RAILWAY AGE, MARCH 2026 ISSUE: Improved carbody materials and innovative designs are transforming these long-lived warhorses into state-of-the-art railcars.
The general-purpose, open-top gondola has been a part of freight railroading since its beginnings nearly 200 years ago. But if you think these gondolas are “run of the mill” railcars, think again. New designs and new materials are helping these rugged, mostly all-purpose cars meet shipper demands for efficient, damage-free loading and unloading.
For this report, Railway Age asked The Greenbrier Companies, TrinityRail® and FreightCar America for their viewpoints on short- and long-term market conditions, including current and projected demands for new railcars (i.e. replacement of cars aging out of the North American interchange fleet; design improvements (i.e. types of steel or aluminum, carbody construction, etc.); and current R&D initiatives.
The Greenbrier Companies
“We continue to view the North American railcar market as operating below replacement levels—currently under 40,000 builds—as fleet owners largely remain on the sidelines amid ongoing trade and tariff uncertainty,” The Greenbrier Companies Vice President of Marketing and General Manager Tom Jackson tells Railway Age. “That said, we are beginning to see early signs of growth in select end markets, including biofuels, metals and certain specialty chemicals. Overall, the industry is entering a multi-year replacement cycle, as significant railcar builds from the 1980s approach the end of their service lives. This dynamic is most evident across core freight car types such as grain hoppers, boxcars and gondolas.
“As part of Greenbrier’s continuous improvement culture, our engineering teams evaluate railcar designs throughout the entire product lifecycle. We work closely with customers to tailor solutions that address their specific operational challenges and objectives. From a design and innovation standpoint, our engineers focus on increasing efficiency, improving aerodynamics, reducing tare weight, and optimizing loading configurations. To support these efforts, we explore alternative materials—including advanced steel grades—to reduce weight, increase payload capacity, and enhance durability. This is evident in the success of our high-strength steel gondola portfolio. In parallel, we continuously refine our facility layouts and production processes to drive efficiency while maintaining industry-leading safety standards.”
Jackson adds that Greenbrier “maintains a robust product development pipeline, with multiple prototypes currently in service and generating strong test results. These include several gondola configurations, CO₂ tank cars, boxcars utilizing alternative materials for doors and roofs, and new specialty railcar designs. Leveraging our global engineering footprint, we have incorporated proven design concepts from Europe and Brazil into North American offerings, allowing us to accelerate innovation and apply best practices across regions. That’s our integrated strength success, which separates us from other railcar suppliers.”
Greenbrier’s gondola portfolio spans a wide range of applications and is available in high strength, advanced high strength, and ultra high strength steel grades. “These materials are also being deployed across other railcar components, including boxcar structures, resulting in improved reliability, lower maintenance costs and extended service life for fleet owners,” notes Jackson. “In addition, we are launching a new family of advanced high strength rotary gondolas that are gaining strong traction in the mining sector. These designs deliver payload increases ranging from approximately 6,000 to 15,000 pounds while further enhancing durability. Our gondola offerings currently range from 2,300 to 7,100 cubic feet, and we are actively developing one of the industry’s largest wood chip gondolas—8,200 cubic feet.
TrinityRail®
TrinityRail® notes it “delivers durable, high-strength gondolas, including the 66-foot mill gondola (pictured), engineered and built to offer reliable, heavy-duty rail transportation for the toughest commodities.”
“We see tremendous upside in the mill gon market in both the short and long term,” TrinityRail® Chief Commercial Officer Charley Moore tells Railway Age. “The growth in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steel production has created a very efficient use of rail by enabling producers to load inbound carloads of scrap and outbound carloads of finished goods in the same car.”
The railcar market is constantly changing. One shift TrinityRail® has seen in recent years is the changing variety of mill gondolas in demand. “Shippers want to optimize their mill gons for the varying density of their products, which could include making the car lighter and creating more capacity with taller interior walls,” says Moore,” says Moore. “At TrinityRail®, we offer many different mill gon designs of varying length and capacities ranging from 2,743 to 6,400 cubic feet. With our design engineering expertise, we work directly with our customers to create a railcar specification that meets the customer’s needs and maximizes the safe loading capacity for the products that they ship.
“Some of the markets served by gondolas demonstrated strength last year with Iron & Steel Scrap carloads up almost 10%, and Nonmetallic Minerals (Aggregates) up almost 2%. Attrition will also continue over the next few years, showing a need for railcars to serve both market growth and replacement of aging railcars. There have been more than 25,000 gondolas built in the past five years, with most of them serving the metals markets (mill gons and coil cars). With attrition and growing demand, we expect that trend to continue into the near future.”
FreightCar America
“Similar to the demand environment we see with many car types, gondola deliveries are largely tied to the replacement of aging fleets, FreightCar America Chief Commercial Officer Matt Tonn tells Railway Age. “This is also supported by inquiry levels. There are indicators that the demand for gondolas will remain consistent with what we have seen in the past few years, driven primarily by strong retirements expected through 2030 and largely tied to scrap steel demand.”
Higher-yield steels “are more acceptable for customers today than at any time in recent history,” Tonn notes. “Collaboration with customers to gain deeper insights into their operating environment, as well as fleet planning and maintenance challenges, continues to drive our focus on new railcar designs and enhancements. Gondolas are a staple car type in the rail industry that serve multiple industries and market segments. From steel and metal products to aggregates, coal and construction materials, gondolas represent one of the largest carload segments in our industry.
“Over the decades, FreightCar America has introduced multiple enhancements to its gondola designs, starting with the all-aluminum Bethgon coal car. With nearly 300,000 coal cars delivered, these lightweight designs vastly increased carload capacity over the older generation steel car designs. On our conventional mill and aggregate gondolas, we’ve introduced increased use of high-strength steels, which have become more acceptable to customers in today’s market. The use of these materials, along with refined designs, including reinforced top chords, side sills and corner connections, not only delivers a more robust ‘purpose-built’ car design, but also reduces weight and enhances capacity, efficiency and utility.”
For the aggregate market, FreightCar America has developed a new line of railcars that Tonn says “are specifically tailored to customers shipping highly corrosive commodities. Our patented Gold, Silver and Bronze Aggregate cars incorporate high-strength carbon and stainless-steel materials in select areas, assuring long life of the rail asset, even in the harshest carload environments. The VersaCoil gondola has benefited from many of the standard gondola design enhancements, resulting in a class-leading lightweight design that provides maximum configurability of loading coils from 30 to 108 inches (2.5 to 9 feet). The VersaCoil gis are available in 5, 7, 9 and 10 trough configurations and are customizable to meet specific car owner load configuration requirements, including an optional insulated coil cover.”
FreightCar America’s Engineering team “is foundational to who we are—driving railcar design development, continuous enhancements and the disciplined innovation that keeps our railcars performing in the field,” adds Tonn. “We partner closely with customers to understand real operational challenges and translate those insights into practical design improvements and fit-for-purpose features. That collaboration, combined with deep technical expertise, allows us to deliver railcar solutions tailored to specific commodities, loading practices and maintenance requirements. The result is a railcar design that’s not only robust and reliable, but purpose-built for each customer’s operation.”
