronics are not built here, so TVs or computers would be in a container and not a boxcar. So, some modeler's license will be required.

Something else I plan on doing is justifying the cost of a spur by having a contractor that makes concrete, asphalt, and provides building aggregate and maybe even construction blocks. I realize in the real world these are likely different businesses, but to justify the spur and rail traffic, they will all be combined into one.

Industry data base

Try the opsig.org website.  In their internet resource section they have a listing of thousands of industries and things they ship and receive.  You may even find one that you know to be in your area.  They are listed by state and city.  Once you know what they ship and receive it becomes much easier to determine what car type for each product.

Modern break bulk facilities

Modern break bulk facilities could be Lowes, HomeDepot, Walmart, Kroger, or any large chain store etc. You could also have canning facilities that would process and can foods or one of their distribution centers. A large metropolis like los angles would likely have several of these kinds of things. Design a large structure that can receive goods by the car load and ship them out via truck. They could receive carload lots of anything made in America from cleaning supplies to appliances.

"break bulk" car assignments

Dear MRHers,

For examples of how carspots and break-bulk handle their car switching, check the FOGChart for the Oregon City Switcher tasks in Clackmas Ore

http://www.fogchart.com/Down/Yard/OC_Switcher.pdf (Page 2)

The car-spot assignments and instructions for Holmans, Canned Foods, and Wymore are particularly interesting/instructional...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

Boxcar Fleet and Distribution Facilities

What you are looking for are processing and distribution facilities. "Break bulk" is now mostly a maritime term.

Get on Google Earth and go to Mira Loma, CA - that is the center of the Inland Empire, which is probably the largest concentration of distribution centers in the U.S. Many are rail served, since UP and BNSF both pass through. If you find something interesting switch from Google Earth to Google Maps (e.g. "Map View" ) and it will probably label the building for you.

For example, the one below is Fruit Growers Supply in Ontario, a major supplier to Sunkist. You can see a boxcar spotted at the right. If you go to their website at 

http://www.fruitgrowers.com/pgs/CartonPlant.php    

you can see that they sell all sorts of agricultural supplies, including packing cartons. There are rolls of paper and stacked bundles of cartons outside. 

modern L.A. switching

If I were you, I would be looking at the L.A. Junction, since it is exactly what you are describing.

Nash-Finch Grocery Distributor

This is is a distribution warehouse that serves grocery stores. You can see the remains of track that has been removed sometime in relatively recent history.  It's changed hands a couple of times in the last few years. But a tremendous amount of truck traffic goes through it.

Grocery items came in by rail and were loaded on trucks to be delivered to grocery stores.

One end of the warehouse is refrigerated, and I think the track actually extended inside. I haven't verified that yet.

gs

LAJ Area Industries

Since you're modeling the LAJ area, I looked at Google maps (I'm familiar with the area) and found several places that receive/use boxcars.

Kaiser Aluminum

International Paper (on Bandini)

Team Logistix (usually 60' RBL), there was a Tortilla company there too

Strategic Materials (recyling, hoppers of glass too)

LA Paper (Newark Pacific)

PCA (Packaging Corp of America)

There's others, but that gives you a variety of ideas of real prototypes.

Dan R,

Wow thank you all. All of

Wow thank you all. All of your comments have been a great help in getting me started. I have also Goggled "AAR Car Type Code" and that's going to take a some time to memorize. 

A new question for y'all, about what is that life span of an average freight car? In looking through my rolling stock, I have some box cars that are stenciled with build dates in the 70's and later, but I'm modeling 1990-94. How common would 70's era cars be in the early 90's?

