1970's Autoracks and Piggybacks

[DakotaLove39]

Hey all. I have some questions about the automotive involvement in railroading during the 1970's. I model Milwaukee Road, and as a shout out to my family's multi-generational enthusiasm for fast cars and big rigs I gotta have some appropriate autoracks and piggyback loads for my trains. I have the entirety of 1970-1979 to work with, so anything seen within that decade is fair game for me.

As far as the autoracks go, I just need to know when the enclosed autoracks became a thing. I'm able to find some video showing both open-air autoracks and enclosed autoracks in MILW freights, but those videos do not provide a timeframe for me.

For the piggybacks, I'm not sure of size. Do I need to focus on 25' trailers, 40' trailers or can I go up to 53' trailers, and if so what kind of flatcars should I be putting these trailers on?

 

[santafewillie]

Fully enclosed autoracks with end doors were introduced in 1974, however they did not all have roofs until the mid-80's. Prior to 1974, they had side panels but not all had end doors. I'm not sure if any open racks still were used in the 70's.
In the 70's the maximum semi-trailers were 40' or shorter. 45 footers came in 1980, 48 footers in 1986 and 53 footers in 1989. I believe that they used 79' flatcars during the 70's.

 

[TrucTrain55]

To add to santafewilles reply most railroads just added 5’ to there existing trailers and in the early 80s when the 102” wide trailers came along the just bought the “Box” and added the suspension from there older 40’ Trailers they had. 85’piggyback flat cars came into play in the mid 60s made by Trailer Train the first of these were purchased by the PRR. TrucTrain started using 40’ vans in the early 1960s. In 1980 deregulation started and so did bridge restricted laws in most states and trailer companies took advantage of this you started seeing more 48’ trailers as these laws were lifted. Here’s pic I took of a old mopac 45’ trailer. They mostly did these to Fruehauf trailers.This one is a trailmobile