By Harry K. Wong
Though massive 86-foot boxcars and gleaming auto racks garner the spotlight on expedited auto parts trains and manifests, it is important to note that while the larger boxcars transported lightweight but bulky metal stampings for hoods, fenders, and bodies, it was the 60-foot boxcar that was tasked with carrying the heavier components such as engines, transmissions, axles and glass. At the beginning of the 1960s, both of these new railcar designs were introduced in parallel to increase efficiencies beyond the traditional 50-foot double-door boxcar.
To this end, Greenville Steel Car Company in 1963 began production of a 60-foot boxcar design with 6,000 cu. ft. of capacity. These cars were notable for their “fishbelly” side sills and Youngstown double plug doors enabling a combined 16-foot wide opening for fast loading and unloading by forklift. Early production cars from 1963-64 featured a “narrow” wheelbase design of just 41’3” between the two truck bolsters. Later production cars featured a more “outset” stance, with the trucks set apart five feet further at 46’3”, resulting in a longer “fishbelly” side sill.
Now available from Tangent Scale Models is its first production of highly detailed 60-foot boxcars representing these Greenville-built 6,000 cu. ft. double plug door prototypes in HO scale. These cars are based not on a single body shell sharing a number of paint schemes, but instead constitute a family of new cars that include both of the build variations of GSC’s 60-foot double plug door boxcar production resulting in five different body shells in all.
Collectively, the models cover a multitude of detail options covering both truck centers, different side sill designs, end-of-car cushioning or center-of-car cushioning, different under-car brake systems, different brake wheel housings, different ladder arrangements, plug door configurations and other differences. These specific details appear where appropriate to replicate specific prototype cars.
Standard details on all cars include separately applied lower door tracks and vertical door rods, wire-form near-scale-diameter grab irons, brake lines and cut levers, flexible rubber air hoses and much more — all rendered crisply and exquisitely to scale. Each car also includes one of two different accurate 100-ton trucks with 36” CNC-machined metal wheelsets. New with this release is a 100-ton Barber S-2 plain bearing truck that, depending upon the prototype, can also depict a truck converted to roller bearings with “removed” journal box lids revealing Timken roller bearing caps inside.
