B&O box car designers in the late 1960s were
looking for a better way to transport canstock. Canstock is thin steel or aluminum used for can making. After
several test designs, the B&O approached Pullman Standard to build a box car using
the data the B&O had collected. In 1972, the result was a 50' box car with a
severely offset 12' 6" door opening. The doors on the car were not identical as one
door opened to the right and the other to the left and each door has unique latching
hardware. Additionally, a fiberglass roof panel was used on the 4th panel from
the B end of the car to allow light in the car as the doors were located at the opposite
end.
Objectives
of the Car and Why the End-Door Design
Click the image below to see original B&O
public relations material describing
the objectives of the car and showing graphically
why the end-door design
allowed two more canstock coils to be loaded
into a 50' box car.
Midway through the Chessie era, many of
the cars were shopped, painted and the
fiberglass panel was replaced with a steel
panel.
Early
in the CSX era, all cars had new style of
doors installed and any remaining fiberglass
panels were replaced with a steel panel.
Only
75 Pullman Standard canstock cars were ever
built. However, the canstock cars have
been photographed all across the United States. There
are many photos of the cars on the internet
showing them in California, Denver, Texas,
Chicago, Ohio, and all up and down the east
coast.
The Spring Mills Depot car has the correct prototype
specific features such as:
- B&O / Chessie doors or CSX doors
- Apex Slotted crossover end platform on the B&O car
- Morton hole crossover platform on the Chessie and CSX cars
- off-white fiberglass roof panel or blue steel roof panel
The models are Ready To Run and feature crisp
detail and sharp painting and details. The models have wire grabs, metal wheels, seperately
applied door tracks, and Kadee ® couplers. The undecorated kits have all 4 different
doors, 2 different roof panels, 2 different crossover platforms.