 "How common would 70's era

They should be pretty common in most areas. Freight cars tend to last quite a while unless they become obsolete from changes in traffic patterns or unneeded due to recessions. Some 90's railroad magazines or VHS tapes of the LA area in those days should give a good idea of what kind of cars were moving in trains. Some 70's era hoppers were still running here on the SP branch line when it was shut down about 7 years ago.....DaveB 

40 years

Dear MRHers,

Given no other info (Google searches, photos of the prototype cars in question),

I've always worked on the "ready reckoning" basis that cars get taken out of interchange per FRA (AAR?) rules after 40 years...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

Rebuild

 40 years nominally, plus more if the car was rebuilt.

In the early 1990's the ubitquous boxcar was the 50 ft exterior post car (think Railbox type) and there were a gazillion IPD cars floating around.

Industries that order boxcars could be very generic (50 ft, 70 ton boxcar) down to very specific (MP 360000 series boxcar.  Industries tend to load cars with the same interior floor dimensions (affects the loading pattern).

As far as commodities, pretty much anything that needs to stay dry and can be palletized can go in a boxcar.  That narrows it down to about a million or two commodities.

But as I said before, most industries only use a very narrow range of commodities and thus use a very narrow range of cars.  One paper mill I served only shipped paper in 50 ft IPD type boxcars and one series of MP 60 ft double plug door boxcar.  They would recieve scrap paper in 50 ft IPD type boxcars.  One industry shipped bagged powdered milk for export.  The industry next to it made track spikes and shipped track spikes in railroad owned boxcars.  The cotton seed mill up the road shipped cotton seed hulls in any type of 50 ft boxcar, except that certain moves to SP destinations only went in "Golden West" 50 ft boxcars.

By the 1990's trucks or intermodal had erroded a large part of the consumer goods and all of the LCL business.  What boxcars hauled was the really heavy stuff and stuff where one destination would consume 50-70 tons or more at a whack.  Paper products, auto parts, large appliances, palletized construction materials (shingles, siding, cans of paint), bagged bulk material (dog food, cement, flour, powdered milk), heavy stuff handled by forklifts (cotton bales, finish lumber) and stuff that didn't flow well (cotton seed hulls, raw sugar) were shipped in boxcars.  Smaller consumer items, most perishables were in trucks.  In the 1990's the railroad refrigerated business was at its modern low point.  The most common boxcar food item was beer or beverages.

There were also the military shipments (bombs, ammunition), but those moved in very specific lanes.  When the military ammo dumps order 1000 clean, class A boxcars for loading, you know somebody's going to have a bad day.

Modern-era boxcars:

I'm starting to get my boxcar ducks in a row as well. I'm also modeling the Los Angeles area (though, freelanced), I began my boxcar inventory with cars I saw growing up, primarily 50' Railbox RBOX boxcars. I'm actually modeling two eras: mid-1990s (so I can run my GP35s with my ABOX Railbox cars), and present-day (so I can run my modern intermodal stuff). But I've recently begun to collect more boxcars as my interest in weathering has grown (boxcars in particular provide a nice canvas for weathering). Here's some of my recent acquisitions:

• Railbox 50' ABOX boxcars (1996).
• TTX 50' FBOX boxcars post-Railbox acquisition (2003).
• Southern Pacific 86' auto-parts boxcars with deleted roofwalks (1964) [ reference].
• Southern Pacific 60' boxcars (1960s).
• ATSF 60' boxcars (1960s).
• ATSF 50' boxcars (1960s).

Tracking down the history of the 50' boxcar is a bit tricky. The first 50' boxcars entered service way back in the 1930s, with the first all-steel boxcars introduced in 1932 [ reference]. SantaFe rolled out its familiar "Shock-Control" 50' boxcars in 1954 [ reference]. But even though the first 50' boxcars came from a much earlier era, apparently they're still in common use as seen on this GBX website  here.

Since protoype information on boxcars is difficult to find, I usually just search Railcarphotos.com to see if any photos of my boxcars were taken in the era I'm looking to model. I also rely on the "40-year" rule, but also consider that there may have been re-builds extending that date.

