Pere marquette auto/furniture box cars

Representative of the research materials available in the C&OHS Archives is a reduced-size copy of Advisory Mechanical Committee Drawing No. 152-12-1413, showing standard painting and lettering for Pere Marquette Automobile and Furniture box cars in several series (overleaf).

The Pere Marquette had numerous cars of this configuration, with double doors, to accommodate two major industries in Michigan: automobiles and furniture/wood products. Furniture making was a major industry centered around Grand Rapids, and of course the auto industry started and remains entrenched in the state.

It's interesting to note that the drawing applied to both steel and wooden cars, although the illustrations from our collection shown here are only of steel cars.

The Advisory Mechanical Committee (AMC) was organized by the Van Sweringen railroads (C&O, Pere Marquette, Nickel Plate Road, and Erie) and was headquartered in Cleveland. It set standards for all four railroads. These standards were adhered to by the mechanical departments of the various lines, which generally did the work.

Starting in 1930 the AMC standardized mechanical drawings. In this system the first "group" of numbers designated the type of drawing (in this case "152" indicates anything to do with painting/lettering equipment). The second group of numbers indicated the size of the drawing. Size "12" generally was 12 inches wide, and two to four feet long. Finally, the last group was simply a sequential number assigned chronologically as the drawings were prepared.

This was certainly one of the earliest drawings made under the AMC standards since it has the low number of 14 and was drawn June 16, 1930.&

Copyright Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society, Inc. Oct 1999
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