It was many years ago that I was putting the finishing touches on several work car kits I had bought and assembled. I thought they looked pretty good: nice, new 40-foot wood sheathed cars with gray paint and black decal lettering and assorted windows. The big hook (which was me) placed them on the track next to some of my other work cars, older style, 36-footers with truss rods and arch bar trucks. The thought was that my Susquehanna Northern had relegated to work train service some more-modern, heavier capacity wooden freight cars than the older, smaller cars with truss rods, some of which were still being used in revenue service. Thirty-six foot cars still in service? Happily, I did remember driving down New York City's West Side Highway and seeing 36-foot reefers unloading big slabs of meat at several distributors' lockers where the platforms and doors were designed for 36-foot. cars. This explains why some of my non-revenue equipment were 40-foot bunk and kitchen cars, while 36 foot boxcars and reefers were still in service. Work equipment on the real roads is not as common as it was in the days before good roads and motor trucks. Today, tractors and other construction equipment by John Deere, Caterpillar and others have mostly replaced the old work cars of yesteryear. Mechanized spike and track laying equipment has largely replaced the track gangs of yesteryear, and there are whole trains with special cars to pick up the track and ballast, clean it and re-lay it as the train moves along at a walking pace.
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