Comments on: Long Service Award CN 504159 is the Oil Supply Car on CN’s Great Lakes Region tie gang #4 at Oba, ON in July of 1976. This steel frame wood box car built in April 1929 is one of 1600 built by CC&F from March to May of that year numbered in the CN 503500-505099 series. It served CN well for 50+ years.

By: terry.oshell

terry.oshell — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 12:45:12 +0000

I remember rolling many gas and oil drums up and down on two planks from those wooden box cars.

By: sdfourty

sdfourty — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 01:50:57 +0000

Nice.
A lot of these wooden cars in MofW service through to the early 80′s along with re-assigned heavy weight passenger equipment – lots of modeling possibilites…
sdfourty

By: Paul O'Shell

Paul O'Shell — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:19:15 +0000

Some more trivia
Note the yellow disc with the black D on the side of the car.
In June 1962 CN introduced the 9” diameter yellow disc with the grade letter in black for the grading of boxcars:
• A – high class commodities such as sugar, flour
• B – general merchandise
• C – grain and low class commodities
• D – rough freight (mine products, pulpwood, ties, pipe, machinery, scrap iron and metal
• X – assigned service for special cargos
• Y – newsprint
This was to supplement the door color coding scheme that was introduced in 1959.
• Yellow – newsprint
• Green – lumber
• Orange – express
• Blue – refrigerated cars for dressed meat service
• Red – refrigerated cars for fresh produce service
The colored doors were no longer standard after 1990.

By: Paul O'Shell

Paul O'Shell — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:17:23 +0000

Thanks for that information on the trucks and springs.

By: L. Parks

L. Parks — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:28:28 +0000

April/29, this box, I’m sure, would have been able to relate a few stories about cold weather railroading. It appears to be riding on an old style 2 level truck. The idea being, the more and softer springs you can stuff in there, the better the ride. It fits with the BLT date of the box, as 2 level trucks came into being in the mid 1920′s.