# Boxcar

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Enclosed railroad car used to carry freight

For other uses, see [Boxcar (disambiguation)](/source/Boxcar_(disambiguation)).

Not to be confused with [Bockscar](/source/Bockscar).

This article is about American freight car. For UIC, Australian and New Zealand railway practice, see [Covered goods wagon](/source/Covered_goods_wagon). For the Wild West wagon, see [Covered wagon](/source/Covered_wagon).

Box car owned by [TTX](/source/TTX_Company)

A wooden-bodied [Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway](/source/Duluth%2C_South_Shore_and_Atlantic_Railway) boxcar on display at the [Mid-Continent Railway Museum](/source/Mid-Continent_Railway_Museum) in [North Freedom, Wisconsin](/source/North_Freedom%2C_Wisconsin)

ANR Boxcars on a freight travelling through [Farragut, Tennessee](/source/Farragut%2C_Tennessee).

A **boxcar** is the [North American](/source/North_America) ([AAR](/source/Association_of_American_Railroads)) and [South Australian Railways](/source/South_Australian_Railways) term for a [railroad car](/source/Railroad_car#Freight_cars) that is enclosed and generally used to carry [freight](/source/Freight). The boxcar, while not the simplest [freight car](/source/Railroad_car#Freight_cars) design, is considered one of the most versatile since it can carry most loads. Boxcars have side [sliding doors](/source/Sliding_door) of varying size and operation, and some include end doors and adjustable [bulkheads](/source/Bulkhead_(partition)) to load very large items.

Similar covered freight cars outside North America are [covered goods wagons](/source/Covered_goods_wagon) and, depending on the region, are called *goods van* ([UK](/source/United_Kingdom) and [Australia](/source/Australia)), *covered wagon* ([UIC](/source/International_Union_of_Railways) and UK) or simply *van* (UIC, UK and Australia).[a]

## Use

Illustration of a boxcar being unloaded by means of a [wheelbarrow](/source/Wheelbarrow)

Boxcars can carry most kinds of freight. Originally they were hand-loaded, but in more recent years mechanical assistance such as [forklifts](/source/Forklift) have been used to load and empty them faster. Their generalized design is still slower to load and unload than specialized designs of car, and this partially explains the decline in boxcar numbers since [World War II](/source/World_War_II). The other cause for this decline is the dramatic shift of waterborne [cargo](/source/Cargo) transport to [container](/source/Intermodal_container) shipping. Effectively a boxcar without the wheels and [chassis](/source/Chassis), a container is designed to be amenable to [intermodal freight transport](/source/Intermodal_freight_transport), whether by [container ships](/source/Container_ship), [trucks](/source/Truck) or [flatcars](/source/Flatcar), and can be delivered door-to-door.[*[citation needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)*]

Boxcars were used for bulk commodities such as [coal](/source/Coal), particularly in the [Midwestern United States](/source/Midwestern_United_States) in the early 20th century. This use was sufficiently widespread that several companies developed competing box-car loaders to automate coal loading. By 1905, 350 to 400 such machines were in use, mostly at Midwestern coal mines.[2]

### Passenger use

In the [Philippines](/source/Philippines), Boxcars were used as additional third-class accommodations by the [Manila Railway Company](/source/Manila_Railroad_Company) during the early 1900s as there was a shortage of true [passenger railroad cars](/source/Passenger_railroad_car).[3] These problems were considered solved by the 1910s as British manufacturer [Metropolitan](/source/Metro-Cammell) and American builders such as [Harlan and Hollingsworth](/source/Harlan_and_Hollingsworth) constructed more passenger cars for the railroad.[4]

In the present day, [hobos](/source/Hobo) and [migrant workers](/source/Migrant_worker) have often used boxcars in their journeys (see [freighthopping](/source/Freighthopping)), since they are enclosed and cannot be seen by [railroad police](/source/Railroad_police), as well as being to some degree insulated from cold weather.[5] [Hobo Code](/source/Hobo_code), a form of hieroglyphs used by hobos, developed as a code to give information to Hobos freighthopping.[6]

