Aboxcar is theNorth American (AAR) andSouth Australian Railways term for arailroad car that is enclosed and generally used to carryfreight. The boxcar, while not the simplestfreight car design, is considered one of the most versatile since it can carry most loads. Boxcars have sidesliding doors of varying size and operation, and some include end doors and adjustablebulkheads to load very large items.
Similar covered freight cars outside North America arecovered goods wagons and, depending on the region, are calledgoods van (UK andAustralia),covered wagon (UIC and UK) or simplyvan (UIC, UK and Australia).[a]
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Boxcars can carry most kinds of freight. Originally they were hand-loaded, but in more recent years mechanical assistance such asforklifts 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 sinceWorld War II. The other cause for this decline is the dramatic shift of waterbornecargo transport tocontainer shipping. Effectively a boxcar without the wheels andchassis, a container is designed to be amenable tointermodal freight transport, whether bycontainer ships,trucks orflatcars, and can be delivered door-to-door.[citation needed]
Boxcars were used for bulk commodities such ascoal, particularly in theMidwestern 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]
In thePhilippines, Boxcars were used as additional third-class accommodations by theManila Railway Company during the early 1900s as there was a shortage of truepassenger railroad cars.[3] These problems were considered solved by the 1910s as British manufacturerMetropolitan and American builders such asHarlan and Hollingsworth constructed more passenger cars for the railroad.[4]
In the present day,hobos andmigrant workers have often used boxcars in their journeys (seefreighthopping), since they are enclosed and cannot be seen byrailroad police, as well as being to some degree insulated from cold weather.[5]Hobo Code, a form of hieroglyphs used by hobos, developed as a code to give information to Hobos freighthopping.[6]
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 (seeloading gauge andstructure 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]