Please define between lightweight and heavyweight passenger cars. - Model Railroader Magazine

Basically, "heavyweight" passenger cars weigh around 1 ton per foot of length. So a 85' car weighs in the area of 85 tons for a heavyweight car.

A "lightweight" car uses more modern construction materials (like Cor-Ten steel, or Stainless steel, etc.) that is lighter, stronger and more resistant to rust. The New Haven's first lightweight cars weighed arond 60 tons each for an 85' car, a significant savings in dead weight that RR's didn't have to pay to haul around.

As these new materials came about when the new streamlined fashion did, almost all lightweight cars are streamlined, featuring stainless steel or smooth sides that minimized wind resistance (and looked snazzy, too).

Paul A. Cutler III
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Weather Or No Go New Haven
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