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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:
020 00 706, $19.40
Orange sides, black ends and door. Mostly black lettering including large roadname and reporting marks on left and circular herald on right. Reporting Marks: GNW 100079. Approximate Time Period: late 1950's to early 1970's. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. This boxcar is from the time when it was just the railroad, not the holding company, and the business was primarily salt. The car is also from what I call the "Era of Color", that time period in the 1950's and 1960's when many American railroads livened up trains with rolling stock painted in something other than boxcar red. Honestly, I thought this car was from a later Approximate Time Period, but it turns out that the exact car is photographed as of 1963 in "Classic Freight Cars Volume 1," page 14. The caption with that photo says the cars were bought used and there is a stencil date of 1958 on the model. There is a "door thing"-- though it is a Superior door, it's seven feet wide on the prototype and six feet wide on the model. (And the lettering on the door reads in part, uh, "W-7 Ft"? Uh, well...) And yes, the reporting marks are, correctly, "GNW", though presently G&W uses "GNWR" for its official initials. I had wondered about that too. The railroad's name, by the way, is a reference to the two counties in Western New York in which it runs, not the result of very overly ambitious plans to reach to the State of Wyoming. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. So clearly we need to look at the "old" G&W, so let's check the February 1963 edition of the Official Guide of the Railways. The shortline was unusual in the number of connections it had. At Pittsburgh and Lehigh Junction there was the Baltimore and Ohio (ex-Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh) and the Lehigh Valley; at G&W Junction there was the New York Central and the Erie-Lackawanna (ex-Erie), at Retsof Junction there was the Pennsylvania; and at Griegsville there was the Erie-Lackawanna again (ex-Lackwanna). All of the railroads that reached into that part of Western New York were covered, and that was to ensure that the salt got out to where it was needed. That could have been just about anyplace in the Northeast at least. For example, salt was shipped year round to highway departments to build up supplies for the winter. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Where were all of these connections? A map accompanying the freight car roster in the January 1964 Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER)-- a very unusual feature for the Register-- shows the relative position of these junctions. With the exception of Greigsville, they were at the north end of the 12 mile line, where the various roads all tangled together on their respective routes to Buffalo and Rochester. The proximity of these lines to each other is an illustration not only of how much traffic once flowed from Buffalo to New York, but also a justification for why Conrail tore almost everything up after taking most of them over. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER listing for the box cars shows 100 of them in the series 100001 to 100100, with inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet (a bit shorter than the standard PS-1), outside length 41 feet 11 inches, extreme height 14 feet 7 inches, door opening 7 feet, and capacity 3715 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. There are 99 cars listed in the April 1970 ORER, but they're gone by the April 1976 Register. I seem to recall their being somewhat clumsily restenciled into the newer reporting marks by just adding an "R" to the "GNW". My guess is that this occurred to avoid confusion with the "CNW", that is the Chicago and North Western. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. While Genesee and Wyoming, the holding company, does very well these days, owning a number of railroads and painting many of its locomotives in its standard orange and black livery, the Genesee and Wyoming, the railroad, almost died in 1996 when the salt mine in Retsof, its main source of traffic, collapsed. (And that measured on the Richter Scale!) A new mine was built in Hampton Corners, visible from Interstate 390 and new trackage was built to serve that operation. Technically speaking the G&W is an operation under the larger Rochester and Southern, a line that operates over the former B&O and ex-BR&P trackage from Rochester to Silver Springs, New York. While the boxcars MTL modeled have long since been replaced by plain gray salt-stained hoppers bearing the GNWR markings, the trackage is still in operation as the original part of what's become a far-flung shortline and regional road operation still partly based in the Rochester area.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
065 00 610, $18.95
A photo in the Morning Sun Color Guide (MSCG) to the Burlington gives us good news and bad news on this car. The good news is that, indeed, it was unusually painted in mineral red, not the all too typical tank car black. The bad news is that the prototype isn't really that close to the model. The TM-5A class of cars has a tank that's a good bit smaller than the MTL 65er series, the tank is riveted rather than welded, and the ladders and platforms differ in their arrangement. The MSCG caption notes that these cars, as mentioned in the MTL car copy, were built in 1918 by Standard Steel Car Company. They had a 12,500 gallon capacity tank and steam heating coils. The MSCG photo is from March, 1970, so the 231036 lasted into the Burlington Northern merger. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As is typical with company service cars, the ORER Accumulation is essentially useless. For example, the February 1964 edition gives only a mention to 2636 total cars numbered from 200000 to 214999 and from 230000 to 251999 in, what else, company service.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
