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©2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting Prohibited.Legal Stuff NOTE: This archive edition covers single car releases only. Reviews of and commentary on Micro-Trains locomotives (including the FTs) and Special Edition sets such as the Evergreen Express are available exclusively in the e-mail subscription edition of the UMTRR. N SCALE NEW RELEASES: 22110, $17.05 - 40 Foot Box Car, Plug and Sliding (Combination) Door, Canadian Pacific. Box car red with white lettering including reporting marks on left and script herald on right. Reporting Marks: CP 100197. Approximate Time Period: early 1960's (1962 build date given by MTL) or mid-1960's (1967 service date given by MTL) to at least the mid-1970s. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.The Official Railroad Equipment Register, (ORER), for January 1964, shows the series 100000 to 100499, of 500 cars with AAR Classification XM and description "Box, Steel, Nailable Steel Floor in Doorway, Staggered Doors." The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 14 feet, and capacity 3900 cubic feet or 127,000 pounds. Being built in 1962, this car would have worn the script roadname as delivered, since this scheme was introduced in 1958 according to the CDS Lettering Diagrams book. (By the way, it looks like their dry transfer set #24 should provide the means to renumber these cars, but I can't be absolutely sure since I don't have the car or the transfers in hand.) © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In April 1970 this series was down only three cars to 497. The CP Rail name was in use by then, but I didn't find any evidence that any of these cars were repainted. (Doesn't mean there isn't any, just that I didn't find it.) There were 482 cars on the roster in the April 1976 book, and 459 in the April 1981 Register. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. According to Ian Cranstone's site, 71 cars in this series went to CP subsidiary Esquimalt & Nanaimo as their 292500 to 292570. The E&N reporting marks were "resurrected by CP in October 1977 for former CP 40 foot boxcars," Ian notes. These were in service there from 1982 to 1998. The E&N is now the E&N Railway, owned by RailAmerica. Meanwhile, Ian has service dates all the way to October 2000 for the CP cars, and I don't doubt that, although there are only eight shown in the October 1996 ORER. You've got to be thinking roofwalk removal well before then, and possibly repainting, so I'm calling the Approximate Time Period closed in the 1970's. Of course, there was a difference between the requirement to pull the running board and the reality, so you could be good well beyond the ATP. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Now for that price. $17.05 for a basic boxcar red and white car? I was reminded of a different car which elicited a similar reaction. MTL's Catalog 103050, a 60 foot double plug door waffle side boxcar for the Santa Fe released in August 1999, carried only the reporting marks and a whole lot of dimensional and other data, and tipped the scales at an MSRP of $20.15. I was told that the number of small "hits" required to get all that data in helped to tip that scale, and I wondered to MTL whether that played a role this time. For example, there are the "dots" along the bottom of the car, and there's also printing on the two sliding doors. Sure enough, that's the reason; significantly more paint passes than the average basic brown and white boxcar. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
27290, $17.90 - 50 Foot Exterior Post ("Ribside") Box Car, Plug Door, Montana Rail Link. The Montana Rail Link has such a good looking, professional paint scheme that I forget that most if not all of its cars came to it second hand... or maybe even third or fourth hand. Yes, it's true; the MRL got started with some ex-BN equipment, some of which was really ex-GN equipment. We'll get back to that. As of January 2002, the line rostered just over two thousand frieght cars, dominated by boxcars but also including some bulkhead flats, about 350 covered hoppers, some woodchip cars, a few gondolas and a pinch of refrigerators. And two passenger cars, numbered 102 and 105? © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In that January 2002 ORER listing we have the series 25023 to 25074, of 48 cars with AAR Classification XP. The inside length is 50 feet 8 inches, inside height 10 feet 11 inches, outside length 57 feet 10 inches. Extreme height is 15 feet 4 inches and the door opening is 10 feet. The Gross Rail Load is 220,000 pounds, the GRL being the newfangled way of stating capacity, if you know what the weight of the empty car is that is! The car's description includes the phrase "20 inch travel" which applies to the cushion underframe, meaning that extended draft gear trucks may be more appropriate; your mileage may vary. Backing up through previous ORERs doesn't add much; I can tell you that in the October 1996 issue there were a total of 50 cars in a bunch of subseries by capacity. At least that's one thing the change to Gross Rail Load is good for-- making those subseries go away. