Other surviving electric (and any other odd) boxcabs, including an airbox (steam/pneumatic), steam boxcabs, a boxgon, and even odder boxcabs (VERY much odder), are
now on their own (richly-deservèd) Electric Boxcabs page, et seq., and Odd Boxcabs page, continuation page 5.
Lee Snover [Stuff It Storage Co. (LeeTown Models)] advised that she ran from 1926 to 1990 and was scrapped in '93; one of two built, probably the first (haven't checked
serial numbers yet) - the second one had a bell on the roof and different end beams.
Lee, and Rich Garich, make O-Scale 23-ton GE boxcabs; don't hold your breath, but rumor hath it that we might just see a Porter 22½-ton boxcab next.
The question of Porter vs. GE bothered me so I asked Lee what he knew and he sent this (edited): Porters were built in May and July of 1926, for a fruit company;
they used Climax@ 6-cylinder distillate engines driving Westinghouse 300KW generators with two Westinghouse traction motors, one per axle, and
ended their days in Louisiana gravel companies. The last one was scrapped in 1993; it had also been used by Celotex Corp. for a while, and lettering was retained
till the end (this was written up in Extra 2200 south by Tom Yorke.
@ - Climax made a few steam boxcabs!
John F. Campbell, boxcab aficionado extraordinaire, wrote that
"General Electric built five 20 ton Box Cabs {etc.}"; this coverage has also
been moved to my GE Boxcabs page.
I deeply regret the passing on 23 Feb 2005 of John F. Campbell; John died of
an abdominal aneurysm on 23 Feb 2005 at the age of 65. A fine
obituary appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 01 Mar 05.
His work is again available (on my sbiii.com domain) at
AGEIR Boxcabs Pages Index and
AGEIR History {main page}, etc. - see
John F. Campbell for more about the re-created site.
In a courtesy rare for news media, the Journal Sentinel provided these
recent photos, by John's friend Deborah Morse-Kahn, of John relaxing at a Milwaukee
bistro:
(photos by D. Morse-Kahn, courtesy of and © 2005 Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel - all rights reserved)
Thanks, JS! You can see the good humor (or is John thinking ,
"Now, just WHY is this photographer interrupting my breakfast?"?). John
was an amateur historian of some note, specializing in the mining railroads of
northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as well as in effigy and
burial mounds in the Wisconsin and the Midwest, not to mention boxcabs.
The Red River Lumber #502, noted on the main Boxcabs page and on the Boxcabs continuation page 3 had a sister
engine built in 1927 by the Red River Lumber Company, in spite of trouble with #502. It was home-built (I assume it was a boxcab!) and not much is
known about it other than it was built by young engineer Theodore Walker, from a boxcar (no less!), with a 100-hp diesel engine shortly after replaced by a
150-hp unit and that both diesel engines were made by an outfit named
FOOS
(really)!
Information on the RRL #502 is from Hanft's book
(see the bibliography, on the Boxcabs continuation page).
Please note - I have removed further reference to a 1907 railroad-built boxcab, the South Brooklyn
#4; it turns out (per Bill Russell) to be an electric engine! Worse (for me), it is clearly such in Jay Bendersky's book, "Brooklyn's Waterfront Railways",
which I've had all along!
There were (and even are) jillions and zillions of other boxcab electrics; so much boxcab info has been added to this page that I had to move them to a
new page just for electrics!
I wrote about the second Long Island Rail Road boxcab, 1st #402, a Brill failure which then soldiered on on the Grand Trunk & Western.
1949 saw the end of steam at the Milwaukee Car Ferry Terminal with the arrival of GT&W #7730. It had been built by Brill in 1926, #22315, and, in 1934 it became
GT&W #7730, Class Q-2-a. In 1950, it became 73, Class LS-5-l, and in 1960 it was scrapped. Note that the coal loader is still in place in the photo of #7730
Don Ross took when he was working as Milwaukee Road yard clerk at Stowell and handled the interchange between the GT&W and the Milwaukee Road. Don writes, "This
fascinating machine was still around when I got home from the Army." Here, with Don's permission, are his photos of #402(1st)/7730/73, from his fabulous
photo collection:
#402(1st)/7730/73 details and photos courtesy of Don Ross
Louis A. Marre, in "Diesel locomotives: The First 50 Years" (see Boxcabs Bibliography), has a photo on page 365 of #7730
working the GT&W ferry slip, pushing a string of cars aboard (pulling off from?) the Grand Rapids. Marre says the LIRR unit was a gas-electric and was
re-engined with two Cummins 250-hp diesels by the GT&W in their own shops.