081 00 740, $25.95
This is another milestone of sorts as well. With this release, all trailers and containers that were in the Cityview series have been produced by Micro-Trains (well, with a little help from Deluxe on those containers). According to the QStation site there was only the one Toronto, as with Montreal and Omaha (there were three Atlantas), so once this one is gone, it's gone. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Note that this isn't the same style "Cityview" as the others in the series. The mural is not part of the name; the depiction is of several landmarks in the city, to be sure, but the city and province are printed in red bracketing the mural. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In 1750, the French built Fort Toronto on the Humber River, a bit west of what is now downtown Toronto. The French lost the territory to the British, who renamed Toronto to "York" in 1793. Yonge Street, technically still the longest street in the world at 1896 kilometers, was built beginning in 1793 as well. York was briefly occupied by United States forces (!) during the War of 1812. In 1834 York was reincorporated as Toronto again and was the alternating parlimentary center of Canada until 1857. The first railroad built into the city in 1851. The "Ex" -- more formally known as the Canadian National Exhibition-- opened in its permanent home near the shore of Lake Ontario in 1878; it's still one of the top drawing fairs in the world. The Toronto Transit Commission introduced the streetcar in 1938 and the first subway opened in 1954. The Royal Ontario Museum-- a favorite of ours-- opened in 1914. In 1953 the first of two consolidations of municipalities created Metropolitan Toronto, and in 1998 that joined with five other cities to form a "megacity" of more than two million people. In between, in 1976, the CN Tower opened on the site of part of the Canadian National's downtown terminal area. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Because of geography, Toronto has the distinction of being a much shorter distance from UMTRR HQ over water, specifically across Lake Ontario, than by car, around the west end of that Great Lake. It's about four hours drive if you're me, and something less than three if you drive as fast on the Queen Elizabeth Way as some people do! There is also the "Fast Ferry" experiment between Rochester and Toronto, but we'd appreciate it if any Torontonians who read this wouldn't bring that up. (Let's just say it hasn't quite worked out as expected.) Speaking of Torontonians, people from in and around the city include comedians John Candy, Howie Mandel, Dan Ackroyd, Norm McDonald, Rick Moranis, and Mike Myers; actors Mary Pickford, Walter Huston and Catherine O'Hara; "60 Minutes" journalist Morley Safer; supermodel Linda Evangelista; "Superman" co-creater Joe Shuster; musicians Neil Young, Glenn Gould, Robbie Robertson and Dan Hill; and the band "Barenaked Ladies" was formed in Toronto and often cite locations in the city in their songs.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
101 00 010, $19.95
Many moons ago when Athearn first released this body style in that much larger HO Scale, it used the term in its advertising: "Ugly Duckling." The Micro-Trains 100th body style-- would anyone who didn't have the scoop early have guessed this?-- is a faithful model of the car born largely out of necessity. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. That necessity was appliances. Although you and I probably don't view moving a refrigerator as lightweight duty, the railroads do, relatively speaking, and transport of these items was a bit problematic once the weight capacity of boxcars was expanded. The cubic capacity of the older style boxcars was easily exceeded before the weight limits were. If appliances could be stacked two high, well that would be just great. And the "ugly ducklings" allowed this. OK, maybe I should call them "Hy-Cubes" instead. There were several variants on this body style and I don't think I would be surprised to see them from Micro-Trains eventually, in the same manner as with the 60 foot excess height boxcar in its three versions. The separate end ladder assemblies come over from that body style, by the way, and the side ladders are also separately applied, which is a first for an MTL car. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Page 44 of the MSCG to the Northern Pacific shows the exact car in all its green glory as lensed in Minot, North Dakota-- do they need refrigerators there anyway?-- just kidding-- in 1976. Yes, these cars were painted in the NP's dark green, the same shade as their RBL insulated box cars classified as refrigerator cars. (For example, the MTL release 21210, a 40 foot plug door boxcar.) And yes, they are actually green. They don't look that way on the website image and they even look more like brown in the box. Just remove the lid and the protective plastic cover, though, and you'll see. What do you mean, remove the plastic cover? Doesn't that let out the factory air? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER for April 1970 shows the NP series under the post-merger Burlington Northern, and it's a short one: just six cars, numbered from 659994 to 659999. They were AAR Classification XL, exceeded Plate C dimensions (you betcha!) and were equipped with DF-2 loaders and 20 inch cushion underframe, which probably means that MTL could have gone with even more extended draft gear trucks than they did. The inside length was 40 feet 8 inches, inside height a roomy 12 feet 9 inches, outside length 48 feet 4 inches, extreme height 16 feet 9 inches, door opening 10 feet, and capacity an echo-inducing 4900 cubic feet and 110,000 pounds. This was the highest numbered series on the NP's roster and the only cars in the 600,000s. This might have been due to the expected merger into the BN, which was well on its way when the cars were built at NP's Brainerd shops in 1967. But the cars stayed in NP reporting marks until between 1985, when two cars remained in the ORER listing for the Burlington Northern, to 1986, when the listing was gone. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Although the MSCG photo shows the 659999 on NP rails, it's also possible that these ugly ducklings didn't get to see home much. The stenciling to the left of the door reads "When empty return to agent IC RR, Kankakee Illinois". That was the location of an appliance factory and the NP was among many railroads that supplied cars for that service. A number of these lines used this style of car, thus giving MTL lots of choices for future releases.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