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Tim Harris' roster of MRL freight cars adds that these came from the BN as their former 319700 series. If you think there's an echo in here on that factoid, you're right. Micro-Trains' Catalog 27240 was road number 25058 from this same series. The key difference between this release and that one is the updated logo with the Washington Industries lion. There have been "not a reprint" car with more distinctions between releases than that! © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. "After MRL purchased and repainted the old BN fleet, dates and data remained unchanged," reports MTL in its car copy. Wanna see a graphic example of this? Take a look at MRL 25071, from the same prototype series, as pictured circa November 2002 on George Elwood's Fallen Flags site. Who's that peering out from under the fading dark blue paint? Is it the big white BN logo? Go farther back in time... why, it's the 1970's Great Northern goat! © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
76060, $18.80 - 50 Foot Box Car, Plug and Sliding ("Combination") Door, No Roofwalk, Great Northern. I have a confession to make... I was looking for something else Northwest Railroad-like some months ago, and in the course of my web surfing came across a photo of this particular car on NorthWest Rail Pics. Hmm, this looks like an MTL 76er, I thought. Yeah, I thought back, but the door opening isn't really right; it's an eight foot plug door plus a six foot sliding door, while the MTL body has an eight foot plug plus an eight foot slider. Grabbing a handy previous 76000 series car, I also noticed that the panel count isn't the same either. But hey, it's a Great Northern, and it would probably be "good enough". So off went a note to MTL, which was acknowledged, and some months later, this car has appeared. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. And that means I am partially responsible for a Door Thing! I throw myself upon the mercy of the court! Okay, I feel better now. The GN sky blue scheme debuted circa 1967, but as MTL points out, the car dates to before then. I pick up the series 36250 to 36749 in the January 1964 ORER, with 496 cars in service out of a possible 500. But let's skip to April 1970 under the Burlington Northern to see the same series, which has slipped just slightly to 485 cars and has also lost the roofwalks. (And gained the important, but pricey to duplicate, "Keep Off Roof No Roofwalk" legend on the right side of the car.) It's described as "Box, Steel" with an end note adding that the cars have nailable steel flooring. The inside length was 50 feet 7 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 52 feet, extreme height 15 feet, capacity 4,928 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. I've already mentioned the doors. That outside length doesn't seem to align with the extended couplers, but hold on... in the April 1976 Register that outside length has climbed to 54 feet 6 inches, which strongly suggests the longer draft gear. No word on whether it was blue, though. There were still 384 cars in the group at that point. That total's down to 154 cars in April 1981. Here's something interesting: four additional cars from the series are shown as having just a six foot door opening. Does that mean the plug doors were permanently sealed? How do you model that? The end neared in the January 1985 ORER with just 16 cars remaining. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I mentioned the 1964 version of this car for a reason: MTL did do a predecessor scheme for this series in the form of Catalog 33120 released in March 1994. It's jade green with red roadname and the famous "waving goat." It was part of the "virtual four pack" of releases of boxcars for the BN's component railroads, no shrinkwrap was harmed in the issuance of that quartet. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