## Hicube boxcar

In the 21st century, high cubic capacity (hicube) boxcars have become more common in the US. These are taller than regular boxcars and as such can only run on routes with increased clearance (see [loading gauge](/source/Loading_gauge#North_America) and [structure gauge](/source/Structure_gauge)). The excess height section of the car end is often painted with a white band to be easily visible if wrongly assigned to a low-clearance line.[7]

The internal height of the 86-foot (26.21 m) hicube boxcars originally used in automotive parts service was generally 12 feet 9 inches (3.89 m).[8]

## See also

- [Autorack](/source/Autorack) – Railway rolling stock used to transport automobiles

- [General Utility Van](/source/General_Utility_Van) – Enclosed railway wagon used by British Rail to carry mail and parcelsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets

- [Railbox](/source/Railbox) – American owner of boxcars

- [Refrigerator car](/source/Refrigerator_car) – Railroad car designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures

- [Stock car](/source/Stock_car_(rail)) – Rolling stock used for carrying livestock on railways

- [Troop sleeper](/source/Troop_sleeper) – Type of military railroad passenger car

## Notes

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** An exception in Australia was the former [South Australian Railways](/source/South_Australian_Railways), which adopted US practices and terminologies; it used the term "boxcar".[1]: 1‑129

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** McAuliffe, Des (1999). "The Snowtown to Port Pirie line". *Proceedings of the 1999 Convention*. Modelling the Railways of South Australia. Adelaide.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Affelder, William L. (March 1905). ["Box-Car Loaders"](https://books.google.com/books?id=wYc5AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA372). *Mines and Minerals*. **XXV** (8): 372–377. Retrieved May 11, 2018.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** "Rolling stock of the Manila Railroad Co. 1904". *Railroad Gazette*. **35** (48). 1903.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Report of the General Manager for the Year Ended December 31, 1938. *Reports of the General Manager* (Report). Manila Railroad Company. March 17, 1939.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** ["Train Hopping: Why Do Hobos Risk Their Lives to Ride the Rails?"](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20756990). *BBC News*. December 19, 2012. Retrieved June 25, 2022.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** Berendsohn, Roy (November 17, 2020). ["Those Hobo Hieroglyphs That Appeared on Posts and Bridge Abutments Relayed Important Messages"](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a25174860/hobo-code/). *Popular Mechanics*. Retrieved June 25, 2022.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** ["60 ft Hicube Boxcar"](https://web.archive.org/web/20121114174030/http://www.gbrx.com/files/files/NAR/Box_Cars/BoxCars60Auto.pdf) (PDF). *GBRX.com*. Archived from [the original](http://www.gbrx.com/files/files/NAR/Box_Cars/BoxCars60Auto.pdf) (PDF) on November 14, 2012.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** Chatfield, D. Scott (January 1994). "Athearn HO Scale and Arnold N Scale 86-foot Box Cars". *Railmodel Journal*. **5** (8). Denver, Colorado: Golden Bell Press: 32–39.

v t e Rail transport freight rolling stock Enclosed equipment Autorack Boxcar (US) British railway milk tank wagon Cattle wagon Coil car Intermodal car Covered goods wagon (EU) Covered hopper Livestock wagon Milk car Refrigerator car (US) Refrigerated van (EU) RoadRailer Stock car Tank car Wagon with opening roof Open equipment Bogie bolster wagon Chauldron wagon Class U special wagon Conflat Double-stack car Flatcar (US) Flat wagon (EU) Gondola (US) Hopper car Kangourou wagon Lowmac Minecart Mineral wagon Modalohr Open wagon (EU) Pocket wagon Quarry tub Rollbock Rotary car dumper Schnabel car Slate wagon Specialized flatcars Transporter wagon Non-revenue equipment Ballast cleaner Ballast regulator Brake van Caboose Clearance car Crane Crew car Excavator Flanger Rail adhesion car Revenue collection car Power shovel Rotary snowplow Scale test car Stoneblower Tamping machine Track geometry car Work trains

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Boxcar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxcar) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxcar?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.