SCL/ACL/SAL freight cars still around

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Gentlemen, Beside our "Survivor List", does anyone keep a list or tally of SCL/ACL/SAL freight cars that are still in service or might be obtainable. The North Florida Railway Museum is looking for older cars from the 1940/50's through 1982. Particularly 40' boxcars, 40 or 50' gondolas, 50 ton hoppers, etc. Just today in Miami I saw gons still lettered for ACL and SCL. Got the ACL number but missed the SCL. These were in a work train just north of Hialeah yard. Any help would be appreciated. Seriously, a network or web site should be set up to monitor such equipment. There isn't much left. Thanks, William

-- William Billy (CRRGator@juno.com), April 21, 2003

Answers

As of December 2002, there is an ACL 40' flat car on a dead end siding at an old steel/iron yard in Camden,NJ. The car is used to move hvy material from off loading a gantry crane into and out of the facility building. They also store a lot of hvy assorted tools and "junk" on the car when it is not being used. It is a faded black with the ACL clearly visable, but the numbers are very difficult to read from the street.

Located in a high crime fenced in area, it is not easily accessable. That may be one reason it still exists. (Besides, it is one of the few large heavy items that would be hard to steal.) MBK 5/2/03

-- M.B. Kanis (k9boatlovr@aol.com), May 02, 2003.


I have seen a few Family Lines covered hoppers, SCL gondolas and SCL rr service diesel tank cars go through Folkston

-- Jason Webb (jwebb4@cfl.rr.com), April 28, 2003.

I'm with you but am not sure what the best way is to know what cars are still out there. The Railway Equipment Register shows the number series of cars that still have the old reporting marks, but does not say how many cars have such lettering or give their individual numbers are. Current copies of the RER are extremely expensive to buy new, so the best I can do is look for used copies at train shows - occasionally you will find them only a year or 2 old. I suspect that our friends at CSX must have the individual car info somewhere - if anyone there could help, we'd be glad to add the info to the survivors list.

The surviving ACL-lettered cars I hear the most about are the class K- 22 gondolas, 98000 series I believe, built in 1966. I think I've also heard reports of the L-14 covered hoppers, 120000 series, also built around 1966-67.

You're quite right that very few are left with the old initials - for one thing, any pre-merger cars are now getting old (36 years and counting), and almost all the survivors have long since been repainted or at least have had CSX renumbering patches applied. On the other hand, a fair number of cars built new for ACL-SAL-SCL still work for CSX (like the Bone Valley phosphate cars), even though they have been repainted and renumbered. The next issue of Lines South will have an article on SCL phosphate cars with a roster showing current CSX numbers for those still on the roster.

-- Larry Goolsby (lgoolsby@aphsa.org), April 22, 2003.


I must say that I agree with you. I started taking pictures of these cars. I saw four in Yulee back in February. I have seen several on moving trains so I know some are still out there. And I live in New York. Good Luck!!!

-- Dick Kearns (kearnsrh@aol.com), April 22, 2003.

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