93080, $22.85 - 3 Bay Center Flow® Covered Hopper, Round Hatches, FMC Chemicals. I'm more than a little familiar with FMC, as it had a plant right near where I once lived, along the "Chemical Coast" of New Jersey. (And isn't that a scenic description. No, but it's accurate.) You might have seen it too; it was the backdrop for several scenes of the film "Fletch Lives", where it "doubled" as a Louisiana, uh, chemical plant. It had as either an input or output the ingredients for bath salts, which may very well have come in via one of these rail cars as the plant was served by Conrail, and the Central of New Jersey before that. I know all this from an enterprise in which I participated during high school, and my father says some of those bath salts are still down the basement, in fact. I think that's as far as I think I'll go on that topic! The particular plant is now owned by Astaris, a 50/50 joint venture between FMC and the Brazilian company Solutia Inc, but as far as we know it still gets rail service. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In the car copy, MTL quotes the capsule history of FMC from their website but here's a little more from there. John Bean, "retired" inventor (and is that really possible?) built the insecticide pump that launched the company in 1883, but then created the "Magic Pump, " a much improved design, in 1901 when he was 82 years old. (So much for "retirement.") The Bean Spray Pump Company became the Food Machinery Corporation in 1928 after some acquisitions and a contest held to find a new name. That was the first translation of "FMC" and the second, Food Machinery and Chemicals, appeared in 1948 when the Westvaco Chemical Corporation was acquired. That firm was deep into phosphorus, used in synthetic detergents, and I'll wager that's how the plant with which I'm familiar came into the fold. Through Westvaco, FMC also got into "trona", the raw material from which several other chemicals are refined, including ingredients of glass. In 1961, the company name changed again, to just FMC, standing for, well, just FMC. In 1968 the company was divided into Machinery, Chemical, Fiber and Film, and Ordnance groups. There were more chemicals added to the roster, more reorganizations, and finally a split into two companies in the year 2000; FMC Technologies was spun off with the machinery operations, and FMC Chemicals kept the chemicals business. The website lists the current general split of businesses: Agricultural Products, BioPolymer, Industrial Chemicals, Lithium, and Pest Control Specialties. Within the Ag Products page you can identify your problem weed and pest from their photo library and find a solution to them. Sounds like that will liven up my next party. On the other hand, I probably have every weed they picture on my front lawn somewhere. Well, except the grass. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Those of you who remember Incentive Per Diem boxcars in orange paint will have a leg up on matching the SSIX reporting marks on this car to a bit of history of lessors. SSI Corporation morphed into Itel Corporation, Rail Division. Within the listing for that owner, non-shipper, in the April 1981 ORER, we find the series SSIX 1000 to 1099, of 4650 cubic foot Covered Hoppers. Assuming that this is the ACF 4650 series Center Flow, that would be a match for the MTL 93000 and 94000 body styles. FMC had its own reporting marks FMLX for 100 other ACF 4650s and 148 assorted other types of covered hoppers in the April 1981 Register, but that doesn't mean they didn't supplement them with some from Itel Rail. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Skip to the January 1985 ORER and there's no change in the Itel Rail listing; in the October 1996 book there are 94 Center Flows listed in the series. Itel wasn't done as a company yet in October 1991's book, in fact the total number of cars they looked after ballooned to more than thirty-two thousand, including 93 SSIX Center Flows. By October 1996, though, the firm had been folded into General Electric Railcar Services, but there were still 93 cars in that SSIX 1000 to 1099 series. And by the way, FMC had over 1000 covered hoppers of various types on its roster in that book. Jump to January 2002, and believe it or not, there are still 93 cars in the series with which we're concerned. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Does that give us a nice long Approximate Time Period? Well, maybe. What we don't know for sure can hurt us. As these were leased cars, we can't say whether FMC was the lessee, and therefore whether the FMC Chemicals logo appeared on them, or maybe just some of them, throughout this whole date span. I'm guessing not, although the FMC trademark has been in the depicted format since 1973. Photos of FMLX cars on George Elwood's site show the FMC Chemicals legend missing from cars pictured in 2001 and 2002, and very plain cars indeed actually. A 1989 photo of FMLX 45352 (which happens to be an ACF 4650) shows a paint scheme that looks dead on to the MTL model except for the reporting marks. I'm therefore further speculating that in order to maintain a low profile, the cars in service for FMC no longer show any clue to that effect, unless you too understand reporting marks. Meanwhile, though, I think you'd be OK running this car into the 1990's as painted, simply because it's going to be difficult to prove that they were or weren't around. