X31 & X32 Boxcar (Part 3) - PRR X31F Turtle-Roofs from Boswer

The X31F class boxcars were rebuilt during the early days of WWII with the center portions of the roof raised to allow taller vehicle loading, such as stacking inclined jeeps, etc.  These cars result in a very unique look in a regular freight train.  Nearly 700 cars were rebuilt into this form, they certainly did make their way around the country after the war for a number of years.

According to the 1950 ORER there were still 457 cars in XMR (Note: A & E) service with fixed automobile racks which could be retracted into the roofs in the 81200-81889 series.  In addition, 233 XM (Note: A & G) plain boxcars filled out the 81200-81889 series.  See Notes E and G for exact car numbers for which AAR class car desired.  This series filled number range, to-the-car, at the end of the X31A series below and butted right against the X41A series above.

PRR 81205 - XM (Plain boxcar)

PRR 81205, earlier Bowser X31F "Turtle Roof" boxcar, painted for general service

One of my older X31F kits built up as a general service boxcar.  The lettering for the "PENNSYLVANIA" seems incorrect compared to the 81348 (below) being a bit too large and tall, this seems to be fixed on the newer models.  Decals from National Car Shops/ex-Speedwitch should be able to fix this, but would require repatching the paint before replacing the road name.

PRR 81348 - XMR (Auto-Rack)

My newer swap-meet bought unbuilt kit shows the car stenciled with "Return when empty to PRR Canton Baltimore MD" assignment stencil, which gives the car's home station.  When the car returned to that station, the Freight Agent there would then assign the car to go to an auto assembly plant for loading.  These cars were called "boarded empties" and would be returned directly by fastest route to the named station.  Certain freight symbols were specifically indicated to handle high priority loads and these "boarded" empties to expedite their return for reloading.

Pennsy X31F class "Turtle Roof" automobile boxcar, newer Bowser kit version.

Looking up in the notes, the PRR 81348 shouldn't have the racks fitted, per what the door marking says, in 1950.  However, as the car's tare date shows the stenciled September 1948 date, it's possible the car was still assigned and fitted for automobile service with Evans racks.

B-end of Bowser X31F which needs the brake staff linkage fabricated.

Like the other Bowser kits from this era, I'll be needing to fabricate a brake staff and bell crank for the handbrake.

Underframe with modified air reservoir position on the basic underframe.

Underframe with air reservoir moved and turned 90 degrees from most other non-PRR cars.  I may install some lead strips between the centersills to help the Center-of-Gravity moment on the car.

In Closing

X31F PRR 81209 XM in a string of interchange cars at Kern Jct., Jan 4, 1953 TT/TO Ops LMRC

These cars of mine have provided some variation "Standard steel boxcar" look of the 1950s fleet at LMRC for most of 20-odd years in automobile service and auto-parts service in trains such as Santa Fe's 59, WGFX, and BK symbol freights, and regular transfers to the SP to connect to  the Bay Area from Bakersfield on Altamont West (AW), returning on Altamont East (AE) symbols with auto-parts.  Auto cars in general service showed up in other symbol freights such as: VXE, VXW, NCP, OCM, etc.

The newly built PRR 81348 and another sister X31F kit, yet to be assembled, will be available for service occasionally on the Jawbone Branch.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 1) - NP Correction in Era - Correcting Bowser NP X31 & X32 class models.

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 2) - PRR X32A from Bowser Kits - Both plain and Evans Automobile cars from Bowser kits.  Also Automobile and Auto-Parts History.

X31 & X32 Boxcar (Part 2) - PRR X32As from Boswer

PRR 59505, an X32 class auto-boxcar

The PRR's double door X32A class cars are a classic choice for auto parts and automobile service across the nation.  I should note that the X32As didn't have end doors, but did have good size side doors for loading larger items.

Pennsy had the following cars in 1950 ORER:
351 X32As from the 58800-59449 series listed in Autoparts service with special auto-parts racks installed, AAR classed as XML.

50 cars of X32A were fitted with permanent auto racks, which could be raised to load as conventional boxcars. AAR classification XMR.

297 cars in the 58800-59449 series were downgraded to plain XM boxcars

59 cars in the 60112-60171-series were downgraded to plain XM boxcars

The ORER notes list the individual cars that differed from the rest of the group of cars, so modeling exact cars historically for service is possible, but not to the level of which auto-plant/parts pool they were in unless additional documents or photographs are used.  Many other auto cars were pulled from X32B, X38, X26C, and X31 subclasses.

