This car is part of the collection at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. It is one of my favorite prototypes and this car has been nicely restored and placed on display outside the museum roundhouse. The M-27 was an interesting car series. B&O built 2,000 cars in 1926 for automobile service in both 1-1/2 and double door configurations. The cars were built with a 9-foot interior height. During this time freight car design was evolving rapidly, and within a few years these cars were already obsolete for carrying automobiles. The introduction of the Evans auto loader, … Continue reading No. 35: Steam Era Freight Cars – B&O M-27

This is a former NYC box car, probably from NYC 152000-153769, Lot 657-B, rebuilt by Despatch shops in 1936-1937 from one of NYC’s large fleet of single-sheathed box and automobile cars, commonly referred to as “1916 Cars”. Ultimately Central rebuilt about 5,800 of the 1916 cars into box cars and an additional 2,400 cars into automobile cars. The early history of these rebuilds is nicely covered in Ted Culotta’s new series of books, Focus on Freight Cars, Volume 7.  According to Ted, Central rebuilt over 5,800 of the ‘1916’ double sheathed automobile cars into all-steel box cars, featuring indented Murphy … Continue reading No. 23: Steam Era Freight Cars – NYC Rebuilt Box Car