Building Freight Cars for Auto Parts Service

The use of customer - tailored freight cars to fit a particular commodity or industry is one way Southern Railway has found to insure that shippers get the most possible mileage out of their shipping dollar .

Spanking-new and ready of years of service, high-capacity auto parts cars roll from the Pullman Standard shop.

While general service freight cars still perform much valuable service on Southern, and continue to be in demand, more and more shippers with highly specialized requirements are being provided with highly specialized freight cars to better serve their rail transportation needs.

A brake and crossover step are installed.

One hundred sixteen high capacity box cars recently built for Southern at the Michigan City, Indiana, plant of the Pullman Standard Company provide an excellent example of the way freight cars are specially-designed to make them more useful to shippers, in this case the automobile industry.

Construction of the cars was a cooperative effort involving close and continuous liaison between Pullman Standard, Southern and auto parts manufacturers.

Lowering the car body onto one of its trucks.

These new freight cars bear little resemblance to the standard 40 foot box car that was previously used in auto parts service. Today's modern, better and more useful Southern cars are. 60 feet in length and cubic capacity is so increased that each car can carry more than twice the cargo hauled in one of the older cars.

Discussing mechanical details are (from left): Tom Kerns, Southern Railway inspector; John Tray, manager of works, Pullman Standard; and w. Sublette, Fisher Body Company.

Ten foot wide doors facilitate work of lift trucks in loading and unloading, and the cars are equipped with roller type truck bearings and have cushion underframes for the protection of lading in transit. In addition, Southern has fitted out many of the cars with interior stowage devices designed to permit optimum loading and provide added cushioning as required by the particular auto parts such cars carry.

Assembling a car's underframe.

High volume capacity and damage preventive devices in these cars serve to generate transportation cost savings for Southern's automobile manufacturing customers. Assured of regular, on time delivery of auto parts at their assembly plants along Southern's lines they can also hold their on hand inventory to a bare minimum with resultant further savings in inventory and warehousing costs.

The new cars from Pullman-Standard are another indication of Southern's policy of matching the car with the commodity to provide better freight transportation for the customers it serves. .