A History of Automobile Car Operations

Many Southern Pacific divisions had freight symbols which moved autoparts in established agreed routes which involved splitting the ownership of the assigned cars between several railroads by mileage of the route offered.  

SP North Coast Perishable with an automobile and auto-parts block, including a PRR X32, at the headend pass through Bealville.

These cars often would be sent to the auto parts plants to receive special racks or holding fixtures to hold the needed parts.  Some years the new models of automobiles would require adjustments to these racks before the new production could begin.  Therefore it was common on these routes to see mixtures of double and single door cars from multiple railroads, which were part of the same "pool" all moving the required parts to the assembly plants.

The automobile boxcars, which moved finished autos weren't as tightly restricted in which autos they could carry or where they would be taking them, but instead they would move around the nation to where the orders for the autos were.  Obviously some railroads would have their automobile boxcars in more tightly assigned service to support the auto assembly plants they serviced.

SP Autoparts & Automobile Operations

The Southern Pacific served automobile assembly plants in the Los Angeles area and San Francisco Bay Area.  Assembled autos from other assembly plants were also shipped into the SP served areas.

SP 64210 unloading new '56 Chevies at Sonoma depot, CA in 1955-56 - Troy Marmaduke collection

In the photo above we can see the two autos stacked on the right side of this SP 40ft Auto car have been unloaded from the Evans auto-rack and at least one more car is still on the rack to the left, with the shiny bumper showing above and to the left of the man.  This is at the Sonoma depot freight platform deck, with the ramp well used in this case to get the Chevies down to ground level.  This would be common for smaller towns to get freight to customers which did not have their own spurs.  Everyone would go down to the station to get their goods, even the local car dealer!

SP 67789, a Walthers single sheath DD boxcar, making a delivery to King Lumber, Bakersfield CA, LMRC circa 2018 photo.

Automobile boxcars moved not only automobiles and auto parts, but extra "automobile" cars could be seen moving pretty much any over-size covered load anywhere across the country.  Some loads requiring double doors or even end doors.  Downgraded "Automobile" cars on the SP didn't often loose their stenciling, but would be found in finished lumber service or other assignments.

"HH Goods"?

The Santa Fe Warbonnet article on the Wreck of the SCX at Cajon from 1949, or so, listed a consist with what each of the cars were carrying.  Several of the 50-odd cars that were listed showed "HH Goods", which were household goods.  These cars were not hauling goods for resale, but instead these were the Allied and Mayflower moving vans of the 1940s and early 1950s, but on rails.  If you wanted to move your family across the country, freight forwarders or other companies could be contracted to ship your goods.

A Family Story

SP Auto boxcar with "rough freight" or maybe "HH Goods" stuff at Owenyo - Rich McCutchan - owensvalleyhistory sp_narrow_g42c_sml

Recently, an on-line comment I read in a forum from Scott L Murdock. "My father started in SP’s engineering department in Ogden Utah. His first job transfer was to Sparks Nevada. SP provided him with a two auto boxcar for the move. He loaded his car in one end and furniture with belongings in the other end. When the boxcar got to Sparks the straps holding the auto had come loose. Luckily the car didn’t start rolling back and forth destroying his belongings!" Scott L Murdock

So there's plenty of options for waybills for "automobile" cars to be used for in our model railroad operations and even local assignments where automobiles might not be unloaded.  

Furniture Cars

A Seaboard car at LMRC stenciled for "Automoble-Furniture" service. 2011, Jason Hill photo

Some roads that didn't really supply automobile assembly plants or routes where auto parts cars would be supplied into a pool, such as the south-eastern US, would stencil their auto cars for "furniture" service, or even dual letter their cars for both.

Pennsy X32A "Automobiles" Cars

Well, enough on what we can use the auto cars for, lets get back to looking at a couple of Pennsy cars from Bowser kits.  

PRR 59505 - "Unassigned"  Car

The 50 foot X32As boxcars that I've picked up over the years are from Bowser and most are lettered for PRR.  I'll be looking at two examples of the class in this post.

Weathered PRR 59505 X32 class auto-boxcar from Bowser kit.

This is one of my earlier acquired cars.  The lettering on the kit shows it's from a Bowser production of the early 2000s I think.  The lettering is pretty good.  The spelled out road name is fairly close to Pennsy lettering style.

In the future, if I decide to do some upgrades, I should probably add a Evans Automobile Rack stripe to the door along with the chain tubes below the floor to put this car in general automobile loading.  This would also allow the car to roam west of the PRR with special large loads, such as aircraft parts to California from eastern sub-assembly plants.

