I believe the cars being scrapped were 48 foot wells. Not very efficient use unless you cut them down to 40 foot or stretch them to 53 foot.

I've heard the docks don't like anything but short wells. If they are delivered 53 foot instead of 40 foot wells they can only get about 80% of the same number of wells per track so it can foul up their capacity.

Remember when it was easy as there were only 20 foot and 40 foot containers? (Some 10 footers too but I don't recall them moving by rail much.) Then American truckers started pushing for longer trailers and heavier weights. Then TTX had to start respacing hitches on the TOFC flats to squeeze two 45s as long as they didn't have nose reefers. Then when they went to 48s all hell broke loose with old boxcars being converted to single platforms (hardly efficient) and three trailers on two drawbar connected TOFC flats with the middle trailer spanning the gap (freaked me out when I first saw one until I realized what they had done). Then they jumped to 48s which made many of the previous designs obsolete. Then jumped again to 53s which really screwed things up. Didn't TTX have some spine cars that could handle 57s or a pair of 28s?

Containers, at least for domestic service, started making the same jumps. I know all the 48s (which have pretty much disappeared) and 53s are for domestic service only. 20s and 40s are primarily for import/export - I don't remember if 45s also became standard for import/export or not. The standard international container used to be 8x8 foot in cross section, but now there are taller and slightly wider containers but I don't know what the import/export restrictions are to their use.

It is a good thing that intermodal equipment is fairly cheap to build. We've seen several generations come and go since the Santa Fe 10-packs and the first SP well cars. Remember the Four-runners that were just too light to stay on the track especially in a big train? Of course the Road-railers are now on their fifth+ generation but still haven't really caught on for universal use.

Western Washington RR now has a few customers besides car storage. Power is still SW9R #23 (originally Inspiration Copper).