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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.
020 00 696, $16.20
Blue with black right side panel. White lettering including reporting marks on left. Large blue and white "B inside M" "McGuiness" herald on right. Reporting Marks: BM 76032. Approximate Time Period: late 1950's (1957 build date) to late 1960's at least. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. This release, timed to coincide with the Springfield Show, is a bit of a correction to previous Kadee and MTL runs of B&M forty foot boxcars (catalog 20300, later 20140) which had all blue sides instead of the half blue, half black sides of the prototype. (And just to make it more confusing, that half and half only applied to the as-delivered forty foot PS-1s, not the fifty footers.) The prototypes had a mixture of door types, as evidenced by the Kadee HO run of B&M 76280 in the same paint scheme but with a Youngstown door (their catalog 5260). I suppose I should mention that regardless of the door type, it covered an eight foot not a six foot opening-- yes, a "door thing." The black panel treatment wasn't limited to new boxcars, as there's a photo of the 1947-built B&M 1154 in the book Classic Freight Cars Volume 1. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The February 1964 Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) shows the series 76000 to 76538 of 522 cars with inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 5 inches, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet, door opening 8 feet, and capacity 3882 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. In the April 1970 ORER there were 516 cars left, in the April 1976 Register, 482 cars, and in the April 1981 Register, 361 with 13 more given interior coating for flour service. However, by the 1980's, you've got to be looking at roofwalk removal. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In fact, Micro-Trains gives the official dates for this particular paint scheme as 1956 to 1962. Following that, there was a simplified paint scheme of blue sides only. Wait, didn't you just say that the forty footers were half and half? Yes, as delivered, but as repainted they went to an all blue car with black doors, and also with a much smaller "extended and entwined" logo. The Fallen Flags site has an example of that replacement scheme on B&M 76114 from the same group of cars. Note to MTL: the roofwalk on this car is gone but the full ladders remain, a possible follow on release? There is an even simpler all blue with black doored 75216 from 1967-- although it's next to an as-delivered B&M boxcar just barely in frame on the left. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
020 00 702, $18.90
When the first of this group of five cars was released in October 2004, we looked at the train that was featured on the car, the "Dixie Limited." Let's continue this by checking the "Dixie Flyers" in the November 1946 Official Guide of the Railways, an issue that's contemporaneous with the Approximate Time Period of these express boxcars. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As was the "Dixie Limited," the Flyer was shared by six railroads. C&EI train number 95 southbound left Chicago daily at 11:40 PM and reached Evansville's Union Station at 6:00 the next morning, where it left the C&EI for the Louisville and Nashville. The L&N took the train as far as Nashville for arrival at 10:40 AM and transfer to the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis. The NC&StL brought it into Atlanta, arriving at 7:45 PM, where it had a short run to Albany on the Central of Georgia and then onto the Atlantic Coast Line for arrival into Jacksonville, Florida at 8:00 AM the second day out of Chicago. Sections of the Dixie Flyer continued onto St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers via the ACL and to Miami via the Florida East Coast. Coming back, you'd leave St. Petersburg at 5:00 PM on the ACL and go via Perry, Florida to arrive in Atlanta at 8:00 AM the next day. Or you'd leave Fort Myers at 7:45 AM and go through Orlando to arrive in Jacksonville at 7:40 PM, and thence to Atlanta at 9:00 AM the next day. All passengers would be together for the rest of the trip, leaving Atlanta at 11:30 AM, arriving in Nashville at 6:35 PM and getting back to Chicago at 7:20 AM the following day. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The northbound train was Number 94 on the C&EI. Equipment included coaches to Atlanta and Jacksonville, and a dining car on the C&EI and NC&StL sections, plus sleeping cars of varying configurations on different sections of the train; and varying numbers depending on the season, which is to say more in the winter months. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Although I should stay focused on the C&EI, I can't resist mentioning that the NC&StL once pulled its section of the Dixie Flyer with its "Yellow Jacket" semi-streamlined Class J3 4-8-2's. There are all sorts of items one can buy from Cafe Press with an image of that locomotive. And Travis Tritt sings about the "Dixie Flyer" in a song written by Randy Newman, although they've got it headed to New Orleans, not Chicago. The real Flyer lasted into the 1960's, but in the April 1970 Official Guide, the name "Dixie Flyer" is given to the L&N's... piggyback service (!) from Chicago to many of the same destinations to which passengers were once carried. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. We asked back in October whether these cars were used in interchange service as painted. Although we do know that the cars have full dimensional data and therefore would be "interchange-ready," we still don't know for sure. We did have someone take a look at the Morning Sun Color Guide to the C&EI, and no luck there! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
111 00 030, $37.60
It's not an exact match to the car number, but there is a shot of ETTX 801862 as pictured by Scott Borden in New Albany Indiana in November 2004 on the Fallen Flags site, and it's carrying a Burlington Northern rack. This is good enough to get me "to present" on the ATP. There are also some TTX/BN autorack photos available on the Canadian Freight Railcar Gallery; it works since the photos were taken in Canada. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The start of the ATP can be driven by the February 1999 rebuild date for the rack itself, as given by MTL. But the car itself appears no later than the April 1981 ORER, which predates the introduction of the "TTX" logo. That, as we noted last month, was in 1991, so I don't think anyone would be able to call you on running the car in just about any 90's setting. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I'll take the ORER entry from October 1996 which shows this car as part of the group ETTX 820679 to 820998. The main series was joined by a whole bunch of subseries, which differed from each other principally in extreme width and capacity. The former ranged from 9 feet 6 inches to 10 feet 8 inches, and the latter from 57,000 pounds (the main series) to 79,000 pounds. Not a lot for such a big car, but don't forget those racks aren't light weight either. The 820914 was part of a subseries with a 58,000 pound capacity and an extreme width of 10 feet 3 inches. The inside length on these was 89 feet 4 inches and the outside length 93 feet 10 inches. There were 70 cars in this particular subset as of that ORER's date. Just to illustrate the impact of the racking, I went to the January 2002 ORER which lists Gross Rail Weight instead of capacity. The cars in the series tip the scales at 179,000 pounds fully loaded; not quite a boxcar full, but still quite enough to weigh down the rails. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
116 00 040, $16.80; 118 00 030, $16.80
The Western Maryland acquired a number of surplus troop cars in 1947 and 1948 and placed them in a variety of services according to a posting by Don Smith on the WMRY mailing list. At first these cars would have been in the pullman green, but Smith says that "when the first batch was put in service as cabooses they were painted caboose red. Later in MOW or camp car service, some of them acquired white or light gray stripes in the window area, and later became overall gray." The RPI site comments that the WM "speed lettering" roadname was first used in 1952 and more formally adopted in 1953, which fits with the MTL car copy that the cars were repainted into the scheme depicted in January 1953. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Smith added that "there are a lot of color photos of these cars in Dwight Jones' caboose book and the WM Color Guide," and also cites Railway Prototype Cyclopedia Number 5. Which would be nice if I owned them! So I checked with MTL and indeed their reference photos came out of the Morning Sun Color Guide, page 89 to be specific where the exact cars are pictured. There wasn't anything they saw specifically as to when or if the particular cars they modeled were repainted into any other scheme. That leads me to estimate-- OK, guess-- the Approximate Time Period for this release. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But there is certainly a chance at one or more follow on releases, as reported by the gang on The Railwire in response to a call for assistance. First, there are variations on the speed lettering; some cars were painted without the stripes going all the way to the ends of the car. The spacing between the letters of the roadname is different as well. It appears that this "truncated stripe" version was used later in the speed lettering era. There were kitchen cars (at least) in oxide red with just the initials "WM" in speed lettering format with stripes in the left hand corner. And there was at least one in gray with black speed lettering. In addition, I did find on Northeast.railfan.net a shot of WM 940944 as retired in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in just red with plain reporting marks-- but still sporting Allied Full Cushion trucks! