Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society : Resources

The Most Significant Santa Fe Freight Car Classes In 1930

By Richard H. Hendrickson

from First Quarter 2000 Warbonnet

Summary

All Types Total: 79,000

Notes: By 1930, almost all of the turn-of-the-century wood cars with truss rod underframes were gone, but half of the box car fleet consisted of 36'cars with wood bodies and either fishbelly steel underframes (Bx-O) or truss rod underframes with channel steel draft sills (Bx-W thru Z). Other box and auto cars had either all-wood or composite bodies. The most common furniture/automobile cars were pre-WWI AC&F wood-bodied cars with massive fishbelly steel side and center sills (most of them rebuilt with steel ends in the 1920s). The reefer fleet was dominated by the early 1920s USRA-design cars with fishbelly steel center sills, but a lot of earlier reefers with truss rod underframes were still in revenue service. Among the Ga classes, Caswell composite drop-bottom gondolas far outnumbered all other types. Caswell convertible stock cars (with roof hatches and drop bottom doors for westbound coke loading) were also very numerous. In the company service tank car fleet, most cars were pre-WWI with distinctive AC&F fishbelly-sill underframes and mid-height running boards.

Car Descriptions

AAR - Association of American Railroads
AC&F - American Car & Foundry
ARA - American Railway Association
comp. - composite construction' steel
framing with wood sheathing.
conv. - convertible
corr.-side - corrugated side sheathing
ctr. sills - center sills
drs. - doors
dbl. dk. - double deck
dbl. drs. - double doors
f/b - fishbelly
GATC - General American
Transportation Corp.
GSC - General Steel Castings
impr. - improved (i.e., post-WWII
design)
orig. - original, originally
pass. equipt. - equipped for passenger
train service
PSC - Pressed Steel Car Co.
rfr. - refrigerator car
reblt. - rebuilt
sngl. dk. - single deck
sngl. sh. - single sheathed
stl. - steel
12P - twelve panel
u/f - underframe
USRA - United States Railway
Administration
wd. - wood
wd. sh. - wood sheathed

Model Manufacturers

A - Athearn
AT - Atlas
BL - Branchline
BW - Bowser
C - C&BT Shops
E - Eastern Car Works
IM - InterMountain
K - Kato
kb - Kitbash
KID - Kadee
L - Life-Like Proto 2000
in - needs some modification
0 - Overland (brass)
PS - Precision Scale (brass)
RC - Red Caboose
S - Sunshine (molded resin)
W - Westerfield (molded resin)
WR - W&R Enterprises (brass)

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