Schuyler Larrabee wrote: > Sorry, getting back to the point here, I believe that by the > mid seventies, > using a box car was getting old hat and the T/COFC was the > new way to get > things done. I think (but can't prove it by my observations because I > haven't been looking with this in mind) that if you > enumerated the T/COFC > cars in a modern freight and compared them to the boxes in a, > say, 60's > freight, the proportion would be similar. Schuyler, I think this thread might have gone astray a little bit - the intent of my original question was "why WERE there so many boxcars in use in the 1970s"? From my personal observations, it looks like the boxcar phase out started by the late 1970's, and was fully underway by the mid-1980's, but with TOFC technology existing back in the 1950's, I was just surprise that this paradigm shift still hadn't occurred (or hadn't occurred in a big way) by the 1970's. The aforementioned March 1999 EL calendar photo is probably a early 1970's photo (based on the motive power's white numberboards, and that green PC boxcar), but there are a LOT of boxcars! And this seems to be prevalent in a lot of shots of EL freight trains during this same time. The question is: Why so late? - Paul ------------------------------------------------------------ Visit the erielack photopage at http://el-list.railfan.net ------------------------------
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