Brill also built one other boxcab, in 1927, for the Lehigh Valley, for which they had previously built a number of gas-electric boxcabs. LV #101, Class DE-1,
pictured on page 364 of Marre (1995), had an M&S 12-clinder diesel engine.
Electromotive Boxcabs
EMC B&O #50 (now on its own page) - at the St. Louis Museum of Transportation is not an ALCo-GE-IR
boxcab, it is an Electro-Motive Corp. {EMC preceded EMD} model AA {1,800-hp Class DP-1} passenger locomotive. It is a very historic diesel locomotive, the first
passenger road locomotive not articulated to its train. Placed in Royal Blue service {Jersey City - Washington DC.} on 22 August 1935, it was given a shovelnose
and transferred to Abraham Lincoln service (Chicago - St. Louis) on B&O subsidiary Alton in Apr 1936. Following the B&O-Alton breakup, Alton bought it in May
1943. Following WWII, it was restored to its pure boxcab appearance and became GM&O #1200 and served in local freight service and on the Joliet commuter train.
Retired in 1956, it was donated by the scrapper to St. Louis in late 1958. It deserves its own web page {as noted - but see below; also, see the EMC
B&O #50 page for much more about still other EMC/EMD boxcabs}.
EMC also built some boxcabs for the SF in 1935; even less well-known but far wilder are the two 1,000hp E6 boxcabs (yes, Virginia, 1,000hp
E6 boxcabs!), #751 and 752, built by EMC in 1940 for the Rock Island for the Rocky Mountain Rocket and later reclassified AB6. They were the second
units on the train, with squared cabs, and would cut out at Limon with the Colorado Springs section (and v-v.). Sometime ca. 1960 they were upgraded to 2,000hp
and reassigned to Chicago push-pull service. As originally built, they were basically an E6b but with only one prime mover and a boxcab control stand and baggage
area where the second engine would have otherwise been installed. Weeee-ird!
Most EMC/EMD material moved to the B&O #50 page.
You ask about another boxcab in the upper midwest. Dan Patch Electric Lines #100 was a gas-electric built by General Electric in June 1913 and served on the
Minneapolis, Anoka and Cuyuna Range from 1922 to around 1968. It was rebuilt in 1954 to a diesel-electric (see article in Trains, 6/59, pp. 21-22). It is
now at the Minnesota Transportation Museum in Duluth (see Trains article, 12/73 pp. 40-49).
{I've added the Dan Patch engine to the list of Survivors; there's a wealth of detail now on its own page.}
Canadian Boxcabs Canadien - There were also boxcabs in Canada, both diesels and the famous electric boxcabs that ran around Montréal. The
Musée Ferroviare Canadien/Canadian Railroad Museum in St. Constant (Delson), Québec, near Montréal, definitely has two early CN
boxcabs, a 1929 CLC (BW) diesel, CNR #77 {#7700}, NCC {H&W} CP #7000, and 1914 GE electric,
CN #6711.
One of CNR's early diesels, #9000-9001, ended up pulling an armo(u)red train during WWII on the West Coast of Canada; it was/they were scrapped shortly after WWII.
The National Library of Canada put me on to the museum and the curator of la Musée said boxcab #6711 last ran in 1995, Further, a new Web ami à Québec snail-mailed
info. on the EMD Model 60 which I've added. For more on the CNR #9000, see below.
Good ol' Mark Laundry came through for us again! He sent me the site URL of the Canadian National
Railway Historic Photograph Collection, "a co-operative project between The National Museum of Science and Technology (Ottawa), Canadian National Railway and
Industry Canada", where there is a magnificent photograph, negative #31545,
showing "Diesel locomotive 9000 {and the other unit - SB,III} with Passenger Train at Dixie Station, Lachine, Quebec, c. 1929"! You'll have to go there on the
link; I couldn't load the picture for some reason. [Actually, I recognize the big beasts, now that I see them again; I have them in Marre/Pinkepank.]
