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These cars served the Santa Fe for almost a half century in a variety of ways. It all began when Pullman built 1,000 furniture cars in 1923 using Santa Fe's unique "sectional sheathed" design. They featured a deep fish belly under frame, 7-5-5 corrugated ends, a 10' door opening with two flat steel doors and rode on Andrews trucks. In the late 1920's they were rebuilt with wider door openings and the left hand door was replaced with a corrugated design. In 1935 the remaining 990 cars received Evans auto racks. Four hundred cars were converted to stock cars in the late 1940's and, in 1949-50 three hundred were converted to single door boxcars and classifed Bx-56. This conversion consisted of AB brake systems to replace the old K brake systems, Ajax hand brakes, second hand radial roofs and the auxiliary doors were permanently sealed shut thereby creating "single door" boxcars. They rode on the original Andrews trucks for their entire service lives. Patterns and complete design by Jim Zwernneman
