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©2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting Prohibited. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Legal Stuff NOTE: This archive edition covers single regular new releases, reprints and some Special Edition cars. Reviews of and commentary on Micro-Trains locomotives (including the FTs) and Special Edition sets such as the Army and Navy Sets are available exclusively in the e-mail subscription edition of the UMTRR. N SCALE NEW RELEASES: © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
051 00 240, $30.05
Red body and cupola sides; yellow ends, cupola ends and hardware; black roof, underbody and steps. White lettering including script roadname below cupola and roadnumber at bottom center. Road Number: 437211 (will be "CP 437211" in website listing). Approximate Time Period: decade of the 1970's. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. I have to admit that one of the best investments I have made with respect to the UMTRR Research Library has been my modest accumulation of Morning Sun Color Guides (MSCG). Without the right six numbers appearing on a lottery ticket, it would be impossible for me to keep up with the sheer number of MSCG releases, but I wish I could. This month's colorful release is a great example of how I can use the Color Guides even when the exact car doesn't appear. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In this case, we're referring to the Canadian Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by John Riddell. From a series of photos we can get a sense of the history of the CP 437211 even though it's not specifically in the book. And, oh yes, I think Micro-Trains has done the same thing based on their car copy. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. We know from the MSCG that CP's steel underframe wood sheathed cabeese were among the more than 1100 wood cabooses in service in 1956 numbered from 435018 to 437264, which of course would include the 437211. At that time the standard color scheme was what I'll call a mineral red all over with roadname and number only in block lettering. The script lettering replaced the block lettering in 1959 and the sides were more of a brown in a photo of 435076 in the Color Guide. The script lettering stayed but the paint changed to red and yellow for the version that MTL modeled; this started no later than 1971 since there's a photo of CP 437156 in the MSCG from that date. Note that the CP's steel cabeese were painted in the same manner. Finally, the yellow "CP Rail" scheme was introduced, and at least one wood sheathed caboose, CP 438591, made it into that decoration. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A couple of notes on the prototype versus the model: first, the side windows were generally two, not three, by the time that the MTL-modeled paint scheme appeared. Second, the cupola is a fair bit taller than on the MTL car. Third, the side grabs and some of the other hardware is white, not yellow or red, on the CP 437156, but again, that's the 437156 and it's plywood sheathed, not the 437211. Fourth, many of the CP's wood cabeese were sheathed with plywood, giving them a smooth sided appearance-- at least until the plywood began to delaminate! It's not at all clear whether every caboose in the series got this treatment, though, so I won't call foul on the Micro-Trains model on that detail. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
065 00 600, $21.05
Once in a while, it happens, and there's nothing this reviewer can do about it: I got stumped. Nothing in the files, nothing in the books, nothing on the 'net. I found very little about the companies lettered on the car either. Republic Oil was founded in 1901 as a "competitor" to the Standard Oil trust, by Standard's own stockholders, and had a refinery in Texas City, Texas in 1931. And although folks in New York and New England may be familiar with today's Cumberland Farms chain of convenience stores, it doesn't appear to be related to Cumberland Gasoline as far as I know. (Although it does own, interestingly enough, the Gulf Oil trademark.) In fact, the only website match for "Cumberland Gasoline Corporation" at this writing is the MTL website itself. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. So I did what I occassionally have to do: I contacted Micro-Trains directly. Ben told me that there's a photograph of the car in Railway Prototype Cyclopedia Volume 7, and that all they know about it is what's in their car copy. That's not surprising, though, considering the rather incredibly short ATP for it. The build date on the car is 1942 and the repaint date from the research is 1943! "Strictly speaking" indeed! And not covered by what I have in the way of ORERs either, sorry to say. I'd have to have quite the accumulation of them to be able to catch that two year or less date span, and then there would be the problem of where I'd put anything else in the modest-sized UMTRR HQ! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. We also know from the MTL car copy, and therefore presumably the RPC Volume 7, that there were four cars in this short series, affording the possibility of reprints, although I don't see that coming anytime soon. When the cars were restenciled into CGAX reporting marks, they may have kept their road numbers, as the January 1953 ORER shows a CGAX 8556 with the note that it's operated by General American. "CGAX" was delisted from the General American registration circa 1959 and was eventually reassigned to Cargill. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