In 1932, to avoid import duties, CNR's Montréal shops built a boxcab similar to a GE-IR 300-HP, 60-tonner, with a Canadian I-R engine and Canadian GE electricals
(Marre, 1995, page 429).
Baldwin boxcabs seemed to have gotten short shrift here;
they now are on their own page
and four survivors are linked there.
Fairbanks-Morse got into the game really late; they built six railcars in 1939 and the hoods
on their hood units were so wide they almost qualify, but they never built a true boxcab.
Let's not forget those old boxcabs in Brazil, on the Paulista Railways. Just 2 or 3 are still working today, but I forget if they are diesels or electrics
(I think the Paulista had both). A new Web friend in Brazil reminded me; thanks.
HEY! - I forgot all about the seven 1939 71-ton Whitcomb boxcabs, #501-507, built for the Texas Mexican Railway (q.v.),
with De La Vergne VO engines (the same as in Baldwins) and four powered axles in a rigid frame (Marre, 1995, page 422)! Later, in 1947, TexMex ordered carbodies
from from St. Louis Car Co. for four more, which they built in the TexMex shops with lead trucks (1-D-1), #700A and B and 701A and B; they had Cooper-Bessemer engines
(Marre, 1995, page 432).
John J. Blair wrote (16 Sep 98), "Hey what about the little 4-wheel boxcab diesels that GE built in the late '30's (a 3' gauge 23 tonner was
used in a line relocation on the Sumpter Valley RR)". He said he'd research them for us. He should be well qualified; he's the OWNER of actual 12"=1'
former NYO&W #7, a 23-ton endcab GE diesel (s/n 15007)! It was built for Wickwire Brothers of Cortland, NY, by GE in November 1941. John reminds me that
Grandt Line produced an HO/HOn3 version of the Sumpter Valley boxcab a few years ago. Thanks, John! See my GE Boxcabs page.
PRR BOXCABS
Excluding the many PRR electric boxcabs, covered on my
Electric Boxcabs page, et seq., my "beloved" Pennsy didn't even get on board
until 1926, with an order for three tiny Class A-6 2-axle boxcabs they built at their
own Juniata shops (of course). I have moved all Pennsy boxcab coverage to
its own page to tie in the three survivors and the many
other Pennsy boxcabs.
When is a boxcab not a boxcab? Well, when it has an end cab and you look at a photo from the cab end and the roof lines line up (in the photo) and you
don't look very carefully! Marre (1995, page 378) has a photo of a 48-ton Davenport NG loco that got me all excited until I noticed the walkway at the other end;
curses, foiled again!
Marre (1995, page 381) pictures National Steel Car Co. CP #7000, with an Irish-built Harland & Wolff engine and only vestiges of walkways; does it qualify as a boxcab?
An "honorary" boxcab? On page 383, Marre (1995) shows that weird, one-off (and I do mean "off") Ingalls Shipbuilding Co. turret-cab GM&O #1900, which is almost
a boxcab at the front but clearly a boxcab at the back! I'd hazard a guess that the rear has a shunting cab (and, on page 398, a miniature of it by Plymouth).
Hey, wait a cotton-pickin', dog-bone minute, here; Harland & Wolff built the TITANIC!
In addition, some of the tiny Plymouth diesels have such miniscule hoods and such relatively gigantic cabs that they could almost qualify as boxcabs!
26 Mar 99 - Bruce Schryver advised that "Pacific Electric had two similar units, numbers 1501 and 1502 that they received from somewhere back east. These were
gas-electric, but had the same configuration. They were fitted with trolley poles to control crossing signals, and were used for short haul service in areas where
they intersected non-electrified trackage" (PE ran lots of electric box motors).
Norm Metcalf of Boulder, Colorado, advised (12 Oct 00) that the units may have come from the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester & Dubuque Electric Traction Co. (the "Dan
Patch Line") and that their #103 is said to have become PE's 2nd #1501.
Per Norm, page 519 of Olson's "The Electric Railways Of Minnesota" gives (possibly conflicting) dispositions for MStPR&DET #100 through
#103.
