Northern Pacific 50' Double Door boxcar question


Y

Yannis

Active Member
Hi all,

I am looking into a project concerning a NP, circa 6100-6500 series, 50' double door boxcar. They appeared in both billboard and early schemes. Their door openings are centered with respect to the boxcar's center-line and they appear to have two same-width doors. Now based on what i see/measure from photos, i am guessing two 7' doors.
I would like to make sure about this before starting the project.

Thanks in advance for your time and replies.
 
I have not (myself) seen one with centered doors. If you are talking this era - the doors are 14'6".
Hope this helps ...
1553475120632.png
 
Thank you Sherrel for the reply!

They are a very particular car type with centered door opening (in contrast to the more frequently seen offset that you posted), and with twin doors of the same width, 7'&7' most probably.
 
I was hoping that you would clairfy your era of car? Like what years were they used?
Are you talking about wood/OB car, late steam, or modern?
 
Late 60s is my era. The particular NP cars were steel, 50', series (circa) 6000-6500. The cars were painted in both early small monad scheme as well as large billboard in both green and brown for the latter scheme. They appear to be having two 7' (maybe a bit more than 7') doors instead of the more commonly seen 7/8 or 6/8 combination of sliding doors.
 
If you are looking for Prototype pictures, there's a few in rrpicturearchives.net's Fallen Flags, NP pics
1553511450848.png

1553511573856.png
 
Sirfoldalot said:
YA, RAY. I believe that you have correctly done it!
Click to expand...
The only others shown on that site are #'s 6174 and 6438. They all seem to have had top walkways, 6167 still appears to have it's one, but whether it's boards or steel mesh is a bit hard to tell. All seem to have retained the high mounted brake wheel. A mix of handgrabs or ladders but all the same doors and straight sills. Must be someone made a model of them.
 
Thanks Toot, these are the cars i am talking about, i have seen some photos of these cars and its the doors' oddity that i am talking about. I will be using an Accurail car as a starting point and i ll have to figure out a solution for the doors, might go for 2x 7' doors on this one.
 
Here is the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association's (NPRHA) Box Car Diagrams of the 6000-6499 50 foot Double Door boxcar. As you can see they don't give a dimension to the center of the two doors, however the line through the center of the car is a Center Line, so where the two doors meet would be 25 feet 4 inches. Sorry about the quality of the drawings, however, these are better than some. These drawings are available to the public at NPRHA.org, equipment, Freight Cars, Box Car Diagrams.

Box Cars 50 Ft. Steel Sheathed 6000-6499.jpg


It appears that the car design was dated 1955. Since the door openings where 15 feet the door sizes must have been that size or larger.

Altogether the Northern Pacific had 101 box car designs.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks Mark!

So it seems they used some odd 7.5' door size to span the 15' door opening. I am looking forward to work on this project after i finish my current (2x) NP boxcar (40') projects :).

Thanks again!
Yannis
 
Here's one I ran across years ago while visiting a friends layout. It had some spots where paint had been dripped on it and had some fingerprints on it also. He was going to throw it out so I rescued it and just weathered it.

thumbnail_20190326_070507.jpg


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I have no idea who made this car. It is quite old but being that I do connect to the Northern Pacific, it was something I couldn't pass up.
 
Glad you did not pass up on it because you did a great job once more!!! Thanks for posting this Chet!
 
I did find a single picture of Chet's boxcar on a google Images search, where it identified it as an Athearn model, but while similar, it does have some notable differences. The doors are offset from the central position, the roof is of differently pressed panels and the subframe/sill is also, not the same. That picture didn't show the end panel pressings either. Were the prototype ones called dreadnought?
 
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