111 00 020, $34.90
This exact car is pictured on George Elwood's Fallen Flags site (look for TTX/Trailer Train) as lensed in Tampa, Florida in December 2003 by Michael Greer. Greer also contribued a shot of sister car ETTX 711080 taken the same day which has a BNSF rack instead (note to Talent, Oregon: hint), once again illustrating that the placement of specific rail carriers' autoracks on specific flatcars is probably not anything that we can predict. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ETTX reporting marks inside the TTX listing in the ORER for January 2002 go on, well, just about forever. Okay, well I guess it's just from the middle of page PC-565 to the top of page PC-632, but that's pretty long. The key reason is a large number of roster lines that contain just one car. ETTX 711021 is, though, actually in one of the larger groups put on one line, that being the span from 710678 to 711029, which comprised 290 cars then. The inside length is 89 feet 4 inches, outside length 93 feet 8 inches, extreme height 19 feet, and gross rail weight 179,000 pounds. The build date on the MTL model itself appears to be January 1975, however the switch of the name from "Trailer Train" to "TTX" would be the earliest possible defining moment of the ATP, and that would be July 1, 1991. But a quick skip backwards into the ORER for
October 1991 doesn't show ETTX 711021, in fact I had to skip ahead to the July 1998 edition to find it. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
125 00 020, $22.10
Well, I have to admit that I've reached a not-so-great milestone in my aging process: Looking through a magnifier AND wearing my reading glasses, I STILL can't make out the build date of the car on the consolidated stencils on the MTL car! Fortunately, UMTRR gang member Jon Hollahan came through with the info: "15178 would have been built in December 1979 or early 1980." Jon continues, "The Approximate Time Period for the particular paint scheme with the skull and crossbones Operation Lifesaver logo (not Ortner logo as MT says) is 1990 to present. The cars are used 99.99% on-line in rock service between the limestone quarries in Medley west of Miami to concrete and asphalt producers along FEC's line from Miami to Jacksonville, Florida. Small numbers of the cars occasionally travel off-line, usually returning loaded with coal for Portland cement production." Thanks, Jon! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The October 1986 ORER shows 299 cars in the series 15000 to 15299, with the following dimensions: inside length 31 feet 3 inches, inside height 9 feet 10 inches, outside length 43 feet 10 inches, extreme height 13 feet 2 inches, and capacity of 2300 cubic feet or 200,000 pounds. This listing almost definitely precedes the paint scheme, though. The January 2002 ORER shows 298 of the cars still in service. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. We once again cite the Fallen Flags site for a prototype picture. Sister car FEC 15542 as captured by Frank Thibodeau in Jupiter, Florida as of May 2001 is shown as of in the same scheme as done by MTL, including the "Don't Make Crossings Deadly" warning. There is another shot by Thibodeau of FEC 15887 with large yellow lettering on red paint, offering a potential second choice for Micro-Trains. An article authored by John Sykes III and furnished to the UMTRR by Jon Hollahan notes that the as-delivered scheme for the first 100 Ortner cars was red with large FEC initials and standard reporting marks. According to Sykes, the large billboard lettering was in yellow first and white later. Apparently the FEC is going to the plain old standard reporting marks again in their most recent repainting program, which, while less expensive, is certainly less interesting as well. At any rate, since the FEC rosters about a thousand Ortners at this writing, reprints shouldn't be an issue. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS:
025 00 490, $16.20