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS: 20700, $14.50 - 40 Foot Box Car, Single Door (Youngstown or "Narrow Rib" Door), Rock Island "100 Years of Progress". Box car red with aluminum roof and roofwalk. White lettering including reporting marks and "Route of the Rockets" slogan on left. Black and white "100 Years of Progress" herald on right. Reporting Marks: RI 23220. Approximate Time Period: early 1950's (1951 build date) to at least the early 1960's. Previous Release: Road Number 48325, December 1986. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.The aluminum roof on this car, which actually represents unpainted galvanized steel on the prototype, makes this release a "not a reprint" versus the original run. The number series is different as well, and the dimensional data has been moved from the generic block font that Kadee was fond of back then to something a little more Railroad Roman-like. There is an extensive article on the exact car issued, with a prototype photo, in the July 1992 issue of Rail Model Journal. This piece, describing how to model the car in HO, definitely gets down to minute detail, such as removing the intermediate ribs from the ends. As if to underscore that, it's tagged "Advanced Skill Level." © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. According to data posted on the RPI website, which in turn comes from the authors of the Rock Island Color Guide, the "100 Years of Progress" scheme was introduced in 1951 to commemorate the 1952 centennial of the railroad. Three thousand 40 foot boxcars received this scheme, a mixture of Pullman-Standard PS-1s and ACF-built 1944 style AAR boxcars. From the roster of all original equipment PS-1s that appears in the March 1993 issue of Rail Model Journal, we glean that the PS-1s were in series 21000 to 22999, with a mixture of seven-panel Superior doors and Youngstown doors. That means that the 23000 series of cars, specifically series 23000 to 23999, were built by ACF. In fact, MTL includes the ACF logo on the car. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. There's only one problem with this: the MTL 20000 series boxcar is a model of a PS-1! So the folks in Talent could have had a relatively more precise model of the car that was actually built, instead of a relatively less precise model of a competitor's car. Okay, so is this a big deal? Well, from the dimensions of the two series, adjacently listed in the January 1959 ORER (Westerfield CD-ROM), differ on only one attribute, "Height From Rail to Eaves or Top of Platforms," and that by only one inch. [For the record, the dimensions I usually relate are: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet, door opening 6 feet, capacity 3,898 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds.] But that's not the entire story, of course. P-S did a different roof and ends on the PS-1s than ACF did on its post-war boxcars. The side sills will be somewhat different as well. [And I suppose the manufacturer of the N Scale '44 AARs is going to have other points of distinction. However, the prototype photos in the RMJ piece reveal that that car wouldn't be a perfect match either.] I can sometimes understand putting a paint scheme on the 20000 that isn't really for a PS-1, but doing a non-PS-1 scheme on a car that could have been done as a PS-1? That's a "bang head against wall" question, and it's my head doing the banging. And perhaps only my head. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Be that as it may, or may not, there were 989 cars in the series as of January 1959, 967 in January 1964, 907 in April 1970, but just 366 in April 1976. Not long after that, the Rock ceased to exist and the cars scattered to the winds. I'd question whether the "100 Years of Progress" scheme surivived much into the 1960's, though, and I'd also wonder whether some roofwalk removal activity might have ended the ATP before the mid-seventies as well. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
34150, $13.70 - 50 Foot Box Car, Double Door, New York Central. The prototype for this car was built not far from UMTRR HQ, at Despatch Shops in East Rochester, circa August 1941. It was the Central's lot number 701-B. According to an article in the October 1995 issue of Rail Model Journal, this lot 701-B did not have auto racks, unlike the previously built Lot 694-B cars, series 62300 to 62599. This may explain why the cars are stenciled "Auto Body Car" instead of the more common "Automobile." © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. We just miss with the January 1940 ORER so we'll have to do with the July 1950 issue (Westerfield CD-ROM), which shows the series 64000 to 64499 at just 85 cars. (Rats, now I wish I had a '41 Register.) The inside length was 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 51 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 15 feet (versus the model's 16 feet, so you know what), capacity 4,860 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Now here's a weird thing. In the January 1959 Register (Westerfield CD-ROM again), the series count has actually gone up, to 171 cars, and in the January 1964 ORER, it's up again, to 263 cars! What? Or as the late Mel Allen would have said, "How about that?" (Now I Various RMJ issues including the October 1996 review of 50 foot auto boxcars note that many of the Central's were painted into Century Green with white lettering, post 1958 when the scheme was introduced to boxcars. Whether that's true for this group, I can't say, but let's not forget that there was an intermediate scheme in the 1950's for the Central which consisted of boxcar red paint, a small black and white oval herald, and large sans serif reporting marks similar to that on the Century Green cars. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
