the.com/boxcar
A rolling iron room that built nations, hid hobos, and carried both freight and ghosts.
means A boxcar is an enclosed railroad freight car, shaped like a long box with sliding side doors, used to haul goods protected from the weather.
from A plain American compound from the railroad's 19th-century rise: a 'box' (a container with sides and a lid, from Old English 'box,' itself from Latin 'buxus,' the boxwood tree whose hard timber was carved into little cases) bolted onto 'car' (here meaning a railway carriage, from Latin 'carrus,' a wheeled wagon, by way of Old French and Norman 'carre'). Put together, it simply names the thing it is — a box on wheels — which is why the word spread far beyond the rails: 'boxcar' came to mean anything boxily enormous, and a pair of sixes in dice earned the name 'boxcars' for the two square pips riding side by side like cars on a train.
- hobo express
- Depression-era riders hopped them to chase work nationwide
- dice slang
- Double sixes are called boxcars by gamblers
- standard sizing
- Most run about 50 to 60 feet long
- sliding doors
- Side doors let crews load without unhitching cars
- declining breed
- Containers and hoppers slowly retired the classic boxcar
the wanderer boxcar — southern pacific railroad's famous depression-era freight car that became a symbol of hobos traveling across america in the 1930s
the reefer boxcar — refrigerated boxcars used by railroads like santa fe and union pacific to transport perishable goods coast-to-coast starting in the 1880s
union carbide boxcar — the train car that leaked methyl isocyanate in bhopal, india on december 3, 1984, killing thousands in history's worst industrial accident