AC 8016 at Steelton yard in August 1997. Photo courtesy Blair Smith.
Freight Car Friday #53 – AC 8016
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Category Archives: Equipment
Freight Car Friday #52 – WC Paper Boxcars
Photographed at Sault Ste. Marie in August 2004, WC 21648 is a typical example of the modern high-capacity 50′ boxcar design built for paper service. This particular car is part of series WC 21550-21649 built by Greenbrier’s Trenton Works in 1997.
The second car coupled to the left of 21648 is WC 26010, an older ex-SOO Line car also commonly still in paper service at the time. Both of these types of cars would have been the typical sight at the St. Marys Paper mill during the 1990s and 2000s.
Freight Car Friday #51 – NOKL 732348
An innovation in the 1970s was the design and development of the centre-divided bulkhead flatcar for the shipping of lumber. Designed with a central truss structure that both strengthened the car and supported the load without the need for additional stabilization in the load and equipped with built in ratchets and tie down cables to eliminate a lot of strapping and with or without deck risers for the first row of packaged lumber bundles. This made it much easier to load packaged and bundled lumber as bundles no longer needed to be staggered in order to create a solid and secure load and a lot of waste generated in the form of strapping and blocking material is prevented.
NOKL 732348 was photographed on July 16, 2015 at Hearst (Wyborn siding) with a load of lumber from Lecours Lumber in Calstock, Ontario. Leased flatcars with the reporting marks of shortline Northwestern Oklahoma Railroad (actually a mark used by cars leased to various railways by First Union) are among the most commonly seen in this service, and these blue painted cars in the series NOKL 732300-732349 and 733050-733099 (built by National Steel Car in 2000 and 1998 respectively) are specifically leased to Ontario Northland. Brown painted NOKL 734500-734599 – built by NSC in 2004 – also seems to be a series exclusively seen in ONR service in addition to Ontario Northland’s own ONT 4100-4149 series, built by NSC in 1997.
| Series | Builder | Date |
|---|---|---|
| ONT 4100-4149 | NSC | 1997 |
| NOKL 732300-732349 | NSC | 2000 |
| NOKL 733050-733099 | NSC | 1998 |
| NOKL 734500-734599 | NSC | 2004 |
Additionally, CN provides some cars for loading in the area, in various family reporting marks (CN, IC, WC, BCOL, etc.) and a few other NOKL groups.
Modern CANFOR Wraps
An earlier file featured a version of a CANFOR (Canadian Forest Products) wrap from around 1990; here’s a few more modern versions.
CANFOR – ~2003-2006
PDF | XLSX – Prototype
CANFOR – ~2010-Present
PDF | XLSX – Prototype
CANFOR Red – ~2015
PDF | XLSX – Prototype
Bonus:
Stuart Lake Lumber (Fort St. James, BC) – ~1980s (closed 2007)
PDF | XLSX – Prototype
(With assistance from A.J. Shewan)
Freight Car Friday #50 – CN 557636
CN 557636 is one of several of these double door CN boxcars shots in the same train in August 2004 at Sault Ste. Marie.
Part of series CN 557440-557739 built in 1974 (and identical sister series 557300-557439 built the previous year), these 52’6″ I.L. cars were built for lumber and forest products service and when new had the main sliding door painted green as a colour coding to indicate this assignment. (Here’s one in 2006 with the original paint including the green door intact.) With modern computerized systems this indicator is no longer needed and most of these cars gradually had the doors repainted the same brown as the rest of the car.
For modelling in HO scale, Kaslo shops produced (produces?) a resin kit for this type of car. (I have two on my shelf to be built up and put into service.)
This car and many other double door boxcars in the train are likely loaded with either plywood or OSB from mills at Hearst or Limer.