111 00 040, $36.25
There is no question that the MTL enclosed autoracks have been quite popular. However, the research of these little beauties is getting less and less popular with me! Case in point: A typical ORER entry inside what I perceive to be the ATP, namely the January 1985 issue, shows only 14 cars in the entire series ETTX 802473 to 802929? Wait, no, there are those subseries again, different only in the capacity of the cars, which add up to a total of 42 more cars, out of a possible 456 slots. Throw in the fact that racks didn't always stay on the same flats, and the best you're going to get for the Approximate Time Period is, well, Approximate. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. So we'll have to back into it. The timeframe for the Chessie System was 1972 to 1987 when it was replaced by CSX, but we'll allow a bit of time for some paint transition on either end. The Trailer Train yellow paint is probably good for most of that timeframe, since Trailer Train didn't give way to TTX until 1991. So that yields mid-1970's through 1980s, at least. It would be difficult to argue either way. There was one report on the 'net that the racks on the MTL model are not accurate for the Chessie but without any detail on that. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Dean Heacock posted several representative photos of Chessie autoracks on Trainweb and among them is a fairly close match to the MTL model. A key point of accuracy is the painting of the C&O initials and the Chessie logo directly on two of the aluminum panels, as opposed to on separate placards... although some pictured cars do have the placards instead. On others, there are placards and a third center placard with a "Railpac" logo. These photos also illustrate the difference between the Trailer Train yellow and the Chessie yellow, and there is one, just as MTL notes and provides on the car. Although that probably added a bit to the price. So did the use of two of the panels for lettering, no doubt. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Meanwhile, on the Fallen Flags site, there aren't any specific C&O racks that I saw, but there was an intriguing photo of a CTTX series flat with a B&O/Chessie enclosed rack bracketed by open autoracks, proving that at least once, they were run together. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS:
020 00 710, $17.15
Box car red with white lettering including large roadname and reporting marks on left and slogan on right. Red, white and blue "shield" herald on right. Reporting Marks: UP 198850. Approximate Time Period: mid-1960's (1965 repaint date given by MTL) to mid-1970's. Previous Releases (as catalog number 20710): Road Number 108645, October 1989. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. According to the RPI website, the shield or medallion that was first designed back in 1887 and had been dropped from the Union Pacific's decoration in the 1930's was returned to service in the 1950's. The word "Railroad" was dropped from the "Union Pacific Railroad" legend in 1969. So the 1965 repaint date for the car given by MTL fits right in. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Interestingly, though, it doesn't fit into too many cars, at least for this series. Although in the January 1964 ORER there were 1881 cars in the group numbered 197000 to 198999, that was all the way down to just 94 cars in the April 1970 Register. There was a notation in the '64 book that the cars were being equipped with lading side wall anchors, and I'm wondering if the cars didn't get renumbered out of that series when that occurred. At any rate, here are the vital statistics: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 44 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 6 feet, capacity 3909 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. As MTL notes, these B-50-39 class cars were built in 1947 by the UP itself, so they're not PS-1s. Branchline Trains has these cars "as delivered" scheme being the boxcar red with alternating "Serves all the West" and "Road of the Streamliners" slogans in yellow with white lettering otherwise. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. One more note: MTL put brown trucks on these cars even though the car copy says they are black. I don't know if that's enough to qualify the car as a "not a reprint" (they weren't making brown trucks when the original run was released in 1989) but if it is, that would be the first of three in a row this month, as you'll see next.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
036 00 060, $15.80