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As with the other railroad owned troop cars, there is probably limited appeal outside the realm of the Western Maryland modeler if you consider the car as painted only. However, thinking outside the box (as usual) there is certainly the opportunity for your pike to acquire one of the cars third hand from the WM, paint out the speed lettering, and add your own line's reporting marks. Why not? It's how the real railroads got these cars in the first place. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS:
026 00 030, $20.70
Boxcar red sides and ends, aluminum roof. Mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left and "wet noodle" herald on right. Reporting Marks: CNA 553201. Approximate Time Period: mid-1980's (1985 transfer date) to present. Previous Release (as catalog number 26030): Road Number 553290, February 1988. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. The Fallen Flags website includes a nice large photo of this exact car, as lensed in Nashville in June 2003 by Michael Greer. As on the model, there is no roadname, so there is no bilingual "Canadian/Canadien" requirement as on other CN cars. We get a clue as to the origin of this car in the form of photos of CNA 553211 and 553214 which are also there, and captioned "ex-ABOX." In fact, they are still in Railbox paint with just a quick restencil. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Ian Cranstone's "Canadian Freight Cars" website confirms that CNA 553000 to 553772 were indeed from the former ABOX series 50400 to 52449 series. They were built by FMC in 1978 and 1979 and are the 5277 models, based on cubic foot capacity. The MTL body style is a model of the FMC 5077 version, so we're close there; I will leave detail comparisons to others. Ian has these cars coming over to the CN in January 1985 still in service and I think the photos on Fallen Flags get us close enough to "the present" for our purposes. Does that mean that the restencil job on CNA 553211 and 553214 is more than ten years old already? Yikes! You'd think that the CN would be a little more up to date on repainting... never mind. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER for January 2002 has this information: AAR Classification "XP," description "Box, Steel, Nailable Steel Floor, Lading Strap Anchors," Plate C dimensions, inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 11 feet, outside length 55 feet 9 inches (with exceptions at 55 4), extreme height 15 feet 3 inches, door opening 16 feet, capacity 5277 cubic feet and gross rail weight 220,000 pounds. You might recall that "CNA" reporting marks reference cars that were built in the United States, and a notation reads "Cars were purchased in the United States and under U.S. Custom Regulations may be used in the same manner as cars carrying marks of U.S. owned railways in the handling of both International and U.S. domestic traffic." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I must admit I am a little concerned about the price tag for this car. There was no need to "go bilingual" so there aren't separate paint stencils for the opposite sides of the body. I checked and the original 1988 release came in at $10.20 so we're looking at a more than doubling of the MSRP for this reprint. People who look at the "plain brown boxcar" despite its silver roof are probably going to be a little taken aback. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
049 00 090, $19.00
Here's the third in what I hope will be a complete series of six reprints of the famous "Meat Packers Six Pack" of reefers from MTL. So far we've had the Kohr's and the King Packing Company. We get nowhere fast checking on "Cincinnati Refrigerator Express" so let's try the company name printed on the right side of the car, "Cincinnati Abattoir." The definition of "abattoir" is "a building where animals are butchered." We'd probably use "meat packing plant" as an alternative. The word "abattoir" doesn't come into general usage so much these days, given the consolidation of the industry, but there was a "Carteret Abattoir" in the town where I lived well into the 1970's at least. