Gloor Craft - 101 - Boxcar, 55 Foot, Thrall All-Door - Weyerhaeuser

Prototype History: Lumber has always been difficult to ship by rail. Box cars provide protection but are hard to load and unload. Flat cars eliminate those problems, but loads have to be tarped to protect them from the weather.

In 1967, Thrall took the best of both ideas and created a unique car that would solve these problems. The All-Door Box Car had no true sidewalls, but was equipped with four large doors which could be opened in pairs. This provided a 25' wide opening that made loading and unloading a breeze! And since it was a box car, the loads were completely enclosed for the entire trip. As the housing boom began in the 1970s, the cars became a common sight at lumber mills and yards across America.

Thrall Door boxcars arrived in Detroit in the early 70s. They were used to carry hardboard products to Ford plants in the Detroit area.

Road Name History: Weyerhaeuser (pronounced "Warehouser") Company, is one of the world's largest private owners of timberlands, owning or controlling nearly 12.4 million acres of timberlands in the U.S. and managing additional 14.0 million acres timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada. The company also manufactures wood products. Weyerhaeuser is a real estate investment trust.

In 1904, after years of successful Mississippi River-based lumber and mill operations with Frederick Denkmann and others, Frederick Weyerhaeuser moved west to fresh timber areas and founded the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. Fifteen partners and 900,000 acres (3,600 km²) of Washington timberland were involved in the founding, and the land was purchased from James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway. In 1929, the company built what was then the world's largest sawmill in Longview, Washington. Weyerhaeuser's pulp mill in Longview, which began production in 1931, sustained the company financially during the Great Depression. In 1959, the company eliminated the word "Timber" from its name to better reflect its operations. In 1965, Weyerhaeuser built its first bleached kraft pulp mill in Canada. Weyerhaeuser implemented its High Yield Forestry Plan in 1967 which drew upon 30 years of forestry research and field experience. It called for the planting of seedlings within one year of a harvest, soil fertilization, thinning, rehabilitation of brushlands, and, eventually, genetic improvement of trees.