Hi Marc CN box

Hi Marc

CN box cars were used to deliver grain from the elevator in Collingwood to the mills on the water front in Toronto.

CN & CP also hauled grain to Toronto  in 40' box cars from the terminals in Owen Sound. 100 plus box car trains would leave Collingwood each week.

Most of these box cars had planks on edge to block most of the doorway and leave a gap hear the top of the door opening. I would expect some box cars were also converted to include the hatches.

Regards

Jim A

Don't know about your specific model

but boxcars certainly were used to haul grain on CP and CN.  As late as 1981 I saw one being unloaded - tipped sideways - at one of the wheat pool elevators in North Vancouver, although I think by then it would have been a rarity.  From Riddell: "In 1950 CP carried 5.1 millions tons of grain, much of it in boxcars like this", "this" being a 40' steel boxcar built in 1929 and photographed in 1988 still stencilled "GRAIN SERVICE ONLY".  The door on the car is pretty conventional, though.

I think in a lot of cases the door was boarded up from the inside and the grain was blown in over the top of the boards.  Earlier cars like the 36' Fowler boxcars had a grain hopper door under the main door for unloading.

Hope this is a bit of help.

David

ps I can imagine carloads of grain turning up in southern Ontario - did the mill at St Jacobs ever have rail service, for example?

Proto'd

Your Athearn model, except for some issues with the ends, is a good representation of the BF-50-2 "grainloading boxes" the Union Pacific rebuilt from old 40-foot boxes. UP had more than 2600 of them. Whether they were scrapped or sold off, I don't know. They appeared in 1966-67, just when covered hoppers were coming into grain service in a big way.   Canada had box cars in grain service much later than the big US wheat-hauling roads.

boxcars

Seeing how Athearn used the same molds for all their 40 foot cars, and they aren't the best cars anyway, I'd sell them on_bay and find some correct Canadian prototypes to use.mike h.

For Sale

Thanks all - I suspected a later date for these, and think it has been confirmed after considering the replies.  These are headed for Ebay.  Maybe I can get enough for them to scoop up something else of interest.

Everyone has their level of tolerance for what is allowed to run on the line.  Mine permits Athearn Blue-Box with the cast on ladders - but not futuristic rolling stock - so this 1960's equipment has got to go.

kinda prototypical

The Athearn car is a late modification of old 40 footers, as another poster mentioned.  The cars CP and CN used, like most other roads in the steam era, were unmodifed 40 foot cars.  Grain doors were the term used for the wooden, or in later years cardboard inserts mounted inside the regular doors to keep the grain from spilling out when the main door was opened.  These allowed any suitable car to be used in grain service.

All that being said, CP at least had some 40 foot cars modified in a similar way to the Athearn's prototype, but I think that was done in the late 60s or early 70s, as I've only seen action red cars with this modification in photos.

UP Cars

Athearn's model has a roof and sides that are very close to the UP cars rebuilt in 1966 and 1967.  When I was a kid these were pretty common, and lasted into the 1980s in revenue service, and many were used in MOW service well after that.  Athearn's end style is incorrect, and the ladders should be at full height on the B end and shortened to 4 rungs on the A end (at least for the cars without running boards; the earliest rebuilds retained running boards).  The Fallen Flags site has photos of some:

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/up/up112361alr.jpg

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/up/up114489.jpg

In addition to the red cars the out-of-the-box model is supposed to represent, there were many rebuilt with cushion underframes and painted yellow, all of which to my knowledge had lowered brake wheels and 4-rung ladders at all four corners.  Here are some examples of those:

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/up/up127000akg.jpg

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/up/up127043asw.jpg

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/up/up127117.jpg

Athearn Grain-Door Box

As pointed out above, the Athearn car has double plug doors and represents a UP car.

Canadian Pacific did have one small series of cars with plug doors with grain inspection/loading doors, but they had single doors.

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp143117&o=cprail

http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp143233&o=cprail

Roster information has this number series showing up around 1965. Built dates are 1954-55, but it's not quite known what original series they came from.

Canadian National is not known to have had any similar cars.

In the mid 1950s, pretty much any standard 40' CN or CP boxcar marked for "clean loading only" could be used in grain service.

This is probably more than 

This is probably more than  you ever wanted to know about the subject 

http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2015/11/carrying-grain-in-boxcars.html

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/unloading-grain-from-boxcars-12205885

https://prototopics.blogspot.com/2019/01/shipping-grain-by-box-car-and-grain.html

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/90694.aspx

O scale Food Service Boxcar with grain doors and roof hatches and prototype discussion and photos

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/topic/sf-food-service-box-car

HO scale doors

http://greatlakesmodels.com/Product%20Detail%20Pages/HO%20Scale%20Product%20Detail%20Pages/020%20002%20810%20006%20HO%20Scale%20Boxcar%20Grain%20Panel%20Door.htm

HO grain boxcars 

http://tycotrain.tripod.com/athearn-rollingstock-resource/id187.html

N scale boxcars with grain doors installed

https://www.pwrs.ca/announcements/view.php?ID=9121

Tons of photos

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Grain+Boxcars&FORM=IDINTS

What I needed to know

thanks for the terrific links to grain shipping, handling, and boxcar grain doors.  Modeling this adds much activity to my grain hauling.  

Michael