Hogshead Tobacco Car

Southern's king size box car - the world's largest - which contrasts so sharply with its standard size cousin was correctly described in the publication "Tobacco" recently as having been "designed by the Southern for economy in freight rates fro shippers." As an example of how the car handles volume, "Tobacco" reported that it recently carried 100 hogsheads of tobacco from Henderson, N.C. to a destination in Kentucky. A hundred hogsheads of tobacco weighing 105,000 pounds - represents the equivalent of about 80 acres of tobacco. With 10,000 cubic feet of space, the car's interior is 84 feet long, 9 1/2 feet wide and nearly 12 feet high. A bowling alley - even allowing the usual 20 feet for the bowler to get up a head of steam and three feet for the pins to bounce off into at the end of the alley - is 83 feet long. And with the gutters, a bowlng could roll his strikes inside the big car pictured here and still have room to spare.