# Boxcar Heights



## ShockControl (Feb 17, 2009)

I have HO trains, mid-century steam-to-diesel era. I have over the years had boxcars with subtly different heights. I had attributed this to different manufacturers and varying degrees of attention to scale. 

However, I have been watching some footage of real trains from this era on Youtube and the Prelinger archive, and I have seen that the height of boxcars varied in the real world.

Does anyone know if there were typical heights, and how many height variations may have existed during the period in question? 

Thanks in advance.


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## ShockControl (Feb 17, 2009)

?????


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Yes.

Boxcars gradually got taller over time.

Wooden boxcars and the earliest steel cars were often 8 or 9 feet tall (inside height).

Cars varied around this but around the late 1930s things started to standardize on a 10'0" inside height, 40'6" inside length standard boxcar.

Post-WWII, the standard grew to 10'6" inside height, and in the late 1960s and 1970s a "Plate C" 11'0" car started to become common.

Many of these 11' 1970s cars still form the backbone of some railroads' boxcar fleets, but newer cars are typically "high-cube" 50' or 60' cars with something like a 13' inside height.


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## Fire21 (Mar 9, 2014)

Chris that's interesting. What did the railroads have to do to accommodate these taller cars concerning their existing tunnels and underpasses?


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## ShockControl (Feb 17, 2009)

Great info. Thank you!


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## Howard1975 (Jan 6, 2014)

The railroads have had the same problems with the tallest passenger cars Amtrak runs, and the freights with those double stack freight cars. Some tunnels and bridges were not designed to handle those tall cars. So either the tunnels and bridges with a top structure, like a truss bridge, have to be modified to accommodate the newest equipment. Or else there are restrictions placed on what equipment can run. For instance, the railroad lines on the East Coast of the US are older, then the rails on the West Coast. There are places in the East, which can't run the tallest freight or passenger cars, because the tunnel portals might be 150 years old or older, and have not been replaced yet.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

Howard1975 said:


> The railroads have had the same problems with the tallest passenger cars Amtrak runs, and the freights with those double stack freight cars. Some tunnels and bridges were not designed to handle those tall cars. So either the tunnels and bridges with a top structure, like a truss bridge, have to be modified to accommodate the newest equipment. Or else there are restrictions placed on what equipment can run. For instance, the railroad lines on the East Coast of the US are older, then the rails on the West Coast. There are places in the East, which can't run the tallest freight or passenger cars, because the tunnel portals might be 150 years old or older, and have not been replaced yet.


Some bridges and tunnels are problems, and also some older train sheds at certain passenger stations don't support newer double deck cars; only single-level coaches can be run into those stations.

Bridges can be replaced and upgraded in some cases, and some tunnels can be adjusted, by lowering the floor, or notching the ceiling (if it's concrete not stone) or both. Or in some cases old double-track tunnels have been single-tracked in order to take advantage of higher clearance in the center of an arched roof.

Other times, the route is simply restricted as to what sort of equipment can run through there, or the tunnel can eventually be replaced.

And sometimes mistakes get made; there's a video out there somewhere (unfortunately I can't find it at the moment) of a CN double stack container train that got routed on the wrong track which didn't *quite* have enough clearance under that overpass.... I've also seen some photos of autoracks (loaded with new cars naturally) that similarly got scalped.

An interesting specific example:

Between Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan, the Grand Trunk tunneled under the St. Clair River, which is very wide and deep and a major shipping navigation channel between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. The old tunnel was completed in 1890, and was in use until the mid 1990s when a new replacement tunnel opened which can currently handle anything on the railways. When specialized equipment for the automotive industry (autoracks and high-cube parts boxcars were developed in the 1960s, these would not fit through the tunnel. CN established a car ferry operation to float oversize cars across the river, which was finally made obsolete when the new tunnel opened and the ferries were retired and the dock yard(s) ripped out.

A similar situation existed between Windsor, ON and Detroit, MI where car ferries supplemented the railway tunnel; eventually they increased clearance by lowering the floor in this tunnel, so it can currently handle autoracks and double stacked *international* standard containers, but not double-stacked domestic high-cube containers which are taller and can only be run in single levels.


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