PFE and plywood car sides

Plywood first became suitable for exterior use in the 1930s, when waterproof adhesives were successfully developed. During World War II, plywood was used for many defense purposes, including crating, barracks, and numerous marine applications, such as PT boats. Wartime experience led a number of American industries after the war to see whether plywood could be of use to them. Among those industries were railroad car builders, including PFE.

PFE had already experimented with plywood for exterior car sheathing in two experimental cars within the large Class R-30-9; plywood interior sheathing was introduced at the same time. They used plywood from Harbor Plywood, whose plant was at Hoquiam, Washington. It was entirely successful as interior sheathing, and continued in that use until the end of PFE. There is more detail on this topic in the PFE book (Pacific Fruit Express, 2nd edition, Signature Press, 2000).

Exterior sheathing, however, would turn out to be a different story. After the two experimental cars mentioned above, the entire R-40-24 class, 2610 cars numbered PFE 65921–68532, were plywood-sheathed. Car sides had four full sheets each side of the door, plus a shorter sheet at each end (approximately half a sheet, give the four-foot doors). This can be seen in Chuck Yungkurth’s drawing made from PFE originals, of this design (also in the PFE book, page 146).  

Cars built in this way can be seen to follow the drawing above; for example, this nice image from the Jay Williams collection (place, date and photographer not known):

The seams between the Harbor Plywood sheets were sealed with a light steel T-bar, with the upright leg of the T between the sheets and the top leg outside.  But relatively soon after these cars went into service, problems began to develop with the seams not remaining sealed. At first, it was thought that a few cars had just not been properly sealed, but over time, more and more seams failed, with water intrusion causing the plywood sheet edges to swell and curl.

In addition to examining  PFE car records, substantial amounts of which do survive, I had the benefit of interviewing Earl Hopkins of PFE. Earl went to work for PFE in 1929, and rose to be Engineer, Car Construction, by the end of World War II, and was in that position during the plywood sheathing program. In 1954 he became Assistant General Superintendent of the Mechanical Department, and in 1962, when the Car and Mechanical departments were combined, he became General Mechanical and Engineering Officer, serving until his retirement in 1974.

Earl told me that at first, any damaged plywood sheets were simply replaced, while the Class R-40-24 project was approaching completion. But over the next few years, as the problems multiplied, it was decided not to replace plywood any longer, but to replace damaged siding with traditional tongue and groove (T&G) siding. Eventually, this took the form of a shop directive, around 1955, to always replace with T&G.

But for a modeler like myself, choosing 1953 to model, my fleet should contain a certain number of plywood cars. My first effort to do this, years ago, was a simple expedient: simply remove the rivets from an Athearn “Blue Box” reefer. One then has (incorrectly) five equal side sheets, but I did add correct wood-car door hinges, and better grab irons and sill steps (the center step is incorrect, as is the paint scheme; door hardware and ladder should be black). 

A better option came along when Frank Hodina, then making patterns for Martin Lofton’s Sunshine Models, send me a gift of resin car sides and some other parts, which I combined with some Terry Wegmann PFE parts to make a model of Class R-40-24 (see my write-up at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/08/pfe-class-r-30-24-plywood-reefer-part-5.html ).

Another possibility arose after Scale Trains acquired the tooling for the MTH line of models, including a PFE car. Unaccountably, they marketed it as a steel car, though is is quite evidently a plywood car (see my review at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/09/re-purposing-mth-reefer.html ). This is really not a bad model once it is re-lettered. 

But now I am embarking on a slightly different one of these cars, using the National Scale Car resin sides. These are aimed at the relatively few cars in Class R-30-9 that received plywood car sides in the late 1940s. The resin sides are to replace the sides in the Red Caboose PFE kit. I will return to this in a future post.

Tony Thompson