From Brian Norden, a director of both the Orange Empire Railway Museum and the Association
of Railway Museums comes this information on the PE units (basically unedited):
From information from Ira Swett's 'Cars of the Pacific Electric':
"PE 1501 and 1502 were built by GE in 1915 for Dan Patch Lines. The 1501 came direct to PE in 1916 and the 1502 was on another SP owned
property (Visalia Electric #402) from 1916 to 1918. The Visalia Electric kept another one of these locomotives #401. PE scrapped its engines in 1944 and the
VE obtained spare parts."
"The Pacific Electric also cut down two Bill gas-electric cars that once ran on the Northwestern Pacific. The result were two locomotives (1648 and 1649) that were
43'3" long and appeared as box cabs.
I had expected (Jul 00) to have photos of Mexican boxcabs "soon" and there is a great Spanish site (en Español, but with an Ingles version coming ca. Aug 00) at
http://www.todoTrenes.com/, with a boxy-cab diesel, but
I have to draw the line somewhere!
Speaking of great gurus of boxcabs, good buddy Don Ross, great guru of boxcab photos (among many others), sent along this gem, guessing that I thought I could call it
a boxcab:
21 Sep 2001 photo by G. H. Menge, courtesy of D. Ross - all rights reserved)
George H. Menge took this photo of Harsco Track Technologies #111 in Topeka, Kansas, on 21 Sep 2001; it sure looks like it's Daddy was an
F-40PH (Harsco was Tamper and #111 heads one of their six rail grinding trains).
[But why is there a miniature British telephone box (booth) on the right front buffing beam?]
Back to the other guru - John Campbell asked "What can you tell me about the attached image of New York Central Box Cab #H-4... ???" Answer - nothing.
This one was a new one on me and really odd; it looked to be a 40/50-tonner or so and the "H"could well stand for Harmon, but the "4"? That implies three others!
So I passed it along to you folks out there; what could YOU tell us about this
oddity?
Cropped from image courtesy of J. F. Campbell - all rights reserved)
There's more here than meets the eye and I moved the coverage to
NY Central Boxcabs page on 03 Jan 03.
SHOVELNOSES
The question was raised, "Are the GE Shovelnose export engines boxcabs?" ALCo powered versions worked in Argentina and Uruguay and other versions were the famous
White Pass & Yukon units and the Philippine National Railways engines. It's a fair question, especially since I include the Alton shovelnoses and such and even the
EMD E6 boxcab versions; but this is MY site and I choose not to cover them; they are standard, late-model, diesels and belong elsewhere. Well - - - ,
mostly so. Just because they were made later on and are a cross between a boxcab and a standard cowl diesel, I can still throw a little memory their way.
However, to open up this page, I moved this coverage to my GE Boxcabs page and that of the the Chiriqui
Land Co's. "mini-boxcabs", as well.
Incidentally, speaking still of GE export models and Alaska and the Shovelnoses, the same Bruce Pryor (noted directly above) also has a
White Pass & Yukon Route site.
The Pennsy had a shovelnose oil-electric, #4663, frequently used on the Logansport - South Bend, Indiana, branch, but it was a Westinghouse 73' rail car
(combine), NOT a locomotive - more on this moved to the PRR Boxcabs page.
British Boxcabs - P. Excell, who has been a veritable gold-mine of information, advised 02 Aug 00 that what is said to be the first oil-engined loco (I assume
he means "ever") was built near Bradford (in Hull) in 1896, by Ackroyd Stuart. I have asked Prof. Excell to expound further on this.
Sam Herschbein, a boxcab afficionado from the Pacific Northwest (who put me on to the Foley Bros. #110-1, thank you very much) advised (13
Nov 98) that "eBay has a Milwaukee Boxcab builder's plate for auction, item # 41868870".
McKeen Boxcabs? - Yup!
A curator at the California State Railroad Museum alerted me to the existence of McKeen boxcabs, wondering if I might
consider the McKeen locomotives to be box cabs (might I!) and forwarding photos from the 1916 and 1919 Locomotive Dictionary (later Locomotive Cyclopedia). Because
both had the same photo with different captions, I am showing the better image here with both captions:
Image from 1919 Locomotive Dictionary)
[Click on thumbnailed picture for larger/sharper image]
1916 Locomotive Dictionary Caption
1919 Locomotive Dictionary Caption
[Click on thumbnailed picture for larger/sharper image]
McKeen also built several other locomotives along similar lines, some with 2 axles and some with 3 axles; this one appears to me to be a 2-axle loco with a pony truck.
