Boxcars

steamman

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May 26, 2020
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Columbus, Ga
Boxcars in the US were developed because freight had to be protected over long distances in differingi climates and weather. In England, flat cars were more common because of shorter distances and quicker travel.

Source

In the Civil War, box cars could do dual duty. Freight inside and soldiers on top. Triple duty where the soldiers on top could provide protection from the enemy. Often soldiers were inside the box car. Which was better: Inside a box car stifling from the heat of other bodies and the smell of open buckets to relieve body waste or in the fresh air bombarded by embers, cinders and soot.

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Civil War troops “riding the rails.” Detail from George N. Barnard, ‘Atlanta, Ga. Soldiers on boxcars at railroad depot,’ photograph, 1864, Civil War photographs, 1861-1865, LC-B811-2709 [P&P], courtesy of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/2018666984/)

Such a thing as even ordinary passenger coaches for the use of the enlisted men was never heard of… The cars that we rode in were the box or freight cars in use in those days. Among them were cattle cars, flat or platform cars, and in general every other kind of freight car that could be procured. We would fill the box cars, and in addition clamber upon the roofs thereof and avail ourselves of every foot of space. And usually there was a bunch on the cow-catchers. The engines used wood for fuel; the screens of the smoke-stacks must have been very coarse, or maybe they had none at all, and the big cinders would patter down on us like hail.
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Union soldiers sleep on a platform next to a boxcar. Detail from Charles Wellington Reed, ‘Charles Wellington Reed to Mother, September 8, 1862,’ Charles Wellington Reed Papers, Box 1, MSS37457, Manuscript/Mixed Material, courtesy of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/mss374570107/)
 
Transporting captives was another use.

Confederate prisoners taken at Gettysburg were placed in railcars at Westminster, Maryland for the trip to Baltimore and camps onward:

July 4, early in the morning we were marched down to the depot and hurried on board a train of box cars where we could not even sit or lie down … cars were too filthy and we could scarcely get a breath of fresh air. (Yankee Rebel, The Civil War Journal of Edmund DeWitt Patterson, Lieutenant, Company D, 9th Alabama)

Union prisoners from Gettysburg took a similar trip from Staunton to Richmond, Virginia:

July 23, drew rations and started for Richmond. Took cars at Staunton at 2 p.m. Rebs took our canteens away from us at Staunton. Crowded into freight cars, 60 in a car, passed through Waynesboro, Greenwood, Elwood, Charlottesville and the Blue Ridge tunnels. One of them 1 1/4 mile through, and two shorter ones. Cars run very slow. All night on the road, passed through Gordonsville in the night, also Hanover Junction. July 24, still on cars at daylight, passed through Ashland, arrived Richmond soon after sunrise. Marched through city to Belle Island ... (Diary of Horace Smith, Company D, 154th New York)
 
Transporting captives was another use.

Confederate prisoners taken at Gettysburg were placed in railcars at Westminster, Maryland for the trip to Baltimore and camps onward:

July 4, early in the morning we were marched down to the depot and hurried on board a train of box cars where we could not even sit or lie down … cars were too filthy and we could scarcely get a breath of fresh air. (Yankee Rebel, The Civil War Journal of Edmund DeWitt Patterson, Lieutenant, Company D, 9th Alabama)

Union prisoners from Gettysburg took a similar trip from Staunton to Richmond, Virginia:

July 23, drew rations and started for Richmond. Took cars at Staunton at 2 p.m. Rebs took our canteens away from us at Staunton. Crowded into freight cars, 60 in a car, passed through Waynesboro, Greenwood, Elwood, Charlottesville and the Blue Ridge tunnels. One of them 1 1/4 mile through, and two shorter ones. Cars run very slow. All night on the road, passed through Gordonsville in the night, also Hanover Junction. July 24, still on cars at daylight, passed through Ashland, arrived Richmond soon after sunrise. Marched through city to Belle Island ... (Diary of Horace Smith, Company D, 154th New York)
Nice description of what soldiers, prisoners or not experienced.
 
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