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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:
032 00 390, $18.35
Yellow sides, aluminum roof, black ends. Black lettering including small roadname and reporting marks on left and "Be Specific - Ship Union Pacific" slogan on right. Reporting Marks: UP 499055. Approximate Time Period: mid-1950's (1955 build date given by MTL) to early 1960's. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. Between the brown and the "Automated Railway" was this paint scheme for Union Pacific boxcars, at least those that were equipped with Cushioned Underframes according to the RPI website. The use of the small Union Pacific roadname apparently gave way rather quickly to the large two line roadname, if the photo references I've dug up are any indication. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. And there is a photo reference in the Morning Sun Color Guide (MSCG) to the Union Pacific, Volume 2 (this is the one with the brown cover). Page 18 shows a sister car, Union Pacific Class BI-50-1, road number 499099, as captured back in July 1955. That would be in the month it was built! To be fair, there has been some chatter on the 'net as to whether the color of this car is not yellow, but orange. I lean toward the yellow, myself. And I'd offer as additional evidence that George Elwood's Fallen Flags site ( www.rr-fallenflags.org ) shows some much more recent photos of some of these cars in the scheme with the large roadname. These cars are absolutely out of service-- in fact, they're off the rails completely-- and they are more than a little dirty. But in places where the paint shows through, it looks yellow to me. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Regardless of color, one definite quibble on the model versus the prototype is that the side sill is straight, a detail that can be fixed if desired. Let's check the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for January 1964 which is unfortunately as close as I get can right now. The series 499000 to 499299 carried AAR classification "RBL" (refrigerator, typical for insulated box cars) and description "Union Pacific Refrigerator, Steel, Plug Doors". The inside length was 50 feet 1 inch, inside height 9 feet 11 inches, outside length 52 feet, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 10 feet 6 inches (yes, that is a "door thing" versus the 8 foot width on the model), capacity 4477 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. There were 295 cars out of the possible 300 at the time. A notation showed this group with 9 Belt DF Loaders. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In the April 1970 Register there were 282 cars in the group with the same number series. However, in the April 1976 ORER the cars had been redistributed into a series from 490000 to 499199 with 186 total cars and another series from 490200 to 490449, and the description changed to more or less "Refrigerator, Steel." You'd have to be thinking roofwalk removal by this time in my estimation, and also very much change in paint scheme. In fact, the April 1970 book is probably past the Approximate Time Period, and so for that matter may be the January 1964 book although I am giving the ATP that much of a span.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
052 00 060, $21.85
The release of this car should be encouraging to those of us who don't, or can't, take advantage of the special runs commissioned by the N Scale Collector's Society (full disclosure disclaimer: I am a member and write for the NSC Magazine). When MTL re-instituted their policy of allowing prototype special runs, I wondered whether this would lock up forever rolling stock that really should have hit the market as a regular run release, including this one which was commissioned as a three pack by the NSC in 2001 (special run numbers 01-73 through 01-76, the last of these being for the shrinkwrapped pack. Part of the MTL policy was that after one year, any prototype special run could be done by MTL as a regular release. Although it's been more than that obligatory year, here is proof that MTL will follow that policy. (The PRR maintenance of way boxcar from December is another example, but it was a "Surprise Car" for an NSC Convention and had even more limited distribution than a standard Special Run.) Those folks that bought the NSC three-pack of this car remain protected since the road number of this run differs, just as it's also stated in the MTL policy. Specifically, they will do a different number when it is prototypically possible. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. And it is prototypically possible, according to the July 1953 ORER (NMRA Reprint) which has 50 cars in the series numbered 2200 to 2249. These were AAR Classification "BR" with a description of "Express, Refrigerator, All Steel." The inside length was 42 feet, inside height 7 feet 1 inch, outside length 52 feet 1 inch, extreme height 13 feet 5 inches, door opening 6 feet wide by 7 feet 2 inches high, and capacity 2457 cubic feet of cargo and 360 cubic feet of ice. Weight capacity was 14,700 pounds of crushed ice or 12,600 pounds of chunk ice with a total of 100,000 pounds. Because the prototype cars were built by Pacific Car and Foundry and the model represents a car done by American Car and Foundry, I'd expect some detail differences. How's this for a special purpose: Note U states that "Cars numbered 2201 to 2215 are equipped with meat (lamb) racks." This is probably not an aftermarket accessory we need, though. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Here's something you might need if you're looking at the early 1960's, though: The ORER for January 1964 still has 48 of these cars, but with the note that they'd been leased to the Railway Express Agency and were carrying "REX" reporting marks. This lease occurred sometime between 1955 and 1964. Movements and remittances were to be directed to REA but car repair bills still were to go to the Great Northern. By the April 1970 ORER and the coming of the Burlington Northern, these cars were off the roster even though there were still Baggage-Express cars being listed for the GN. Vic Roseman's book "Railway Express" has the GN cars in service to the REA until 1969, though, so the not so strictly speaking ATP should cover almost the entire sixties.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
073 00 060, $22.50
The logistics of a railroad moving its own parts and supplies around is not usually front and center when one discusses the everyday operations of a carrier. The line is in business to move other people's stuff, not their own. But there needs to be some way to get service material around the system, and sometimes, but not always, that's in freight cars. Believe it or not, a lot of small parts are transported the same way as in other industries-- by air or by truck, using any of the well known names in the shipping business. But big parts are significantly more problematic, and are better suited to rail transport-- traction motors immediately come to mind. This MTL model does represent an example of how the railroads do it themselves. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As this is very much a prototype company service piece of rolling stock, I was not surprised that it wasn't in the ORERs that I checked. It also wasn't mentioned in the Canadian Frieght Cars site. That means I can't do any more than guess at the ATP this time around, and I will base that guess on the British Columbia Railway becoming BC Rail in 1984. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. However, there is a jackpot on the Fallen Flags site in the form of a nice shot of this very car in Vancouver-- undated, but we'll take it! You may wonder whether MTL was having a bad day in terms of how the road number isn't lined up with the BCOL reporting marks. Well, no, they're just reproducing how the actual car looks-- the British Columbia's paint shop was having the bad day, it seems. Although the look and feel of the car is captured using the PS-1 body style, the BCOL's 40 foot cars generally came from National Steel Car and as such did differ from the Pullman-Standard design. My suspicion is that the flashy paint scheme will catch and hold the observer's eye before the detail differences do.
077 00 100, $16.45
I was pretty sure I wasn't completely hallucinating when I remembered seeing Chattahoochee Industrial boxcars while still living in Jersey City, but how could it have been if they had just those exterior post cars? Aha, they didn't, these cars predated the dominance of the X-post cars. The "better by a dam site" always seemed just a little off-color to me as well, although I, honestly, didn't quite get the reference to the expression "better by a damn sight" for many years. Perhaps that's just as well, as I was just a lad when these cars hit the prototype rails in 1967 and I surely would have had soap in my mouth if I'd commented on the play on words. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. James Kincaid's MSCG to Pullman-Standard (formal title: "Pullman-Standard Color Guide to Freight Equipment") includes two photos from this series. "The Chattahoochee Industrial was very proud of these cars," Kincaid writes, "they represented the first cars for the railroad." There's a three-quarter view of the very CIRR modeled at the top of Page 28 of the MSCG, followed by a January 1967 promotional photo of a squeaky clean white (!) CIRR RS-1 pulling a string of a number of these cars staged at Cedar Springs, Georgia. The photos show a key compromise on this model, I guess we'll call it a "ladder thing" in that the prototype has short ladders while the model has the full size ladders to the roof. MTL doesn't have an exact match for this body style and I don't think anyone else in N Scale does either. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The April 1970 ORER shows the series 2000 to 2199 with AAR Classification "XL" and description "Box, All Steel, DF Equipped." The inside height was 10 feet 11 inches and the extreme height 15 feet 6 inches, so these were taller than the typical Pullman-Standard output of the time. The inside length was 50 feet 6 inches and outside length 54 feet 5 inches. The door opening was 9 feet, one foot more than the MTL model's door but the "door thing" isn't as noticable on 50 foot cars in my opinion. The capacity was 5119 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. The April 1981 Register shows 141 of these cars remaining on the roster but they're gone by 1985, a relatively short tour of duty for the railroad.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Although built in 1979 as Conrail's H1K class, the paint scheme is from 1992 and later, given the "Conrail Quality" herald. To help backdate the cars, remove the herald. Simple enough. You could also remove all of the lettering, yielding a nice gray example for your own pike's MOW service, but keep in mind that the real cars still work as painted at this writing. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Fallen Flags site shows an in-train (and in-motion, it's a little blurry) shot of sister car CR 493119 as lensed in Enola, Pennsylvania in November 2003. But in Robert Waller's Conrail Cyclopedia, "Maintenance of Way" section there is an entire webpage devoted to Conrail's "Ballast Express" that includes 1996 and 1997 images of the two numbers MTL did model. "The H1K ballast hoppers start out a bright grey that is almost white," it's noted, "then quickly gather a coating of grime, stone dust, and wheel grunge kicked up from the trucks through the open foot boards." Some of the MTL car copy came from this page. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. On Conrail there were a large number of hoppers numbered in the 400000s and this group comes near but not at the very end of that sequence. The July 1992 ORER shows the group 493001 to 493199 of all 199 possible cars with the basic description "Hopper, Steel." There are no inside dimensions given, pity. The outside length is 43 feet 10 inches and the capacity is 2300 cubic feet or 201,000 pounds. I am pleased to be able to use the latest addition to the ORER Accumulation, the edition from October 2004, to redefine my proxy for "to present." And that label fits, as 197 cars remain in the CR series under the Norfolk Southern listing in that issue. The Gross Rail Weight is shown as 263,000 pounds. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS:
020 00 850, $11.55
Box car red with white lettering including large left to right sloping "SP&S" on left and "football" herald on right. Reporting Marks: SP&S 12263. Approximate Time Period: late 1950's (1957 service/repaint date) to mid-1970's. Previous Releases (as catalog number 20850): Road Number 12270, February 1988; Road Number 12218, July 1998. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. The car modeled here was, on the real SP&S, part of a 500 car order of 40 foot boxcars that was filled by the half-owner Northern Pacific in the NP's Brainerd shops. This was in answer to a complaint by the Association of American Railroads that the line didn't own enough of its own cars in proportion to the amount of cars it required. According to the various captions that appear in the MSCG to the SP&S, these cars came with Camel doors (similar looking to the Youngstown on the MTL car), Murphy rectangular panel roofs and U.S. Gypsum metal running boards. As such they are, of course, not PS-1s as is the MTL 020 series body style. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A second order for 500 more cars was later combined into one group for reporting purposes, and that's what we find in the ORER for January 1964. The series 12000 to 12999 is your basic "Box, Steel" with AAR Classification "XM". The stats: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 41 feet 11 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 6 feet, capacity 3915 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. There were 957 cars out of the original thousand at that point and 890 in April 1970 under the Burlington Northern registration. By April 1976 that was down to 249 cars plus another 15 that had their doors removed and were placed into veneer service. The MSCG states that few of the cars were restenciled for the BN and offers only one example that was put into company service. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The typical paint scheme for these cars, if there was one considering the Spokane's interest in experimenting, is almost exactly what MTL did on this reprint, with one exception. The "assigned" paint scheme with the 60 inch billboard letters that you can't miss also included small reporting marks left of the number. In fact, in the MSCG there is a 1971 photo of SP&S 12263, the car number reprinted by MTL, with these reporting marks. There is also a shot of SP&S 12444 without the reporting marks. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
031 00 270, $21.05
These cars started as the property of GAEX, a joint venture that paired the box cars of General American Transportation Corporation, or GATX, with Evans Products' "Damage Free" equipment, which explains both the "No Damage" and "General American" logos. The Pennsy took over ownership of these cars after the initial lease, after which GAEX was dissolved, incidentally, which explains the PRR reporting marks. While the cars themselves date from 1950, this paint scheme is from about 1958. These were ex-GAEX 100000 to 100109 and according to Chuck Friedlein for "Rob's Pennsy Page" had diagonal panel roofs, improved Dreadnaught ends and carried Chrysler FR-5 series trucks, which look somewhat like Bettendorfs except with snubbers (shock absorbers). There's no current exact N Scale model of these trucks. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The January 1964 ORER shows the series 47100 to 47209 with 109 cars, AAR Classification "XME" and description "Box, Steel, DF Loaders. There isn't the usual Pennsylvania System Class, though, for example "X29". The inside length was 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 53 feet, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet, and capacity 4872 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. In the April 1970 ORER under the Penn Central listing there were 147 cars left including nine that were bumped to 110,000 pounds capacity. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The MSCG Volume 2 for the Pennsy has three photos of cars in this series and the MSCG Volume 1 for the Pennsy has a nice shot of PRR 47136 (page 94, thanks to Joe Levitsky for that tip). They did survive into the Penn Central era and in fact were restenciled into the PC series 264651 to 264789. They probably should have had the roofwalk taken off by this point, but since we're dealing with the Penn Central here, I wouldn't take anything for granted. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
046 00 190, $16.75