PRR - "Assigned" Car

I picked up this model from a swap meet a few years back.  This car is from a newer Bowser production which has the lettering to assign the car to auto-parts/automobile plant at Grand Rapids, Michigan (Code "PD") included on the basic pad printing on the model.  

PRR 58977 with "Automobiles" lettering and return routing to "PD" placarding.

The car's tare date is showing 1945, so I'll probably be retaring the car for the late 1940s and early 1950s era.  The builder of this car did some rather overall airbrush weathering, which lacks much character that I like in my weathering.  So I'll probably do some adjustments to the weathering on this car when I have done the other tweaks to the car.

Missing handbrake staff, normal on all Bowser boxcar kits from 1990s and 2000s.

The older Bowser kits are missing the hand brake staff, which needs to be fabricated from wire and should have a clevis bell crank on the bottom, next to the coupler.

Underframe of a typical Bowser X32.  Many PRR X31/32s should have reservoir relocated.

Many of these kits I have built over the years have the centersill filled with weight to improve the car's center-of-gravity.  This model had damage to one coupler box cover and screw being knocked out.  It was pretty easy to fix that without much trouble.

In Closing

I'll probably do a few chalk marks on both these X32As to finish them up.  This series of X31/32 series boxcar blog posts will probably be 5-6 parts as I work my way through the various PRR sub-classes and construction details.

A Pennsy "Turtle Roof" X31F in the ATSF-SP interchange track at Bakersfield from TT/TO session in 2018, at LMRC.

If there's interest, I might do some blog posts on other automobile service cars that are easily found in the modeling community.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 1) - NP X31 & X32 from Bowser

X31 & X32 Boxcars (Part 1) - NP, A Correction In Era

Many years ago I was looking to add some more lumber cars for my fleet.  I came across the Bowser X31 & X32 class cars that were painted in Northern Pacific scheme, showing 1951 tare dates.

NP 39159 with black car-cement roof applied to the model

Unfortunately, as we'll see, these weren't exactly what I was hoping they would be useful for once I dug into their history.

History

Fresh X32 NP boxcars on ATSF freight with 260-class F-units, 1961+ Walong - Richard Jahn collection

In 1961 the Northern Pacific leased 40 and 50ft round-roof boxcars from PRR/DT&I for lumber service.  Bowser released these models in the 1990s and early 2000s, I picked up a couple of each based on the printed tare dates on the models.  However, I did learn that the models are not accurate for the 1950s era that I model, but are more properly accurate for post-1961 layouts.

X31 40ft Round Roof

NP 39159 with black car-cement roof applied to the model

The 39159 has the roof painted black to represent the change to the car's paint for service on the NP.  I wouldn't be surprised if this was a coating of black "Car Cement", which was a water-proofing tar-like material to seal up the roof on these older boxcars for finished lumber loading on the NP.

Basic Bowser model with light chalk marks.

I'll still need to apply the black roof to correct the model.  Also changing the tare date on the model is still needed.

X32 50ft Round Roof

NP 39648, a 50ft X32A weathered from service on the NP in the 1960s.

These two 50ft models will need to have black roof coating applied and the tare dates changed.  The cars should have a "JN 9-61" as the tare date, based on the NP Historical Society special run of NP X32s available here, which just need the roof painted black: https://store.nprha.org/bowser-ho-scale-x-32-50-np-round-roof-boxcar/

NP 38715, another example of an X32A boxcar, which will need minor changes for the 1960s.

These cars will hopefully still find a good home to provide lumber service after the slight corrections to the era of service.

In Closing

These models are nicely painted and another example of the "Shake-the-box" kits from Bowser.  Once the modeling community realizes which era these are correct for, I think they'd make a great bit of "something different" for the 1960s era modelers of the Pacific North West, and also a chance to model an NP car that could be off-line as well.

PRR 59505, an X32A Bowser model.

I'll be covering two PRR cars of X32A in Part 2, which is a bit more historically accurate out-of-the-box.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Weathering NP 11661 - A Rapido Double Sheathed Boxcar - Prisma Pencil & Acrylic Weathering

Outside Links to Bowser's X31/32/33 type kits and RTR models in HO Scale.

Bowser's Current Offerings - Link to available kits and RTR models from Bowser. (looks like mostly Undecs for X31/32/33 variants.

X31 History Offerings - Past production runs of X31 type cars (Including 2 & 4 door, along with 4 door "Turtle Roof" version)

X32 History Offerings - Past production runs of X31 type cars (Including 2 & 4 door versions)

X33 History Offerings - Past production runs of X31 type cars