Return To Sioux City

Return To Sioux City, a photo by William 74 on Flickr.

Before intermodal railcars became the norm, box cars were the standard way to ship many, if not most, goods. While the railroads owned many box cars, it was also very common for larger companies to own their own fleets of cars. And there's a lot of writing on these old box cars, with instructions for hooking up the brakes, securing the doors, maintenance, and in this case, where to send the empty box car after you've unloaded it.

This one happens to be a Swift and Co. box car, with instructions to send it back to Sioux City.

Swift's Premium

Swift's Premium, a photo by William 74 on Flickr.

We recently visited this vintage Swift & Co. refrigerated car, parked out the back of the Fox River Trolley Museum. I've seen a couple of these in other museums, and somewhere I found a photo of a Chicago & North Western freight train pulling a solid line of them out of the city. Not a surprise since Swift had a big facility in Chicago (big enough to warrant it's own stop on the CTA's Stockyards branch).

Swift

Swift, a photo by William 74 on Flickr.

A vintage refrigerated rail car, once owned by the Swift company.

Oscar Mayer

Oscar Mayer, originally uploaded by William 74.

While not the most common rail cars (especially now), box cars are probably the most versatile, with the ability to carry just about anything that can be loaded into it. Originally they were hand loaded, but of course forklifts and other devices have sped up the process. However, box cars are still a good deal slower to load and unload than other types of car, which helps to explain the decline in their use since World War II. They've been largely supplanted by intermodal containers, which can be loaded once at the factory and unloaded once at their final destination.

This happens to be an old Oscar Mayer car. That's right, the hot dog and baloney people. A lot of companies had their own fleets of box cars, which sped up the shipping process a bit and also provided a nice rolling billboard.