35100, $12.00 - 40 Foot Despatch Stock Car, Atlantic Coast Line. Waaaaaay down at the end of the listing for the Atlantic Coast Line in the July 1950 ORER (Westerfield CD-ROM) are two entries for stock cars. One's a set of double deckers, and the other one is the object of our interest. Series 140400 to 140449, of 50 cars, is listed as "Stock, Steel Frame" with AAR Designation "SM." The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 8 feet 6 inches (the MTL model is arguably a little taller), extreme height 13 feet 1 inch (the MTL model's pretty close... go figure), and door opening 5 feet (a little tiny bit of a "door thing" there versus my measurement of 5 1/2 feet). Capacity was 2,926 cubic feet or 80,000 pounds. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Incidentally, the number series alone didn't place these cars at the end of the Coast Line's listing; like many ORER entries of the time period, the equipment is listed by type. The ACL's ballast cars are actually higher in sequence, being in the 160's. But I think the placement of the stock cars at the end, plus the fact that there were a grand total of 206 cars of that type on the roster against a total roster of more than twenty-six thousand car, says something about the importance of the livestock hauling biz on the Coast Line. It doesn't get any better, either; in the January 1959 ORER (Westerfield CD-ROM again) the series we're interested in as still at 50 cars but the total stock car roster is down to 194. In January 1964, the last Register I have before the ACL and Seaboard merged, 50 cars remain in the 140400 series with just 74 total stock cars. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
As we've noted before, when the Seaboard Coast Line was formed, their management "zeroed out" all of the series of the predecessor railroads, choosing to count everything in the renumbered and restenciled SCL series. It looks, though, that this is a non-issue, since there are no ACL stock cars left to restencil, as there is neither a zeroed out ACL series or a companion SCL series, which would have been 440400 to 440440 according to the instructions in the ORER. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Unfortunately, in terms of online resources and citations for this car, I've come up with a goose egg, and I guess I can't say I'm surprised. Morning Sun's ACL Color Guide by Paul Faulk doesn't help here either... no stock cars pictured, says one of my readers. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
46030, $15.40 - 50 Foot Steel Gondola, Fishbelly Sides, Drop Ends, Burlington (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy). When I think of the "era of color" on North American Railroads, the Burlington Route is usually one of the first paint schemes I think of. It would be hard to miss the boxcars and gondolas in bright red with that billboard sized roadname, and let's not forget the sharp red, gray and white paint that adorned classic diesels like the GP-30. (I liked it so much I bought one a couple years back... in HO! Well, the cheapo price didn't hurt.) This decoration was adopted in 1958 according to information on the RPI website, and lasted at least somewhat into the Burlington Northern era which began in 1970, thanks to the slow pace at which repainting took place. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The ORER for January 1959 (Westerfield CD-ROM) shows the series 82000 to 82199, of 200 cars, described as "Gondola, Steel, Drop Ends, Steel Floor" with AAR Classification "GB." The inside length is 52 feet 6 inches, outside length 55 feet 1 inch, extreme height 7 feet 4 inches, and capacity 1,745 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. Ditto in the January 1964 Register. The MTL 46000 body style scales out to about a 50 foot inside length and a 58 foot length over the couplers, partly on account of the medium extended coupler being used on the brake wheel end. (So on tight radii, the car next to the gon doesn't smack into the side mounted brake wheel. Prototypical, no, a practical compromise, yes.) In April 1970 under Burlington Northern, the series is at 97 cars, and in April 1976 it's at just 8 pieces numbered from 82040 to 82188.