One "trick" I use to keep my older 50' and 86' boxcars in-era is to pull off the roofwalks, if installed, though I'm not exactly sure when roofwalks were no longer commonly installed (at the development of the high-cube?). 

Which type/length boxcars and in what roadnames do you presently own? What other types of freight cars do you own? Any 53' or 89' TOFCs?

Era

The 2 RBOX cars wouldn't be appropriate int he 1980's and the rest would most likely not be appropriate in the current era.  SP equipment was notoriously in bad shape.  We served several industries that were joint MP/UP and SP/SSW back in the 1990's.  The UP/MP got most of the loadings because the SP equipment was in such bad shape they couldn't reliably provide a quality car.  There was one local move that was only about 3 or 4 miles from a paper mill to a bag plant and the SP kept a few OLD boxcars to use for that move (50 ft "smooth side" plain door boxcars).  The UP crews refused to move the cars because they were missing grab irons, doors and had sketchy brakes.  They were only used by the SP crews for the 6 months they switched the plants.  They were finally retired when a fork lift broke through the floor.

A lot of the older SP equipment was sold/rebuilt/leased back in Golden West service and then after the UP/SP merger the Golden West cars were released.

One "trick" I use to keep my

Pulled this from Atlas Rescue Forum: 

Roster

I currently have about 73 boxcars:  7 - 30 ft, 25 - 34 ft, 40 - 36 ft, 1 - 40 ft. 

11 are home road, 18 are primary connections (PRR, B&O), 13 are connections and the rest, 31, are a mix of other roads.  All are wood frame truss rod cars,  except for 4 with a steel underframe.

I have 73 boxcars, 47 gondolas, 14 hoppers, 18 reefers and ventilated boxcars, 14 reefers and 12 misc. cars.  I need to add another 45-50 gons and 10 hoppers or so and will add probably another dozen or two boxcars.

Nope.

While on this subject, the mix of roadnames has changed over the years.  If you are modeling "classic" transition era, the suggested mix has been 50% home road, 25% connections and 25% other roads and privates.  If you are modeling a modern road that mix is more likely 50% private, 25% home road and 25% other.

Non interchange cars can keep their roofwalks for a long time

While the interchange rules banned roofwalks in 1983, the reality was that many boxcars that didn't get interchanged kept their roofwalks far longer than you would think.  I have photos of 40' boxcars in 2003 that still had their roofwalks in place. Having the odd company service boxcar with roofwalks in place on the layout would be an interesting change from the rest of your boxcar fleet.

Marc Simpson

Railbox cars:

Dave:

I saw lots of RBOX cars in the 1980s in Los Angeles. Are you saying they were more prevalent in the 1970s? The ABOX cars (small logo) were introduced in 1996, so they should be appropriate for the late-1990s/early 2000s. I did find a lot of prototype photos for both RBOX and ABOX cars in those eras (1980s and 2000s, respectively). The TTX FBOX cars were released in 2003 so wouldn't they still be protoypical for present-day?

A favor, Dave?

I don't mean to high-jack the OP's thread, but could you do me a HUGE favor and assign the appropriate eras for these please?

• Railbox 50' RBOX cars (1974).
• Railbox 50' ABOX boxcars (1996).
• Railbox 60' TBOX high-cube boxcars (2002).
• TTX 50' FBOX high-cube boxcars; post-Railbox acquisition (2003).
• Southern Pacific 86' auto-parts boxcars with deleted roofwalks (1964).
• Southern Pacific 60' boxcars (1960s).
• ATSF 60' boxcars (1960s).
• ATSF 50' boxcars (1950s).

Roofwalks:

Thanks for all the info on roofwalks, guys!

FBOX and RBOX in 1980s and Today

I'm guessing Dave's comment had a typo there and meant to say the *F*BOX cars would not be appropriate for the 1980-90s since they're modern cars post 2000.

the bulk of the RBOX fleet was built from the mid-late 1970s to 1980, and a lot still in service in original markings today.