History

Equipment diagram courtesy Greg McDonnell

The 300 11500-11799 series boxcars were rebuilt by the DT&I Jackson Shops in 1936. They were originally USRA double-sheathed wood boxcars 11000-11299 acquired from the Government Equipment Trust in 1920. The cars got steel sheathed sides and very rare 16-panel radial Cambre roofs but kept their 5/5/5 Murphy ends, underframes and Andrews trucks (the two photos I have of these cars have one Andrews truck and one Bettendorf truck on each car). Their interior capacity increased from 3028 Cu. Ft. to 3193 Cu. Ft. and their carrying capacity remained at 40 tons.

200 of these boxcars were re-equipped as insulated boxcars with 8' plug doors between 1956 and 1958 and were re-numbered 19000-19199. One car survived in company service at Flat Rock yard until it was scrapped in the early 1990's. There is also a 11500 carbody without trucks in Jackson, Ohio at the Jackson Auction Center (along the former ROW leading to the DT&I car shops).

Information courtesy of Jim Hediger, Martin Lofton, Al Westerfield.

If you have additional information, corrections, photos, or diagrams you would like to have added to this page, please e-mail me.

Revenue Service Info

Clicking on the underlined numbers brings up a list of which individual cars
were assigned to that service at that time.

ORER Data Courtesy James Brewer, Craig Dunn, Scott Heiden, Martin Lofton, Mark Plank, Michael Schwiebert

Prototype Photographs

Location unknown, sometime after 1957

DT&I 11755  Hamler OH 1950s   John Schwiebert photo

DT&I 11674  Toronto ON February 1956  Don McCartney photo

A surviving 11500 in 2003!
This 11500-series carbody is located at the entrance to the Jackson Auction Center between the C&O station and the former DT&I car shops. The gravel road in front of the car body is the former location of the DT&I trackage leading into the car shop complex. There's a 50' round-roof X32 boxcar body to the left of this one; next time I visit Jackson, I'll have to bring my tree-pruning saw!

Modeling the Car

Martin Lofton did an excellent two-part article in the September and October 1989 Railroad Model Craftsman on the history and modeling of many different steel-side USRA rebuilt boxcars. The DT&I cars are described but not modeled.

Tichy's #293-4028 USRA 40' Rebuilt Box Car w/Steel Sides is the best place to start modeling the DT&I 11500-series cars. The roof needs to be replaced with a 16-panel Cambre radial roof (if you want to get really picky), a fishbelly centersill added (Accurail's #112-105 is good) and square stirrup steps added to match the DT&I cars. Microscale decals #87-315 DT&I compass herald and reporting marks could be used to model a post -1955 car if you use correct dimensional data with it.

Accurail's 4600-series USRA double-sheath box could also be used, but you'd have to add steel sides, 6' Youngstown doors and a 16-panel radial roof (Accurail's car has a 14-panel peaked roof).

The DT&I leased hundreds of cars from the Pennsy, N&W and other roads in the PRR family over the years. In 1953 they had 39 PRR X26c USRA rebuilds on the roster (73 in 1/55) that were also close to the Tichy kit (PRR's X26c were 18" taller and had 7' wide doors: two Tichy kits could be combined to accurately model these cars). Thankfully, Tichy has provided decals to do the pre-1955 PRR leased cars: