Boxcar facts for kids

A steel-bodied boxcar built in 1926 for the South Australian Railways.

A wooden boxcar from the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic Railway.

A boxcar with two doors passing through Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

A boxcar is a type of train car that is completely enclosed. It is mainly used to carry different kinds of goods, also known as freight. In North America, these cars are called boxcars. Other countries, like the United Kingdom and Australia, often call them goods vans or covered wagons.

Boxcars are very useful because they can carry almost any type of load. They usually have sliding doors on the sides. Some even have doors at the ends or special adjustable walls inside. These features help load very large items.

What Are Boxcars Used For?

Illustration of a boxcar being unloaded with a wheelbarrow.

Boxcars can carry many different types of goods. In the past, people loaded them by hand. Today, machines like forklifts help load and unload them much faster. Even with machines, boxcars can be slower to load than other special train cars. This is one reason why fewer boxcars are used now compared to after World War II.

Another big reason for their decline is the rise of container shipping. A shipping container is like a boxcar without wheels. It can be easily moved between container ships, trucks, and flatcars (flat train cars). This makes it easy to deliver goods directly from one place to another.

In the early 1900s, boxcars were also used to carry bulk items like coal, especially in the central United States. Many companies even created special machines to load coal into boxcars automatically. By 1905, hundreds of these machines were in use.

Boxcars and Passengers

In the early 1900s, the Manila Railroad Company in the Philippines used boxcars to carry extra passengers. This happened because they did not have enough regular passenger railroad cars. By the 1910s, new passenger cars were built, and boxcars were no longer needed for passengers.

Sometimes, people traveling without tickets, like migrant workers, have used boxcars for their journeys. Boxcars are enclosed, which offers some protection from the weather.

Hicube Boxcars

In recent years, a new type of boxcar called a "hicube" boxcar has become more common in the United States. These boxcars are taller than regular ones. Because they are so tall, they can only travel on train routes that have enough space above the tracks.

The part of the hicube boxcar that is extra tall is often painted with a white band. This helps train workers easily see if the car is accidentally sent on a route that is too low for it. The inside height of these large boxcars can be about 12 feet 9 inches (3.89 meters).

See also

• Autorack
• Refrigerator car
• Stock car