Baltimore & Ohio 374065 Wagon Top Boxcar

The Car

In this undated photo we are looking at our car shortly after it arrived at IRM in 1991.  We show a built date in our roster of 1922 but that may be misleading.  Parts of our car certainly date from that year, but the wagon top design was a home built upgrade to allow recycling of older rolling stock.  In some cases more than one extensive rebuild was done to the same car, and they often resulted in re-numberings to make tracing individual car histories a challenge.

The B&O came up with their own distinctive design for these cars, basically consisting of a modular inverted U shaped hoop which was prefabricated.  It could be assembled in many different variations on a more or less standard car frame.  Thousands were built mainly in the B&O shops at Cumberland and at Keyser.

Sharp eyes will detect faint traces of the car lettering in the above image including a large B&O in panels 2, 3, and 4 from the left.  That is the scheme which is being used on this project.

Herald

On the second panel to the right of the door, the famous B&O capital dome graphics are seen.  The slogan LINKING THIRTEEN GREAT STATES WITH THE NATION appears in the outer circle.

Wire3 Wheeling

We started early to try to beat the worst of the predicted heat.  Victor Humphreys is removing old paint and rust from the A end.

Cutting Bolts

Mark Ricker came up to Union on a visit from Kentucky and pitched right in cutting frozen and rusted bolts from the end ladder mounts.

It Is Off

This allowed us to remove the ladder, after some coaxing and choice words.  Mark hands down the ladder to Ray Pollice who also came to help while Victor continues work on the right.  By the end of the day Mark had the bolts cut and removed for the A end side ladder, Ray had cleaned a nice area on the right side, and Victor applied primer.

At IRM this car was selected along with several others for restoration for a major Hollywood movie production.  The financing for the project fell apart, but not before we were left with perhaps half a dozen cars in various states of repair.  Our volunteer forces have completed many of those and now the wagon top joins them in the restoration process.

We will be able to do a lot of the work for very little money as is our custom, but donations are needed to cover the unavoidable expenses, and hopefully enough can be raised to assure the completed restoration can subscribe to indoor space in the next Barn.  Please help with a donation to restricted fund R374065. And of course you are welcome to contact me to schedule your workday on the next hot 102 HEAT INDEX day in the sun!