Green with mostly white lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left and large herald on right. Reporting Marks: BN 376234. Approximate Time Period: late 1970's (1975 build date given by MTL) to present. Previous Release (as catalog number 25490): Road Number 376200, September 1989. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. I have to admit I was a bit surprised when I searched the 'net for the phrase "BN 376234" and found, among the dealers who'd already posted the information about this car, a citation from my own website! Did MTL duplicate this number or was there another BN car with the same road number? No, it's simpler than that. This road number was used on the March 2003 Z Scale release. And as such I can tell you that the MTL car copy was most likely carried over from that 1:220 release, and specifically mentions the equipment that might be inside the car for purpose of hauling aluminum or copper rod or other copper products. And that information came from, perhaps among other sources, the ORER for April 1981. Fortunately, when a boxcar door is closed, whether that boxcar is in 1:220 scale, 1:160 scale, or 1:1 scale, you still can't tell what's in it! So unless you tell, the observers of your train won't know the difference anyhow, and I ain't tellin'. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The data from the April 1981 ORER are as follows: as noted, the full description is "Box, May Be Equipped With Four Doorway Bars and Wood Cradles for Aluminum and Copper Rod or Wood Platforms for Copper Ingots, Cathodes and Other Castings," the inside length was 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, and capacity 5077 cubic feet or 193,000 pounds. The series from 376200 to 376399 had 195 cars. That dropped all the way to 82 cars in the July 1992 Register, but only eased down to 80 cars in October 1996. The BNSF listing for January 2002 showed 49 cars in the group. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I didn't find a specific match to the series in which this car resides on the 'net, but there's any number of places in which one can locate a typically painted BN boxcar, including the usual standbys Fallen Flags and Northwest Rail Pics. It's certainly possible that the full as delivered BN treatment has been placed with the yawn-inducing plain green (or even boxcar red) with reporting marks only, but I'll ignore that for the purposes of the ATP, since again, unless you confess, no one should be the wiser. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
030 00 050, $18.55
MTL itself admits that there is a bit of a "door thing" with this reprint, right in the car copy. What we used to call the 30000 body style is based on an FMC prototype but with staggered doors, not centered ones as on the prototype. The prototype has an six posts, you might say ribs, on either side of the doors, while the MTL model has four on the left and seven on the right. Enough with that though. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. MTL states the build date as 1979 and the closest ORER I have is April 1981. Therein we find the series SP 245990 to 246514, of all 525 possible cars, described as "Box, Freightmaster EOC Cushioning, Nailable Steel Floor, Single Sheath, 50K." Key stats: inside length 52 feet 8 inches, inside height 11 feet, outside length 59 feet 1 inch, extreme height 15 feet 3 inches, door opening 16 feet, capacity 5503 cubic feet or 153,000 pounds. In the July 1992 Register there were 377 cars in the main series plus subsets of just "Box, Steel" for another 119 cars. But in October 1996 all the cars were back together again under the longer "cushion car" description and there were 467 cars remaining. Under the Union Pacific registration in January 2002 there were 380 cars left out of the original 525. I would have expected that at least some of them would have gone over to the Golden West Service sale and leaseback program during the Espee's lean years, and of course that's possible, but 380 out of 525 is not a bad survival rate for more than 25 years. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I was a bit surprised to see a circa August 2004 picture of sister car SP 246017 (just one number off), in the original paint scheme, on the Fallen Flags site. I wasn't surprised to see some, ah, embellishing: graffiti. I suppose it's a necessary detail these days. The paint seems to have held up fairly well otherwise. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
045 00 181, 045 00 182, 045 00 183, $15.65 each
To me this is a big surprise, the biggest of the month by far. For one thing, it's been less than a year since the most recent reprint of this flat (and may I hasten to add that there has been no price increase from that reprint). For another, it's rare that three road numbers are offered at a time on anything, much less a reprint. But that also means that we see how these reprint catalog numbers might be handled going forward; note that the last of the eight digits differs as opposed to the previous use of a decimal point plus number, i.e. 45180.1 . (Does this therefore limit MTL to just ten reprints per paint scheme? No, according to MTL itself. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.) © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. This is of course a good choice for a multiple road number run since prototype military transport trains could and can get pretty long. The use of three different appropriate loads which are also different from the load on the May 2004 reprint (I checked) will also add variety in that model train. Dig out something appropriate for the first two runs of this car, which were not sold with loads, and you're well on your way to a convoy. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As you might recall from the ORER review on the May 2004 run, the road numbers MTL has selected belong to the prototype series 38016 to 38665, which numbered 650 cars in July 1953 and 623 as late as April 1970. When first rostered these cars were considered to be heavy duty flats but were later reclassified as being for general service even though their capacity remained at a hefty 200,000 pounds. The more important change was in the reporting marks, which slowly went from the modeled "USAX" to the consolidated "DODX" for the Department of Defense. This change more or less defines the Approximate Time Period. The MTL body style isn't an exact match for the prototype, which had an "inside length" of 54 feet. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As with any multiple road number run, the question comes up: how large was the overall production? Given that this has been a popular car, I'd expect that it's a pretty big run, but that's still split across three numbers. And the inclusion of loads, for which there must have been a fair amount of logistical planning on the factory floor, says to me that the number of pieces was indeed limited. So it's hard to project that any of these reprints will stay in stock for very long. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES:
021 00 386, $19.85
Aluminum sides, black roof, ends, sills and door hardware; blue and and black primary lettering including reporting marks, state name and outline map on left. Four color process graphics including state flag, state flower (Rosebay Rhododendron) and state bird (Cardinal) on right. Reporting Marks: WV 1863. Twenty-second release in the States of the Union series. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. Okay, history buffs, why is it that Virginia was one of the first states, and West Virginia was the 35th state and the last state east of the Mississippi to be admitted to the Union? You're on your way to the answer if you consider the admission date: June 20, 1863. During the Civil War, that is. Virginia's western counties did not go along with the rest of the state's decision to secede from the Union. In fact, in May 1861, 25 counties met at the First Wheeling Convention and repudiated the secession decision. They created the Restored Government of Virginia and adopted a "dismemberment ordinance" to become a new state called, initially, Kanawha. The state was admitted as West Virginia, though. I have a feeling that this all was a lot uglier than the timeline of state history that I found indicates. One hint: There was a state constitutional amendment passed in 1866 denying citizenship and suffrage to anyone who aided the Confederacy; that wasn't repealed until 1871. Two years later, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was completed across the state; you just know I had to get the main subject of this column in here someplace. A key reason for the railroads' coming was mining, and the state has been a focal point for that industry, and, unfortunately, its disasters, including the worst one in United States history which killed 362 people in December 1907. Looking through the timeline, it's hard to believe how many times the state capitol burned as well. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. West Virginia got a real shot in the arm from an unlikely source when the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" was recorded by John Denver. The line "Almost Heaven, West Virginia" became the springboard for a tourist campaign that brought visitors to experience the wild, rugged beauty of the state, and was even featured on some real live rolling stock in the 1970's-- remember the South Branch Valley Railroad and their green and yellow boxcars? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A few famous West Virginians include gymnast and Olympic sweetheart Mary Lou Retton, actress and "Alias" star Jennifer Garner, baseball players George Brett and Steve Yeager, author Pearl S. Buck, entertainer and "Hollywood Squares" host Peter Marshall, and test pilot extraordinaire Chuck Yeager. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. My first foray into West Virginia was strictly on a lark on my birthday in 1988. It was one of those times when I needed to get away to rethink things... OK, I was getting over a girl. I only got as far as the easternmost panhandle along Interstate 81, where I made a stop in Martinsburg to set foot in the state and make it official. The next visit was even shorter, a cheat of sorts to be able to tally the state again. I hit the very top of northern panhandle that sticks up into Ohio, along US 30 for just a few miles. It was August of 1988 and I was on what I called "The Whirlwind Tour," something I haven't yet talked much about. The third and final visit was much longer and I wasn't alone; I was with my then fiance Rosemary in 1990 and we traveled the state from north to south including a look at the New River Gorge. And a first ever stop at Wal-Mart, but that's another story entirely. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
