B2 40 foot USRA box car

USRA 40 foot box car HO kit with trucks and magnetic couplers. Forty-foot boxcars, and their 33 and 36-foot long predecessors, dominated the Great Northern’s car fleet for decades. They were used to haul anything that had to be protected from the weather. Grain was the traffic that paid the GN’s bills and grain was hauled in boxcars. Grain originated from Montana east of the Rocky Mountains eastward along the entire railway to the Minneapolis, and from central Montana and Eastern Washington to export elevators on the Lower Columbia River and Puget Sound. Lumber moved eastward from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana in box cars. Lumber was long haul traffic that generated good revenue per carload. Less than Carload and carload merchandise was an important commodity group due to its high revenue. Boxcar loads of merchandise moved predominately westward on the GN. Great Northern began to build its fleet of 40-foot box cars at the turn of the Twentieth Century. By 1917 the railway had purc