© 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
So why is MTL describing the built date as 1972? Well, I don't know. I do know that the "Built" and "New" dates are apparently repeats from the original release of this car in 1977, so in this case, I think it's perpetuating an "oops." Fortunately, this is not terribly difficult to correct if you're so inclined. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
54020, $15.70 - 62 Foot Bulkhead Flat Car, Southern Pacific. As we've noted in past issues, Richard Percy's Espee.Railfan.Net site includes a compliation of SP Freight Car Specification sheets and although Sheet 14A, dated 1968, was issued prior to the January 1972 build date MTL gives for this particular series of bulkhead flats, it's still a nice view of the overall class of these cars. By 1968 the Espee had about 1,900 of them according to the spec sheet, and as MTL notes in its car copy, plasterboard was a key commodity carried. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The specific series that MTL has used for its 54000 body style offering was numbered 508400 to 508899. As listed in the April 1976 ORER, there were 497 cars total. The inside length was 57 feet and outside length was 66 feet 4 inches. The MTL model is very close to those dimensions. The inside width 10 feet 5 inches, and inside height 8 feet 6 inches, which I imagine to be the height of the bulkheads from the deck side, and extreme height 12 feet 3 inches, which I imagine to be the height of the bulkheads from the railhead. Capacity was 148,000 pounds. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Churning through the ORERs we have 490 cars total in April 1981 (counting some strays in subseries), 461 cars in October 1986, 450 in October 1991, 331 in October 1996, and 302 total in a bunch of subseries by capacity in April 1999 under the Union Pacific. If the 508898 was still around, it was rated at the 150,000 pounds capacity. A total of 66 cars remained in January 2002, enough to earn my "to present" tag, but I doubt that they'll be sticking around much longer. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The "see text" part of the Approximate Time Period has to do with the consolidated stencils that appear on the right side of the car. The infomation I have is that they started with a single panel in 1974 with double panels appearing "later". A search of the Frieghtcars List archives revealed a date of 1982 for a move away from the double panel variety. This is all, of course, quite in the "strictly speaking" mode. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
21340, $19.85 - 40 Foot Plug Door Boxcar, New York State Car. New York, New York... no, wait, I mean the whole state. What is the only state to border on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes? On both New England and the Midwest? Yep, it's New York. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The state that has been my home since 1989 is much more than the Big Apple that anchors it; it's a fascinating geologic combination of deep glacial lakes, very old mountains, rivers that flow both south to the Gulf (like the Allegheny) and the Atlantic (like the Hudson, Susquehanna, and Delaware) and north as well (like the Genesee which runs right through the center of Rochester). The history of the area now known as the Empire State began well before Europeans colonized it, of course. Peoples like the Seneca and the Iroquois lived throughout the region, and the "Six Nations" or Iroquois Confederacy is, after more than 800 years, the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. (The US Government is a representative democracy, by the way.) © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
In 1524 Verrazano sailed into New York Harbor, and in 1609 Henry Hudson got far enough up the river that bears his name to understand that it was not the celebrated Northwest Passage. The Dutch had "New Netherlands" which stretched from modern day Connecticut to Delaware, but the British took over forty years later and renamed the land "New York" for James, Duke of York, who was also Duke of Albany, from which we got our state capital's name. The colony, then the state, was a crossroads of the Revolution, and New York City briefly served as the infant country's capital. A statue of George Washington stands at Federal Hall, where he was inaugurated in 1789. Industrial development followed, spurred by "Clinton's Ditch"-- the Erie Canal-- which was completed in 1825, and then by the railroads, not the least of which was the New York Central and Hudson River conglomeration of shorter lines. Commerce and finances were based in New York since the 1792 meeting under a tree which was the beginning of the New York Stock Exchange. And the Statue of Liberty welcomed millions of emigrants to our shores, although a not insignificant number would sadly be turned away at Ellis Island. "New York, New York" was a key tune in the movie "On The Town" which is one of hundreds of films made in or about the state. But did you know that Bedford Falls, in the movie "It's A Wonderful Life" was supposedly based on Seneca Falls, right here in Western New York? © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I would think it difficult at best to note the exact first time I set foot in the Empire State, but it's reasonable to think that it was via the PATH Train, a.k.a. "The Tubes," from my boyhood home of Jersey City. The first major trip away from the city-- way away from the city-- was to Wilmington, an Adirondack Mountains town of just 300, in 1973, a visit which changed the direction of my model railroading, if not my life, for good. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
