Past 86 Double Dr

86011 Conrail Quality double door single car; 86012 Conrail Quality 2-pack.
Conrail had the largest fleet of auto parts cars. These cars which still carry CR numbers now work for NS.

86021 Grand Trunk Western (DTI) double door single car. After GTW acquired Detroit Toledo & Ironton in 1983 cars like this with the GT - ”the Good Track road ” logo but without the name spelled out appeared, still with DTI reporting marks.

86041 Santa Fe double door single car; 86042 Santa Fe 2-pack. By the mid 70s, Santa Fe settled on this paint scheme for its 86 footers as they
came due for repainting.

86031 Norfolk Southern (SOU) double door single car; 86032 Norfolk Southern (SOU) 2-pack. For years following the 1982 merger of N&W and Southern, Norfolk Southern continued to use NW and SOU reporting marks, even on newly created number series and new cars.

86051 Chicago & North Western double door single car; 86052 Chicago & North Western 2-pack. C&NW had a significant fleet of auto parts cars. In later years, many were also used to haul breakfast cereal!

86061 Chesapeake & Ohio double door single car. 86062 C&O 2-pack.
Although largely associated with coal, C&O had a large network of lines in Michigan acquired with the Pere Marquette Railway in the 1940s.

86071 Denver & Rio Grande Western double door single car; 86072 D&RGW 2-pack. This run is a good example of how auto parts boxcars are owned and routed. There are no assembly plants located on the Rio Grande, however they are on the route from midwestern plants and those on the west coast. Therefore, within a multi-railroad pool of cars, Rio Grande contributed a proportion of the fleet. Since these pools encompass plants across the country, Rio Grande cars could circulate between Ohio and Missouri for years for instance and never ride the Rio Grande! This applies to every roadname. The key when modeling a realistic auto parts train is to have a wide variety of road names in your train.

86081 Detroit Toledo & Ironton double door single car; 86082 DT&I 2-pack.
Detroit Toledo & Ironton, as the name implies, serves the heart of America's auto industry. In fact, at one time the railroad was owned by Henry Ford. DT&I's massive fleet was also one of the most colorful with cars painted blue, green, and even magenta. We're starting with a trio of the striking sky blue cars.

86091 Conrail - Early, Hasty Repaint double door single car.
Conrail inherited its (and in fact the largest) fleet of auto parts boxcars from predecessors Penn Central and Erie Lackawanna. A number of these cars were hastily repainted shortly after the merger with early, often temporary, sets of stencils. CR 293357 was one of these. This car also received a replacement door during servicing that had been painted a different brown from the body of the car.

86101 L&N double door single car. Built in 1967, this car was in a pool assigned for loading at a Ford plant in Monroe, Michigan (on the New York Central.) Many think of L&N as a big Appalachian coal road, which of course they were, but they also served many manufacturing centers including Atlanta, Knoxville, Cincinnati, Louisville & Nashville (duh!), Memphis, St. Louis, Birmingham, Montgtomery, and after 1971 Indianapolis and Chicago!

86111 Grand Trunk Western - CN double door single car. 86112 Grand Trunk Western - CN double door 2-pack. GTW had been controlled by the Canadian National for decades. In 1995, CN was privatized and began to replace the familiar GT logo with it ’s own CN noodle. This version includes CN ’s website address. Most cars with this lettering are blue but a portion of the fleet is brown so we are including one in the 2-pack.

86121 Norfolk Southern -gray double door single car. 86122 2-pack. In recent years,a portion of Norfolk Southern ’s massive auto parts box fleet has appeared in this rather glitzy scheme.This scheme even includes the name spelled out in a style not used on their locomotives.The inclusion of the stallion logo is also noteworthy. Perhaps the special treatment reflects the high value of the cargo carried.The three road numbers in this run are from cars built by Greenville in the early 70s.

86131 NYC -Conrail double door single car.
With the split of Conrail between Norfolk Southern and CSX looming, the road began marking cars destined for the CSX fleet with NYC reporting marks. With the split of Conrail complete, the AAR reassigned the NYC reporting mark to CSX. NYC 241043 was originally built for Penn Central in their Despatch Shops.Since receiving it’s Conrail paint, the right door was replaced with an unpainted aluminum door from another car. The 2-Pack, 86132 includes one car with blue replacement door from a Chessie car and another car with all brown doors.

86141 Cotton Belt (big SP) single car, 86142 2-pack.
These are arguably the flashiest members of the Southern Pacific/Cotton Belt fleet ever! When originally delivered in 1967, this group was assigned for loading at a Ford stamping plant in Buffalo but these assignments changed over the years. A number of these cars are still in service today in their original paint!

86151 Southern single car, 86152 2-pack. Southern Railway had a large fleet of 86' auto parts boxcars in a variety of paint schemes. 1969 saw the introduction of the "GIVES A GREEN LIGHT TO INNOVATIONS" motto. Usually, cars with cushion underframes such as these had SUPER CUSHION SERVICE to the right of the door but for some reason this group of cars came with SOUTHERN SERVES THE SOUTH instead.

86161 Pennsylvania single car, 86162 2-pack.
Delivered in 1966, this group of PRR cars was the largest batch ever delivered of this type of car. PRR had such a huge freight car fleet (over 112,000 cars of all types) that a typical mixed freight anywhere in the country was statistically certain to have some PRR cars in it!

Products bearing Chicago & North Western, Western Pacific, Cotton Belt and Rio Grande marks are made under trademark license from Union Pacific Railroad Company.

86171 Penn Central ex-PRR single car. PC 237851 had been delivered in PRR paint but shortly after the 1968 Penn Central merger, the car was renumbered and the PRR keystone covered by the new PC logo. Apparently the PRR tuscan red was in too good a shape to warrant repainting the whole car green... (Single only-no 2pk.)

86181 Frisco single car, 86182 2-pack. Frisco served auto plants in Oklahoma and Missouri plus handled considerable bridge traffic from the Deep South to the Midwest and Southwest. The Frisco was acquired by Burlington Northern in 1980.

86191 Western Pacific single car, 86192 2-pack. WP had a large Ford plant on line at Milpitas, California and forwarded parts from Midwestern parts plants to this facility. Since this group of cars was part of a large multi-plant pool, a number of WP cars could be seen moving parts between the South and Midwest as well.

86201 Chicago & North Western -Yellow single car, 86202 2-pack.In 1980, Chicago & North Western changed from boxcar red to this yellow and black scheme with a three-color logo on many boxcars. The C&NW logos also changed over the years. These cars were delivered in brown with yellow and black “Chicago and North
Western Railway” logos which was later replaced by “Employee - North Western - Owned” but by the time these cars were painted yellow, they had long since switched to “Chicago and North Western System.”