MTL adds a pipe load to its growing list of ladings for open top cars, and if the short history of these items is any indication we'll see this as an accessory before too much longer. Meanwhile, the car in which it is carried reappears nearly twenty years after its first run. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER for January 1964 shows 100 cars in the group 72200 to 72299, described as "Gondola, Steel, Flat Bottom, Wood Floor, Drop Ends" with AAR Classification "GB". The inside length was 52 feet 6 inches, inside height 3 feet 1 inch, outside length 55 feet 9 inches, extreme height 7 feet, and capacity 1536 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. This car was part of the G8 class of gons on the N&W. In April 1970 there were 70 cars with capacity moved up to 140,000 pounds and 28 more with capacity of 154,000 pounds. The 72216 would have been at 140 and the first release 72201 was at 154, if you're curious; this would have ended the "strictly speaking" ATP sometime in the sixties. What's also a bit interesting is that the Nickel Plate Road, which the N&W took over in 1964, also had gondolas in the 72000 series. In the April 1976 and the April 1981 Registers there were still 93 cars of the original 100 listed, and October 1986 there were 72 left. It looks like these left the roster by about the end of the 1980's. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. It was reported on another venue that these cars should have been painted with the 24 inch high "N & W" lettering instead of the 17 inch lettering that was utilized by MTL. Measuring the lettering on the previous release, I get 1/8 actual inch which translates to 20 inch high lettering. Hmm, too much picking of nits? Perhaps.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
055 00 140, $18.25
Excuse my bias again: I just don't think of hoppers when I think of roads based in the central part of the country. I should get over that; there are plenty of opportunities to haul coal and other minerals out of the service area of the Illinois Central Gulf. The ICG did have a reasonable complement of them in April 1976, the closest ORER I have to the service date of these cars, with a total of 1555 cars of that type numbered in the 300000's. That's about three percent of the total ICG roster for the time. As long as I am there, I'll give the vital statistics: inside length, 33 feet even, no inside height given, outside length 36 feet 6 inches, extreme height 11 feet 10 inches, capacity 2540 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. Although there was room for 3000 cars in the group there were just 459 on the roster at that time. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. From that Register listing it looks as though the 320000 to 322999 series came straight over from the Illinois Central as those were the only 33 foot hoppers on the roster. But earlier listings for the Illinois Central, like the April 1970 ORER, show 33 foot hoppers numbered in the 70000s, 80000s and 90000s, like, for example, MTL's release of an IC hopper numbered 74825 as catalog number 55240 in April 1987. My sense is that the IC did some reshuffling prior to the merger or perhaps after it in order to collect car types differently. Oh, and it's also possible that merger partner Gulf, Mobile and Ohio contributed some of their cars to this group since in April 1970 they had over 700 steel 33 foot hoppers too. Let's go forward again: in April 1981 there were 123 cars left in the group and in January 1985 there were just two left. Well, it was a nice paint scheme while it lasted. Unfortunately I couldn't dig out any images for us from the 'net. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES:
021 00 388, $19.85
Aluminum sides, black roof, ends, sills and door hardware; blue and black primary lettering including reporting marks, state name and outline map on left. Four color process graphics including state flag, state flower (forget-me-not) and state bird (willow ptarmigan) on right. Reporting Marks: AK 1959. Twenty-fourth release in the States of the Union series. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. There would be plenty of room to spread out in the forty-ninth state; it has less than a million people in 570,374 square miles. That's one-fifth the size of the "Lower 48". It's widely believed that crossover from what is now Asia to what is now North America was through Alaska, back when the continents we know now were joined together. Vitus Bering was the first European to "discover" Alaska on behalf of Peter the Great of Russia. But other countries joined and quickly grabbed the accessible natural resources, especially furs, and encountered Native Americans like the Tlingit and the Haida. Russia nominally had possession of the territory but administering it was a drain, so it was sold to the United States for $7.2 million. That was a LOT of money in 1867, leading to the nickname "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox" after William Seward, the Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson who negotiated the sale. A general neglect of the area ensued until gold was discovered in 1896 in the Yukon and suddenly the Folly was a route to riches. Gold was discovered in what is now Alaska itself not long after; in the meantime, mining, lumbering and fishery industries were established. The area became the Alaska Territory in 1912. The Alaska Railroad was completed in 1923. The land's proximity to Asia led to a boom of activity during World War II including the building of the Alaska Highway, but also invasion of the Aleutian Islands by Japan. Following World War II, exploration for gas and oil began in earnest, eventually leading to huge reserves and huge controversy as to whether they could be exploited without spoiling Alaska's environment. By 1949 there was an effort underway to make the territory a state, which occurred on January 3, 1959. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. On March 27, 1964, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the United States rocked Alaska and took 131 lives and the very south end of the Alaska Railroad. While in Anchorage, we saw several examples of how the landscape was dramatically changed with this event. It was estimated at first at above an 8 on the Richter Scale but was later upgraded to a 9.2, which, since the Richter is a logarithmic scale, was ten times stronger than first thought. A disaster of a different kind occurred when the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in 1979. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I have been looking forward to the release of this car! My first trip to the 49th State was also my family's first visit, and it came on the occassion of our tenth wedding anniversary. Courtesy of a pile of frequent flyer miles (it sure wasn't on the UMTRR income!) the four of us headed up to Anchorage in August 2001. It was a short trip-- we weren't quite sure how a then one year old and almost five year old would react-- but it was quite enjoyable. Even given the relative development of the Anchorage area, the beauty of the state came through. Of course there was a train ride, down to Seward on the Alaska Railroad, views of a glacier, a short hike in a park, and a ride behind sled dogs. And what was probably the best moment of the entire trip: Thalia holding a very young Iditarod puppy! There are photos of the trip in the "Alaska Adventure!" page in the "Photo Section" of the family website, so please have a look. It was one of those trips that seems to have happened only yesterday, and I don't think our clan would object to heading back there tomorrow. (Although we might wait for the days to get a little longer.) © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE):
Reprint:
Boxcar red with white lettering including large reporting marks on left. Reporting Marks: D&SNG 3401. Approximate Time Period: 1960's to present, but see text. Previous Releases (as catalog number 15105): Road Number 3749, September 1995; Road Number 3410, October 1999. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge may yet haul a little freight here and there, but it is primarily a tourist operation and has been since the line was purchased from the Denver and Rio Grande Western in March 1981. (And it's run out of a general office in Florida, how's that for a contrast?) The Durango to Silverton section was one of the last surviving sections of what was once a more than one thousand mile narrow gauge empire, and it remains today one of the most scenic rail lines ever built. But it's not for the fainthearted, as the trackage hugs the canyon above the Animas River deep in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Passengers have the choice of parlor car (extra fare), coach or open gondola. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The fairly extensive D&SNG site includes a current roster of equipment, which leads to the "see text" disclaimer; just a single box car, road number 3681, which is listed as a "rail camp convered boxcar." Other boxcars may or may not be officially rostered. A roster of surviving Rio Grande narrow gauge boxcars includes the D&SNG 3401, but just barely: it's off its trucks and stored at Durango. As of 2000 there was also a string of these cars used as a "highway shield" at Durango. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES:
505 00 200, Magne-Matic Coupler, $20.45, 505 00 201, Marklin Coupler, $18.65.
Boxcar red with mostly white lettering including large roadname and reporting marks on left and large "Mt. McKinley National Park Route" herald on right. Reporting Marks: ARR 10701. Approximate Time Period: late 1960's or late 1970's to late 1980's, but see text. NOTE: This item (both versions) has been sold out and discontinued. The Alaska Railroad series numbered 10700 to 10727 appears sometime between the January 1964 and the April 1970 editions of the ORER, and unfortunately that's as close as I can get. But this car is actually a lot older than that, as these and a number of other cars rostered by the McKinley National Park Route are rebuilt troop cars. And that, unfortunately, makes the MTL model not much more than a stand in for this prototype. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER for April 1970 tells part of the tale: inside height of just 9 feet to go with the inside length of 50 feet 4 inches, outside length of 54 feet 2 inches, and extreme height of just 13 feet 7 inches. The door opening was 6 feet 10 inches, slightly wider than the adjacent series 10551 to 10643, but still a "door thing" with respect to the 8 foot door used by MTL. The capacity of these cars was either 100,000 or 110,000 pounds; the 10701 was the former. For the record, it looks like these cars lasted until the 1980s, certainly long enough to receive the U-1 symbol that MTL references in its car copy-- which is the reason for the split start of the ATP. In fact the 10701 is specifically called out in the July 1987 Register, but it's gone from the July 1989 book. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Fallen Flags site shows two partial views of sister car 10629 intact but out of service, which I believe was part of the same general group of troop cars that served as the common origin of most of the Alaska's cars numbered in the 10000s. The August 2000 images from Seward, Alaska show the troop car origins and even suggest where the windows were filled in. But the 10629 does sport the same paint scheme as the MTL model. And it even appears to have its original Allied trucks!