New Release: 15115, $13.30 - 30 Foot Wood Double Sheathed Box Car, Single Door, Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes. The first Nn3 offering for the year is lettered for a prototype line that actually ran on two foot narrow gauge, not three foot. A fairly dramatic illustration of how twenty-four inch trucks look under even a slim gauge boxcar can be found at the website of the Phillips Historical Society, under their roster page. In fact, the car in the picture is lettered as the website image of the MTL release is. I don't understand why the MTL text pegs this release as road number 68; I think that's just a basic typo. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The only ORER I have that aligns with the Approximate Time Period of the line is my faithful April 1928 edition. I am somewhat surprised to note that there is no listing for the railroad. It's not because of its narrow gauge, as there is an entry for the similarly slim gauged Bridgeton and Saco River Railroad, complete with connection to the Maine Central (though the MEC doesn't return the favor in its connections list). In a word... rats. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Not to worry too much, though, as the current website describing the history and operations of the Sandy River line will certainly get us enough data. The MTL car copy borrows from that narrative as well, and so I won't repeat it, except to note that the line once rostered hundreds of cars to support a goodly amount of lumber traffic. On the website you'll also find a long list of reference materials. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The "current" version of the SR&RL is a short tourist line that is operated as part of the not-for-profit society. Like many other efforts of this type, this is a working museum in every sense of the word and volunteers are constantly adding to and maintaining the equipment and infrastructure. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
New Release: 14212, Marklin Coupler, $13.55, 14212-2, Micro-Trains Coupler, $15.25, 50 Foot Exterior Post ("Ribside") Boxcar, Plug Door, Burlington Northern. You might think that this is an ordinary 1970's to 1990's era boxcar, but not so, according to the ORER for April 1976. The BN series 376200 to 376399, of 200 cars, had a special purpose, as given in the description: "Box, May Be Equipped with 4 Doorway Bars and Wood Cradles for Aluminum or Copper Rod or Wood Platforms for Copper Ingots, Cathodes or Other Castings." Oh, yes, that's what MTL's car copy says too. (I've really got to remember to read it before plunging into my research!) Of course, you'd probably never know about this from the outside of the car, especially at 1/220th actual size, so go ahead and assign it to regular service if you'd like. Key dimensions are as follows: inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 7 inches, outside length 57 feet 8 inches, extreme height 14 feet 8 inches, door opening 10 feet, capacity 5,077 cubic feet or 193,000 pounds. There were 195 cars listed in April 1981, 145 in January 1985, and 82 in October 1991. That's a pretty fast attrition rate; maybe because of the lading, I don't know for sure. Stabalization to some extent followed, as there were 80 pieces in the October 1996 Register and 70 in April 1999 under the BNSF. And, in fact, there are 49 cars left in the January 2002 book, our proxy for "to present" around here, although I wouldn't vouch for the paint scheme or its condition by this point.
© 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
A quick plug of "Copper Rod" into my usual search engine resulted in the first link being, "Click directly to 109 U.S. Industrial Copper Rod Manufacturers!" Sponsored, as you might surmise. Ok, I'll bite: The Thomas Register shows them, pretty much scattered all over the country. Hmm, I was looking to see whether the BN would have originated or delivered these shipments in this series of boxcars. It appears that the answer is, "Yes". If you try just the word "Copper" on the Thomas Register, by the way, you get 268 matches. I think I'll leave that for a reprint. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Reprint: 14915, Marklin Coupler, $18.50, 14915-2, Micro-Trains Coupler, $19.45, 40 Foot Box Car, Plug Door, Northern Pacific. Although this reprint results in a tie between N and Z releases for this paint scheme on this body style, there is a distinction: the reprint in 1:220 has a different road number, 98638, than the reprint in 1:160 did, namely, 98593. The original run in both scales both had the same road number, 98585. And there's your minutia for today. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Back in June 2001 when the N Scale reprint bowed, I reported that the prototype car series, 98550 to 98649, was built in 1959 and appears to have lasted to the June 1987 ORER, although there was just one car left in the series at that point. We probably should back that ATP off a bit, given roofwalk removal, let's say to the early 1980s, for example April 1981 when there were 66 cars left under the Burlington Northern, out of the possible 100. Whether roofwalked or not, these carried AAR designation RBL and were technically refrigerators given the insulation installed within. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
What I did not have back in 2001 was Morning Sun's NP Color Guide, and on page 57 of that volume by Todd Sullivan appears a shot of prototype car 98583. I'm sure that the observant will find differences, for example, straight sills on the prototype, but terms of overall effect, we're okay. Sullivan reports that though the NP was already favoring 50 foot boxcars at the time these were built, there remained enough interest on the part of the road to build four series of these cars, totaling 250 pieces. They were assembled at the line's shops in Brainerd, Minnesota. © 2003 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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