021 00 500, $24.95
Who'd have thought that birthdays were celebrated in order to ward off evil spirits? Well, apparantly that was the premise in ancient times according to a couple of sites I looked over. The custom of birthday gifts dates back thousands of years. On the other hand, I also came across several sites which asked, "Is Birthday Celebration A Sin?" I think I know where I stand on that one. As my birthdays continue to, well, accumulate, I can't say that I approach them with the same anticipation that I used to have as a child. Being 10 on the tenth, for example, is certainly more fun than being, well, let's not go there. But I also know that continuing to have birthdays certainly beats the alternative-- not having any more birthdays. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. One family that is very happy to have people sing "Happy Birthday to You," especially over the broadcast media, is the descendants of Mildred and Patty Hill, who own the copyright to the song that was established in 1935. Seventy years later, there are still royalty payments required every time the song is perfomed. It's a rewrite of the Hills' song "Good Morning to You" which was written in 1893. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The concept of a "Happy Birthday" car isn't new in model railroading, but love it or hate it (and as with most SE cars, there are some on both sides of the fence) you've got to appreciate the way that MTL has pulled it off. Yes, it's certainly a play to the collector set to release four different colors for the roof and ends, and make it more challenging by keeping them in all the same catalog number! My understanding from the UMTRR Spy Network is, by the way, that dealer orders in multiples of four usually meant that one of each color was shipped per four cars. The idea of factory air goes one step farther with "factory confetti" (!) and I certainly hope that Eric Smith and Company haven't been buried under letters and e-mails inquiring as to exactly how many pieces of confetti were placed in each box! Can you imagine the descriptions of "new in box" examples of this on auction venues: purple roof and ends, 12 silver circles, 17 red circles, 8 green stars, 13 blue stars... Well, no, come to think of it, I can't either. But I can tell you that overall, the car is selling well, even at a fairly high $24.95 MSRP. The market for this is, of course, huge; how many people out there have a birthday? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE):
Reprint:
Boxcar red with black and white lettering including "Sunset Route" herald on left and reporting marks on right. Reporting Marks: SPC 472. Approximate Time Period: 1899 to 1907 (per MTL information). Previous Releases (as catalog number 15102): Road Number 474, May 1988; Road Number 444, January 1997; Road Number 478, June 1998. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. As is true with most narrow gauge lines-- well, with most railroads of any gauge-- the story behind the railroad that originally owned this car is fascinating. What became the Oregonian Railway began as the Dayton, Sheridan and Grande Ronde Railroad in 1877 as an alternative to two standard gauge lines that were already serving the Willamette Valley south of Portland, Oregon. Several reorganizations later, the Oregonian operated trackage from Dundee, south of Portland to Airlie on the west side of the river and Coburg on the east side. The Southern Pacific Company financed an expansion into Portland proper which was completed through a second railroad in 1888, and leased the Oregonian in 1890. Absorbtion followed and much of the trackage was converted to standard gauge-- which explains why the prototype for this car went to another SP subsidiary. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. By the 1980's most if not all of the route of the original Oregonian Railroad was part of history, but it's fairly remarkable that any of it survived that long. Meanwhile, the Nevada and California to which this car went next became the Nevada-California-Oregon and was also largely converted to standard gauge by the Western Pacific and the Southern Pacific. As usual, the book "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" is the source of much of this information and it cites the book "The Southern Pacific in Oregon" as one of its sources. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES:
500 00 520, Magne-Matic Coupler, $20.50, 500 00 521, Marklin Coupler, $18.70.
