Charles Wales, William Hopkins Collection

In 1940 the Seaboard Air Line Railway received 500 Furniture cars from Pullman-Standard's Michigan City, IN plant that were a hodge-podge of components. These cars were SAL Class AF-1 and P-S Lot 5617. They had sides that were essentially 1932 ARA box car sides (but with double doors), round roofs like the Pennsy's X-31's, Pullman's "dart-not" ends and Pullman underframes. It was interesting that the SAL embarked upon such a radical design considering that they took delivery of AAR 1937 design double door box cars two years earlier, P-S Lot 5578.

In 1941, the SAL purchased 500 box cars to the same design, Class B-7, but with 6' single doors, again from Pullman-Standard, in Lot 5659, numbers 19000-19499. The car pictured in the February 2002 Shot of the Month is from this class.

The Seaboard went back to Pullman-Standard in 1942 for an additional 500 AF-1 Furniture cars in Lot 5702, cars 11500-11999. These were the same as the cars built in 1942. Finally, from 1942 through 1945 (wartime interruption), they received an additional 450 AF-1 cars from Pullman in Lot 5803. These cars were in the 22000-22449 series.