I shouldn't be at all surprised if this car is little more than the business end of a McKeen "Windsplitter" motor car.
1903
Boxcab!
(04 Oct 08)
As noted on the main Boxcabs page, Frank Hicks advised me on 03 Oct 2008 that there was an internal-combustion-engined locomotive working
on the Macomb & Western Illinois Railroad in 1903, making it possibly the first I.C.-powered locomotive in revenue
service on this side of the water. Frank should know; he wrote a book on that railroad; The Little Road: The Story of the Macomb
Industry & Littleton Railway. Macomb, Illinois: Western Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-9777116-0-9. There is also a
general history of the railroad on Wikipedia at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macomb_and_Western_Illinois_Railroad
Here is information excerpted (and slighly edited) from Frank's background on this little-known locomotive:
The Macomb & Western Illinois Railroad (later known as the Macomb Industry & Littleton) had the locomotive, never given a road number, built by someone or some
firm in 1903 with an internal-combustion engine of some sort. Despite the existence of several photos, Frank was never able to come up with any definitive
information on who built this locomotive or what sort of engine and transmission system was used; perhaps a sharp-eyed reader can supply the answers.
(Images cropped from pictures courtesy of Archives and Special Collections,
Western Illinois University Libraries)
[Click on thumbnailed pictures for larger/sharper images]
(Image cropped from picture courtesy of Archives and Special Collections,
Western Illinois University
Libraries)
[Click on thumbnailed pictures for larger/sharper images]
(Image cropped from picture courtesy of Archives and Special Collections,
Western Illinois University
Libraries)
[Click on thumbnailed pictures for larger/sharper images]
The engine was definitely internal-combustion, though Frank doesn't know whether it used gasoline, diesel, or distillate fuel; he's also
not sure of its drive system, but his guess is that it was gas [or diesel]-electric rather than -mechanical. This guess is based on
two things: first, it was referred to by the railroad in promotional materials as "the electric motor" ["motor" meaning electric
locomotive in this case]; second, in surviving photos a controller handle similar to contemporary streetcar K-type controllers can be
seen through the front window of the locomotive, suggesting that an electric controller may have been used for speed control. The
locomotive appears to have been built on a modified Pullman truck, and with its primitive wooden carbody construction, the carbody could
potentially have been built in almost any carpentry shop. The prime mover and drive system, though, were pioneering for its day,
leading Frank to believe that a larger firm may have been involved in its design and construction. The 1903 construction date begs the
question: was this THE FIRST internal-combustion locomotive used in regular service in this country?
Anyway, the locomotive didn't last very long, nor was it very successful. It wasn't powerful enough to haul more than one car
over the M&WI's grades, and its short and fairly unsuccessful career was ended abruptly when the railroad's engine house burned down on
31 Dec 1904, completely destroying the locomotive almost exactly a year after it was delivered.
Thanks, Frank!
Can anyone out there please shed more definitive light on this pioneering little locomotive?
Be sure to look at the
SURVIVOR BOXCAB LOCATIONS MAP on the main Survivors page.
LEGACY
What happens to all this when I DIE or (heaven forfend!)
lose interest? See LEGACY.
There are now more than seventy-five (75) BOXCAB pages;
see the full INDEX, now on a separate page.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
See Copyright Notice on primary home page.
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Contact S. Berliner, III
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To tour the Boxcabs pages in sequence, the arrows take you from the Boxcabs index page to this first Boxcabs page, to continuation pages 3 and up,
then 100-tonner LIRR #401 and her sisters, survivor boxcabs (with map) and survivor notes, survivor CNJ #1000 (the very first), Ingersoll-Rand boxcabs (with
instruction manual), other (non-ALCo/GE/I-R) boxcabs, Baldwin-Westinghouse boxcabs, odd boxcabs, and finally model boxcabs.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III -
1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008,
2011
- all rights reserved.
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- The vast bulk of my massive Web presence (over 485 pages) had been hosted by AT&T's WorldNet service since 30 May 1996;
they dropped WorldNet service effective 31 Mar 2010 and I have been scrambling to transfer everything. Everything's saved but all the links have to be changed,
mostly by hand. See my sbiii.com Transfer Page for any updates on this tedious process.
The primary Boxcabs Index has been moved to a separate page,