Aluminum with red lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left. Red and black "heart" herald on right. Reporting Marks: SAL 25196. Approximate Time Period: early 1950's (1952 built date given by MTL) or mid-1960's (1966 service date given by MTL) to mid-1970s. NOTE: This item (both versions) has been sold out and discontinued. The following is "reprinted" from the N Scale release coverage (Catalog 20616) from October 2002. The Silver Meteor, the Silver Star, why not the "silver" boxcar? This is but one variation of how the Seaboard painted its cars in the bright metallic hue; "big brother" Kadee has done several different SAL cars and they've all sold faster than the breakfast special at Waffle House. If this one does well for MTL, there could be plenty more where this came from. Meanwhile, cars modeled by Kadee and listed on their site date as early as 1959. And by the way, they do call them "silver." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for January 1964 is a little before the service date given by MTL. It shows the series 24500 to 25899, which is a total possible 1400 cars. There are 1250 cars in the main series and several subseries with various modifications. One of these applies to this particular car: "Equipped with insulated roof... and differing in inside height and cubical capacity." But of course you can't tell from the outside. Some of the other subgroups were even more exotic... how about a small set of cars equipped specifically to handle nylon thread? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Anyway, let's check the stats: Inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 1 inch (with the roof; the standard cars were 10 feet 5 inches), outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet even, door opening 8 feet. Uh, yep, a "door thing". © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As you might recall from previous Seaboard releases, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line to form the Seaboard Coast Line, it stopped reporting car quantities under the previous reporting marks. This time, though, the end notes help because they still have to call out the specific car numbers that were modified from the original series. So we can learn that car number 25196 is still in SAL paint in April 1970 and remains so in the April 1976 ORER. Don't forget that the roofwalk should have been gone by then. However, by April 1981 there is only one car from this group still on the roster, and it's not 25196. Based on the data I have, it looks like it was not renumbered into an SCL series either, just "retired." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. You can see an example of how this aluminum paint scheme looked after some years of service via a photo on "The Seaboard Lines Image Gallery." The pictured boxcar, SAL 13097 isn't in the series modeled by MTL; in fact it's got roof hatches, but it is painted up the same way and has a service date of sometime in 1965. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE REPRINTS: 530 00 070, Magne-Matic Coupler, $20.50, 530 00 070, Marklin Coupler, $18.70. 39 Foot Tank Car, Single Dome, Burlington Route (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy). Black with white lettering including reporting marks on left and "Burlington Route" herald on right. Reporting Marks: CB&Q 232076. Approximate Time Period: late 1940's (1949 build date) to late 1960's at least. Previous Release (as catalog number 14407): Road Number 232167, July 1987. NOTE: This item (both versions) has been sold out and discontinued. The Morning Sun Color Guide to the CB&Q by Michael J. Spoor provides a reference photo of sister car 232040 as lensed at Cicero, Illinois, in April 1968. The accompanying caption provides MTL's car copy: built in July 1949 at Havelock and mostly used for diesel fuel and lube service. The prototype car appears to be significantly longer than the MTL model; it's got a 16,000 gallon tank which would be a lot for a 39 footer. I could count rivets or not but I should note that the prototype car has rivets and the MTL model has a welded tank. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The 200 car fleet was numbered 232000 to 232199 and was classified TM-6 on the "Q". The ORER for January 1964 only shows a single listing for 2656 cars in company service all numbered in the 200000's so that's no help. I may be a bit conservative on the ATP, though. The same page of the MSCG on which this tank car is pictured also includes shots of tank cars built much earlier-- like, 1911!-- that were still in service in 1970 when the CB&Q was merged into the Burlington Northern. The general rule that company service cars lasted just about forever certainly could apply here. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITIONS:
40 Foot Steel Boxcar, Plug Door, "Happy Birthday." White sides with multicolor balloons and legend "Happy Birthday" across side. Four different releases with different color sides and ends (yellow, orange, blue and purple). "Confetti" included in each box. Reporting Marks: HBD 2005. NOTE: This item (both versions) has been sold out and discontinued. Please see the review of the N Scale release above.
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