Express Boxcars- B5 or B6 loaners Dec 1954

[NW Mailing List]

Also, as written up in the histories of Pacific Fruit Express and Fruit
Growers Express, they would both lease out fruit ice reefers, both the
express reefer types and the standard freight types for express box cars
and mail cars in the Thanksgiving-Christmas rush time period as the fruit
business was not active then.  

 

Gary Rolih 

 

From: nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org
[mailto:nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org] On Behalf Of NW Mailing List
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 11:15 AM
To: NW Mailing List
Subject: Express Boxcars- B5 or B6 loaners Dec 1954

 

I'm a little late on this thread, because I have been out of town for about
a week. Since nobody seems to have the whole story, I will add this: they
are either B5's or B6's (Note the continuous side sill.) and are obviously
in temporary passenger service for the Christmas mail rush. In the late
'40's and early '50's, N&W would take a number of CLEAN boxcars before each
Christmas rush, add signal and steam lines, as well as marker lamp brackets,
and give them numbers in the 240 and above series. They were not repainted;
just renumbered and lettered for storage mail. (This was written up in the
December 1954 N&W Magazine, complete with picture.) After the rush, the cars
from that year were returned to freight service. They got their original
numbers back and presumably the steam and signal lines were removed. The
next Christmas, Roanoke started all over again. Seems like a lot of work,
but that was the way N&W did things back then. My guess is that the cars in
the picture are B6's from series 43500-43999, which Roanoke built in
1946-47, as they would have been among the newest box cars on the road at
the time of the photo (and thus, the cleanest available) 

 

I am surprised that few people on the mailing list remember seeing this
first hand; but then, I am getting old!

 

Jim Nichols

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