Rivet Counter HO Scale Trinity 60' 6886 12' Plug-Door High-Cube Insulated EcoBox Boxcar/Trinity Leasing/Black and Yellow

Insulated boxcars are a car type that lies between a standard boxcar and a refrigerated boxcar (reefer). A standard boxcar is ideal for transporting commodities that can withstand large temperature swings in both winter and summer. A reefer would be double-walled or insulated and either have ice bunkers or a mechanical unit mounted internally or externally on the freight car to keep the contents evenly chilled or frozen. Think of it as more of a refrigerator or freezer. An insulated boxcar, on the other hand, can be double-walled and/or insulated, but lacks an integrated cooling device. Think of it as more of a cooler that items can be placed into it and the temperature will remain relatively consistent despite the external temperature changes.

Insulated boxcars, like reefers, are equipped with plug doors to seal the car openings.  Standard boxcars were typically built with sliding doors; however, over the last few decades, this reliable distinction has become blurred as most modern boxcars are now built with single or double plug doors to protect whatever the load is from the elements outside, but still be susceptible to temperature changes.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, many insulated 50’ and 60’ boxcars were built for railroads and private owners by companies such as Pacific Car & Foundry and Fruit Growers Express. These cars were often given the name ”beercars” due to their heavy usage by breweries nationwide to transport their goods to distributors. Today, many of these cars have been retired or will be retiring soon due to their age. Few, if any, insulated boxcars were built by any freight car builder until recently. Both Greenbrier and Trinity now have offerings to replace the disappearing fleets of yesteryear, and each company took a different approach to developing their products. Greenbrier took their reefer design, removed the reefer unit, fuel tanks, and A-end cage, and also shortened the internal length by a few feet.  

Trinity took a different approach. While Trinity also offers a mechanical reefer, they decided to instead build off of their existing 60’9” high-cube boxcar and add insulation. They began with their lighter-weight boxcar, which they call the “Ecobox”. Insulation was added internally to the roof, ends, and side walls, which reduced the internal length to 60’3” and shrunk the cubic foot capacity from 7500 to 6886. For the floor, Trinity couldn't raise the height, so they simply added 4” spray foam insulation to the underbody of the car. It looks a little crude, but it does the trick. Trinity also had to add longer swing arms that mount to the door bars and rollers so the plug doors could swing farther out from the car sides due to the added insulation to the interior. At the top of the A-end of the cars, a Lat-Lon solar-powered GPS asset tracking system was added as well.

Currently, Trinity has built and is leasing 240 of these cars under TILX reporting marks (793110-793349). Of these cars, Trinity has applied four different paint schemes to them, two of which are a bit on the unusual side for what is typically seen on the rails. The first 30 numbers are in a traditional boxcar red scheme, and the next 100 numbers are white with a large red band at the top of the car sides. Then, 75 cars are black with a yellow band placed similarly to the red in the previous scheme. The last 35 cars are solid white. The red and yellow band cars stand out in a train when they pass by.

The bulk of these cars today appear to be in use at various Anheuser-Busch breweries. Specifically, they have been seen in heavy usage at the Fort Collins, Colorado, and St. Louis, Missouri, facilities and then sent in multiple directions to distributors nationwide.  The colors of cars are typically mixed with each other and can be seen running in groups or alone.