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. There were plenty of abattoirs in Cincinnati in the first half of the 19th Century; in fact the city was so well known for its pig business that it was called "Porkopolis." The first slaughterhouse was opened in 1818. Hogs were the primary livestock in Ohio and in the mid-1800's, according to a 1999 feature article in the Cincinnati Post, "a half million hogs took their last walks down Cincinnati streets, ending up in hams consumed at fashionable houses, hotels and restaurants nationwide, even at the White House." By the end of the century, Chicago had become "the hog butcher to the world" as Carl Sandburg put it, but the Queen City still had a decent slice of the business (if you'll pardon the expression). Perhaps the most well known name in that later part of the industry's history was Kahn's, but another was the Cincinnati Abattoir Company. In a 1912 item transcribed to the 'net, the company was called "one of the great corporations of the city." General Michael Ryan of the Cincinnati Abattoir Company served as the first president of the American Meat Institute in 1906. More well-known names like Oscar Mayer (yes, the real person!), Thomas Wilson (Wilson and Company), and John Rath (Rath Packing) served in this position as well. Cincinnati's heritage as a pork processor is recalled today with depictions of flying pigs (!) along the city's Riverwalk. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Prototype information is, in a word, sparse. In fact, I can give you the Clover House has had the dry transfers for this car available for some time-- in fact, it's been the only inexpensive manner in which to get this car until now, either do it yourself or through custom painters. Russ Clover pegs the time period for the car as the 1920's. The artwork in his catalog matches the artwork on the original run of this car, right down to the road number 214. But I should note that he's got it listed as a 36 foot car, not a 40 footer. That 36 foot body style didn't exist when Kadee ran the Meat Packers, though. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Trying "Cincinnati Abattoir" on the web, up comes another refrigerator car circa 1918 from Art Griffin's "Great Decals!" series (in HO Scale, unfortunately). The layout of the car is similar but not exactly the same as the MTL model. The words on the right are a bit different, and the font for the "Cincinnati Refrigerator Express" is more extended, somewhat like the "Copperplate" font I like to use at times. The road number for Art's decals is 125 which doesn't match the series given in the 1919 Register. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
055 00 320, $15.45
The Missouri Pacific had more hoppers than I realized! The January 1953 ORER (NMRA Reprint) shows 2181 of them in just the series from which the MTL model is taken, numbered 58750 to 60949. Those appear to be the only 33 foot hoppers, though, as the other groups of cars have inside lengths of 30 feet 6 inches or around 40 or 41 feet. All in all, I added together more than 8000 hoppers, out of about 37,000 total revenue cars. Let's finish the vital stats: inside height 10 feet 4 inches, outside length 34 feet 1 inch, extreme height 10 feet 8 inches, capacity 2191 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. According to Mo-pac.com, these were AAR type-- whatever that means, I wouldn't quite call it a "standard." They were purchased from 1936 to 1941 and were the last of the 50 ton hoppers. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
We'll take the build date of 1941 as printed on the MTL car as good. The end of the ATP could be in the area of the early 1960's, as based on a data point found in the RPI compendium of information. Through Ed Hawkins, who cites the Winter 1985 issue of the "Eagle" which is the publication of the MP Historical Society, RPI says that in 1961, "The color of open top cars was changed from black to box car red. Hawkins said this coincided with the new MP President, Downing Jenks and his newly selected Chief Mechanical Officer, John German. Hawkins spoke with German recently about this and he said that Jenks couldn't understand why the railroad shops were required to stock two colors of paint when he believed one color would do just fine. By going to one color for all freight cars, this simplified the ordering and stocking of paint at the shops." But in a post to the Mopac Yahoo group, Hawkins also noted that "the offset-side hopper side hoppers received the large 'Route of the Eagles' [slogan] beginning around mid-1949 to 1960." Which might further shorten the ATP for the MTL-depicted paint scheme. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Whether black or boxcar red, and with or without slogan in the January 1964 ORER there were 1855 cars in the series, plus 30 that were given extended sides and placed into woodchip service. In terms of online photos, I couldn't get one from the exact MP series, but Tom Stolte's site does have some 1940's era shots of three and four bay hoppers in the same general paint scheme, in glorious black and white. Well, the cars are black and white, so no harm there! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
092 00 020, $23.95
The second run of this car offers a chance for weathering buffs to do their worst. Cement, which is what the prototype carried, can make a car awfully messy in a hurry. This one shouldn't be an exception. What do you mean, weather MTL cars?