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
522 00 100, Magne-Matic Coupler, $16.20, 522 00 101, Marklin Coupler, $14.40.
Gondolas are not usually what come to my mind when thinking of the Rio Grande, but in fact, the D&RGW did quite the business in the steel business. Pueblo, Colorado was one reason; it was a key point for shipments from mills for the "Action Road". Built in 1977, the April 1981 ORER reveals series 56375 to 56424, of 50 cars class GB, 52 foot 6 inches inside length and 57 foot 2 inches over the couplers. For the July 1992 book 17 of the remaining 48 cars were split into the GBS series, but that didn't last long, as in 1996 only one of that GBS subset remained. There were still 36 cars in several subgroups in the January 2000 Register under the Union Pacific registration so you're covered that far, although I'd set the weathering machine to "heavy". In fact, recent photos of Rio Grande gons on the Fallen Flags site show as almost black from rust, never mind orange! My October 2004 ORER still has 30 cars left so we'll keep that "to present" but perhaps with even more weathering. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Inspection of a photo of one of the prototypes of this car found in Jim Eager's MSCG for the D&RGW reveals some possible nits to pick with this release. The photo apparently shows fixed or perhaps welded ends, not drop ends as with the model. In fact, MTL admits that the real cars had fixed ends in its car copy. Harder to ignore is the placement of the brake wheel on the end, as opposed to on the side on the MTL model.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
526 00 080, Magne-Matic Coupler, $14.50, 526 00 081, Marklin Coupler, $12.70.
There have been Union Pacific bulkhead flats painted brown with yellow lettering that have been released before, but this is the first run with the yellow paint and red and black lettering. The N Scalers sometimes have to deal with a "door thing", well here we have a "length thing" that is not easy to overlook. The ORER for April 1970 shows the series UP 15000 to 15099 with an inside length of 48 feet 6 inches and an outside length of 57 feet 11 inches, whereas the model is at a nominal 40 feet. A 17 foot or so difference, even in 1:220, is noticable, even given that some of the outside length is taken by the cushion underframe. A note indicates, as MTL states, that the cars have end bulkheads for wall and plaster board shipments. MTL says the cars were built at the Omaha shops but I think it's possible that they came from a "kit" based on a General Steel Casting Company body. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I have the cars in service right through the rest of my ORER Accumulation, with nine still rostered in the October 2004 Register. I can't vouch for the continuation of the yellow paint scheme but on the Fallen Flags site there is a variety of larger flats in yellow in circa 1990's images. There is also a representative photo of UP 15260 from the next-adjacent series of their bulkhead flat cars, as caught in 1969 by Jim Sands at Marshalltown, Iowa.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
980 01 150, Magne-Matic Coupler, $100.95, 980 01 151, Marklin Coupler, $99.15.
It was a long way from the flashy purple and silver of the early Atlantic Coast Line diesel units (like the N Scale FT recently done by Micro-Trains) to this rather plain looking but easier to maintain black and yellow garb. It's reasonable to assume that the 1957 change to basic black was a cost saving move. The ACL was the only major railroad in the United States to paint its diesels purple and all F units were delivered that way. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The only roster I found online for the ACL was a little confusing, showing road numbers 3348 to 423? This may have been two numbering schemes mixed together, but since through MTL we establish the start of the ATP at 1957 with the paint change, it doesn't matter that much. One citation I found had the F7's delivered in the late 1940's and early 1950's, following FTs, F2s and F3s. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Fallen Flags website has a 1967 photo of this very unit, F7A number 430, pausing at Rocky Mount, North Carolina. This was the year that the ACL merged with the Seaboard to become the Seaboard Coast Line. The F's that moved from the ACL to the SCL kept basically the same paint scheme. The "Atlantic Coast Line" roadname became "Seaboard Coast Line" in an italic font, and a small "SCL" in the road's distinctive font was added below the side cab windows. And of course the famous ACL "curlicue" herald on the nose was removed. It doesn't look like the Seaboard Air Line had any F7's to bring to the merged railroad so all SCL F7's would have come over from the ACL. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE REPRINTS: No releases this month. Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITIONS: No releases this month. |