Greenville Steel Car Company 86’ High Cube Double Plug Door Box Car

During the 1960s, the most radical freight car designs employed the extreme height clearances offered by Plate F car designs. In 1964, no car type articulated this extreme more than the 86-foot, purpose-built “Auto Parts” boxcars. These large boxcars became fixtures on the rails all over North American mainlines, riding hot trains to deliver components vital to the productivity of auto plants. While several car builders offered 86’ auto parts boxcars, the most prolific builder of the double plug door design was Greenville Steel Car Company of Greenville PA. More than 4,400 of these cars were acquired by most major railroads, and they were assigned to pools where multiple railroad’s cars served a specific shipper or shippers. Original utilization of these cars was for Ford, Pontiac, and Chrysler, as well as deliveries from 3rd party parts suppliers to the auto plants. Greenville’s 1964-1978 production was the longest run for this car type, with many still in service today.

Tangent Scale Models offers high-end HO models of the Greenville 86’ High Cube Double Plug Door Box Car in HO scale! This is not just a single box car model, but instead a system of 86’ High Cube Double Plug Door Box Car models.

The Tangent Greenville 86’ High Cube Double Plug Door Box Car system is a state of the art, dimensionally-accurate scale replica that was tooled to Greenville Steel Car plans and verified with field measurements. The model comes with highly accurate “true-to-life” colors and “hyper-accurate” lettering including exact stenciling, fonts, and lettering placement. The Greenville 86’ system of models offers a multitude of detail variations and phases to replicate the many different Greenville Steel Car offerings. A quick synopsis of the era and railroad-specific detail variations include:

• Body shells with or without overlapping side panels

• EOCC (end of car cushioning) or COCC (center of car cushioning) “near scale”draft gear variations with genuine Kadee scale couplers

• Separate flexible rubber air hoses

• Roofs with running board supports remaining in place (1965+ appearance since the running boards were gone by 1966) and roofs without running board supports (1965+ Greenville production)

• Under car brake system variations

• “See through” etched metal end crossover platforms in three possible options: Gypsum, Apex, or Morton

• Side tack board types/sizes and locations

• Seven prototypically-accurate brake stands (Ajax, Universal, Equipco, Miner 6600, Champion-Peacock, Elcon-National, Peacock 850)

• Two possible handbrake “brake wheel” options

• Optional 3rd door arm hinge parts to be configured one of three ways

• Two brand new truck sideframes: 70-Ton Barber S-2A Roller Bearing Truck or a 100-Ton “Low Profile” Barber S-2-C Roller Bearing Truck (outlined at the end of this press release)

• 33” or 36” wheels, as applicable to each model

• Two brand new truck brake beam part options

• Three brand new “rotating” roller bearing truck cap options

• Recommended age 14 years and older

Canadian National (CN) “Delivery 10-1978” is the first Greenville 86’ auto parts offering in Canadian National. The CN rostered a few orders of Greenville cars, but this order for 80 cars in 1978 was the largest. The 1978 cars have body-mounted brake gear and End-of-Car Cushioning components, along with that signature 5-grab iron body that makes them stand out from any other style of 86’ Greenville box car. Some of these cars have lasted in their original CNA brown delivery scheme for a long time – we can verify an example to at least 2016! We know this scheme is a big deal – and we thank our CN fans for their patience. We wanted to release it with the correct body grab iron details.

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