The April 1981 ORER shows the series 10070 to 10119 of 50 cars with AAR Classification LO and description "Covered Hopper (Cement)". The inside length was 34 feet 9 inches, outside length 41 feet 11 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, and capacity 2980 cubic feet or 200,000 pounds. The herald plus "Action Road" slogan was used beginning in 1967 so we're quite alright assuming that our ATP begins at the build date. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
But how about the end date of the ATP? MTL states in its car copy that the car ran from 1977 to 2000, and that might in fact be true for this specific car, but it's a little better news in terms of the overall series. Under the Union Pacific listing there remained 43 of the original 50 cars in the January 2000 ORER, the latest one I have. And the Fallen Flags website offers an image of sister car 10088 from December 2003, adding potential to the phrase "to present." Oh, by the way, that car is pretty hard to see under all that cement. Get going, weatherers! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
021 00 387, $19.85
My first foray into Wisconsin was part of the "Whirlwind Tour" of August 1988. The good news is that I traveled the length of the state from north to south, so I got to see plenty of it. The bad news is that it was during the course of one day and at highway speeds. My friend Paul and I were driving from Duluth, Minnesota to Chicago, and in between those two points there is plenty of Wisconsin. Along US Highway (fill in) there was quite the insistence on adhering to the speed limit, in the form of signs that read "55 means 55"! And what was everyone actually doing? Hmm, has the statute of limitations on this run out yet? Anyway, I had a more leisurely trip to the Badger State with my wife a number of years later, when we went to Madison, capital and college town, to visit a friend of hers. I very much enjoyed the city; the only thing that would have improved it would have been attending a performance of the public radio show "Whad'ya Know." Not much, you? As listeners of the show already know! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Well, speaking of "Whad'ya Know," did you know that the official dance of Wisconsin is the polka? Don't laugh, part of my heritage very much includes that traditional dance, accordion and all. Much less surprising would be that the official drink is milk; Wisconsin is a leader in dairy production including their famous cheese. And, I suppose, the "cheeseheads" that root for the Green Bay Packers (American) football team, but that's another story entirely. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Long before that, Wisconsin was first inhabited by varied Indian tribes in the 17th century, including the Algonquian-speaking Menominee, Kickapoo, Miami, the Siouan-speaking Winnebago, Dakota (or Sioux) and Iowa. In the mid-1600's other groups entered Wisconsin, including the Fox, Sac, Potawatomi and Ojibewa (Chippewa). © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Western Europeans began exploration in the 1600's as well, with Jean Nicolet, a Frenchman, first to set foot in the area. The French had control at first, then the British, then the United States. Talk about being bounced around in terms of jurisdictions: from 1787 to 1800 it was part of the Northwest Territory; from 1800 to 1809, the Indiana Territory; from 1809 to 1818, the Illinois Territory; from 1818 to 1836, the Michigan Territory; and from 1836 to 1848 it was the Wisconsin Territory. Iowa was carved out of it somewhere in there as well. Americans began arriving in earnest in the 1820's, coming to the lead and galena (lead sulfide) deposits in the southwest part of the territory. In fact, the nickname "The Badger State" comes from the nickname given to the early miners, who themselves worked underground and sheltered themselves in the winter in excavations-- not unlike the animals we call badgers. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Rich farmland brought many more settlers, and statehood wasn't much after that, coming on May 29, 1848. The capital was Madison from the start, having been surveyed the year before. The first railroad train ran from Milwaukee to Waukesha in 1851. You knew I had to sneak that in somewhere. I would be remiss if I did not mention the brewing industry that not only provided a livelihood for many and a beverage of choice for many more, but also provided plenty of traffic for Wisconsin railroads. Names like Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz and Heilmann continue to be famous, even though they are not necessarily brewed in Milwaukee any more. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Famous folks from Wisconsin, also known as "Wisconsinites" in one website, include newscaster, talk show host, and model train enthusiast Tom Snyder; long time "Password" host Allen Ludden; both Ringling Brothers of the circus fame; architect Frank Lloyd Wright; one name entertainers Liberace and Hildegarde; speed skater Eric Heiden; illusionist Harry Houdini; astrologer Jeanne Dixon; band leader Woody Herman, and actors Spencer Tracy, Don Ameche, Tyne Daly, Tom Hulce, Alfred Lunt, Frederick March, and Gena Rowlands. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
506 00 500, Magne-Matic Coupler, $21.95, 506 00 501, Marklin Coupler, $20.15.
