Transitional Chesapeake & Ohio PM District auto parts box cars

On June 6; 1947, the C&O acquired some 9,447 box cars from the then-merged Pere Marquette fleet of freight cars. In doing so it ended up with new car numbers. We have been led to believe that these "new" Chesapeake & Ohio car number equalled the number "2" in front of the "old" Pere Marquette number: well, not always.

The automobile industry, and General Motors in particular, was one of the PM District's biggest customers. The C&O needed automobile parts cars for shipping between supplier plants and assembly plants. As these assigned cars were modified, the mechanical department, continuing in the PM's tradition, agreed to designate numbers in the C&O 254000 through C&O 260127 range for automobile parts and other special cars. It appears that many older cars in the PM 54000-60066 series would just fade away and might not ever get renumbered.

The freight car photographs that were recently uncovered are of the C&O 254400-254460 series. They were modified and renumbered from cars in PM series 82000-83499 in mid-1949. The car series was later expanded to 71 cars ending with C&O 254470. These cars serviced the GM parts and assembly plants in Flint and Saginaw, Michigan (regrettably, the pool name on the doors is illegible). Also in 1949, five other PM 82000-series were assigned to automotive parts service. They were assigned to a new, short-lived series: C&O 258000258004.

The remaining PM 82000-series cars began to fade out of the PM roster and into the C&O roster as C&O 282000-283499. Limited numbers of ex-PM cars, however, did carry PM reporting marks and numbers (therefore, it would not be strange to see both PM 82000 and corresponding C&O numbers from the same or similar series in a yard together). The total number of PM and renumbered ex-PM 82000 series cars together remained relatively constant up until the late 1950s. Many were, however, reassigned back to general or new special uses (see the author's comments in the table on page 8). Their totals started to dive in the mid-1960s, but a few stayed around into 1974, and one even survived until 1983.

A table detailing the chronology of these roster changes, plus PM-era and later C&O photographs of these cars, are provided at the end of this article.

The author thanks Tom Dixon and Carl Shaver for their assistance in putting together this "snapshot" look at these cars.

FOOTNOTE: Interestingly, the C&O had to deal with both a C&O 8200083999 series 40-ton, wood side-- sheathed, staggered double-door box cars and PM 82000-83499 50-ton, allsteel, single door box cars in their reporting system. The wood-sheathed C&O box cars became obsolete in 1953. The 82000-series designation would eventually be picked up by coil-steel cars. These older C&O box cars are described in Plate 36 of Carl Shaver's C&OHS book, Freight Car Equipment of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway August 1, 1937.

Copyright Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, Inc. May 2000
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