A Boxcar Is Just a Box on Wheels—or Not

Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief

FROM THE EDITOR, RAILWAY AGE SEPTEMBER 2024 ISSUE: Don’t box me in here, because I usually try to think outside the box for this column. How many boxes can you spot on this page? How many times will the word “box” or some form of it appear in this article?

Let’s see … Canada and England celebrate Boxing Day (which is not a sport). Then there’s the sport of boxing, which takes place in a “ring” shaped like a box (I thought rings were round). There are box haircuts (I can’t get one). Box cutters (don’t cut your fingers!). Box cakes. Boxes of chocolates (which on Valentine’s Day are usually heart-shaped). Boxes of cheap wine (yuck!). Big Box stores. Box trucks. Jack in the Box (tasty but not all that healthy). Charlie in the Box (from The Island of Misfit Toys). You can buy a “Box of Joe” at Dunkin’ Donuts. I own a set of box wrenches (very useful hand tools). Where would Amazon or UPS or Fed-Ex be without boxes? And of course, intermodal containers, usually stacked, are, well, boxes! Railfans used to call GE’s Genesis passenger locomotive “the box the locomotive came in” (that’s silly—it’s beautiful). You get the picture—framed in a box, right?

Indeed, boxes are very useful. They probably came before the wheel, which is the most efficient way to move a box on land.

Then there are boxcars, the subject of our September issue cover story. I enjoyed writing it because, well, I happen to like boxcars. They’re multipurpose and efficient. One refrigerated boxcar, for example, can hold 50% more boxes of fresh produce than a semi-truck.

Despite their simple appearance, boxcars are rather complex, and expensive to build—lots of steel, numerous welds, complicated door mechanisms. I agree they’re important to this industry. If we really want to grow traffic, we’ll need more of them, in one or two standardized sizes (50- or 60-foot Plate F), and soon. We need to figure out how to improve their utilization and deal with an antiquated STB Car-Hire Arbitration Rule. The carbuilders are doing their best to manufacture high-quality, rugged boxcars at a reasonable cost. We’ll get there, eventually.

So, how much do I like boxcars? Most of you know I’m an O Scale model railroader. Boxcars dominate my freight car fleet, unlike the 1:1 scale railroads. I’ve got 32 (probably a small collection to some of you), and no two are alike. I like the more colorful ones, like the Delaware & Hudson 50-foot, 6-inch, 4,932-cubic foot cushioned XM unit pictured here.