Slowly but surely, the Z Scale crowd is getting this series of five Santa Fe express boxcars filled in-- a quintet that was issued as one five-pack in N Scale in October 2001. Oh, well, at least this lets you space out the payments. Each of the cars is painted similarly but carries a different "name train" slogan on one side of the car. This is the fourth in the sequence; the first three were the Grand Canyon (February 2003), the Scout (September 2003), and the El Capitan (July 2004). The only one left is "The Chief"; so far the Z Scale road numbers have matched the N Scale ones. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
To briefly recap on the series of cars, they were built in 1941 by Pullman-Standard but they aren't quite the PS-1 style MTL uses for its base. The cars were painted this way only until about 1944 when they were redone with just the legend "express" replacing the map and slogan on either side of the car. I did a more thorough look at each of the trains named on the five cars in the October 2001 UMTRR, available in archive version on the UMTRR site. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
522 00 090, Magne-Matic Coupler, $14.10, 522 00 091, Marklin Coupler, $12.30.
The Delaware and Hudson had a number of colorful schemes during the later part of the 20th Century, but this wasn't one of them. Gondolas and other open top cars had already been black for a while-- with exceptions, of course. The "billboard" lettering was in the standard Roman font that had been used for many years on boxcars and hoppers. But black was out just a couple of years after the black was on this car; in 1974 some gons emerged in red with yellow lettering. As John Nehrich of RPI notes, "the post-steam era for the D&H is VERY confusing." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
We'll ignore the build date of 1951, therefore, and hit the April 1970 ORER which is way closer to the repaint date. The series 13700 to 13899 contained 151 cars in the main series; we'll get to the two subseries in a moment. The description was "Gondola, Steel, Drop Ends, Wood Floor" with AAR Classification "GB" and the following dimensions: inside length 52 feet 6 inches, inside height 3 feet 3 inches, outside length 57 feet 2 inches, extreme height 7 feet, and capacity 1647 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. Another 22 cars were different only in capacity, 140,000 pounds. A second subset is more interesting, it consisted of 25 former gons in the series that were converted to flat cars and derated to just 51,000 pounds capacity. No worries, though, it looks as if the 13792 was in the main series, at least in 1970. Checking the April 1976 Register, we find a drop down to 137 cars in the main series, 33 with lower capacity, and the same 25 gon to flat conversions. By April 1981 these counts were down to 65, 32 and 8 respectively. In the mid-1980's some of these cars were converted to ingot service. I'm going to cut the ATP off there in deference to the ever changing paint schemes of the D&H of the period, but a little stretching beyond there probably wouldn't be all that noticeable. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
540 00 010, Magne-Matic Coupler, $36.10, 540 00 011, Marklin Coupler, $34.30.
Since it was only June for the first release of this car, which was in fact the first Husky-Stack model done by MTL, we should still be good on the commentary from then, and I will largely refer you to that. I will note that aside from the road number change, there's another difference: this time you get two forty foot containers instead of one forty foot and two twenty foot containers. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I will repeat the ORER data from the October 1996 edition for convenience: the Trailer Train series DTTX 56775 to 56873 has AAR Classification "FC" and description "Flat". The AAR Car Type Code is better: "S312" translates to Stack Car, 48 foot well, single well (or "FC" again), and the load type, which can consist of two 20 foot or one 40, 45 or 48 foot container in the well and one 40, 45 or 48 foot container stacked above. Well, I guess "Flat" is enough of a description, then. The inside length is, as you'd probably guess, 48 feet, the outside length 71 feet 8 inches (notice the round-up from the Gunderson spec) and the capacity is 164,000 pounds. There were 98 cars in the group in October 1996 and from there I jumped right to the January 2002 Register where the same 98 are in place. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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