Thanks to Jon Hollahan, UMTRR Gang Member, we have some information direct from the Florida East Coast Historical Society on this reprint. Or should I say, this "not a reprint," as the lettering, and in particular the depiction of the "Hurricane" herald, is different enough to warrant that designation. According to a file describing the FEC's steelframe boxcars, the series 5016 to 5030 was ordered from Berwick Forge and Fabricating in September 1969 and delivered in January 1970. From the July 1970 ORER (transcribed into the table) we have the inside length of 50 feet 6 inches, inside height of 10 feet 6 inches, outside length of 55 feet 3 inches, extreme height of 15 feet, door opening of 16 feet, and capacity of 4952 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds, raised by January 1980 to 154,000 pounds. From July 1970 to January 1982 these cars were grouped with cars 5001 to 5015, which may or may not have been a good idea considering that the 5001 to 5015 were of the plug and sliding door type built by FGEX and modeled by MTL as their 33080. Starting no later than the January 1983 Register, the groups were split up and the 5017 to 5030 received their own listing. There were 13 cars in the group from then until January 1990, at which point the number in service dropped to 12. The spreadsheet from the FECHS has the 12 cars lasting into the January 2001 ORER. But as of the January 2002 ORER there are gondolas occupying the number series, so whatever happened, the ATP is over by then. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Strictly speaking, the appearance of the FEC "Hurricane" herald (and this is my term, not anything official) dates to about 1973 according to the RPI website, so these cars might not have been delivered in this paint scheme. The use of the yellow dot wheel inspection symbol dates to about 1978 and theoretically should have been removed when the car was serviced in 1982 as MTL notes. FEC went to red with yellow lettering and large reporting marks after the red and white that MTL depicts. At "press time" I didn't yet have a date for this change but hopefully I will have it Incrementally next issue.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
042 00 050, $12.45
Some of you might be around long enough to recall my commentary on the old Lionel "exploding box car" that I offered when the first of the US Army flatcars was released in June 1996. That was a Lionel product available in both O and HO Scales, and was, well, a bit of a gimmick. The sides of the car were made to fall apart into a couple or three pieces, as I recall. Lowell Smith did a two pack of the "Exploding Boxcar" in the same paint scheme as Lionel's offering, in early 1997 if I'm not mistaken. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Well, based on the car copy, it looks like the United States Navy went one better, and had a real exploding boxcar! Not to make light of it, though, and unfortunately it is hardly the only example of rolling stock exploding, but it is kind of an interesting twist. The marking at the lower right, "NAD Concord," attests to its likely assignment to Concord, California. The aftermarket price of the original run of this car had been exploding for a while as well. It was in the seventy-plus dollar range for a while, which is quite a lot for a Kadee wood boxcar, but has since settled way back. Fortunately for this accumulator, used copies weren't quite as pricey, and I do recall being very happy to fill this hole in the roster with a pre-enjoyed boxcar out of an old Tex-N-Rails runner auction. The appearance of this reprint won't do anything to boost the aftermarket value of the nearly thirty year old original, either. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The April 1970 ORER listing for the Department of Defense has in its end notes, "All cars marked "U.S.N.X." or "U.S.N." and not listed [here] are in intra-plant service." Oh, and that 61-00201 painted on the car is technically a serial number, not a road number. USN cars shown on the Fallen Flags site don't include anything like this car, but the paint scheme is similar, being light gray with minimal black stenciling. Because of this, I don't think you're really limited to the 1970's as your ATP. I'm not sure anyone would have definitive information to the contrary if you were to have one of these cars on a 1950's layout, for example. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. And by the way, that gray paint does result in the official UMTRR designation of "not a reprint" as the original car was done in aluminum paint, not gray. The lettering is just a little bit different as well.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
069 00 030, $15.95
Page 12 of the book "Classic Freight Cars Volume 9" has an undated photo of CP 286120 with its aluminum paint looking kind of dirty. Well, not dirty to the point of obliterating the lettering, but still more unkempt than I'd expect. The dirt is especially noticable around the plug door. Appearance wise, you'd swear it looked more like a plug door boxcar than a reefer unless you'd noticed the vents on the far right under the ladder. They are not as large as on the MTL model, or one side of it that is, as the 69er body style has different vent arrangements on each side. The door on the prototype goes all the way to the roof and on the model it stops short. The ends on the prototype have eight ribs followed by a clear flat area where the brake wheel is mounted, whereas on the model there are seven ribs and an eighth rib of sorts going most of the way across at the brake wheel. Nitpicky? Maybe, but I have the photo evidence so I can provide this much detail, and why not. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Canadian Freight Cars site, looked after by Ian Cranstone, shows the series 286000 to 286134 being included in ORERs from April 1965 to October 1992, although the listing adds that some were renumbered into the 287100 to 287256 group at some later point. The builder was Hawker Siddeley which later became the Trenton Works. I'll grab the April 1976 ORER for the following dimensions: inside length 44 feet (leaving space for the refrigeration equipment), inside height 8 feet 7 inches (leaving room for insulation), outside length 54 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 6 inches, door opening 8 feet wide by 9 feet 3 inches tall, capacity 3294 cubic feet or 137,000 pounds. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES:
021 00 389, $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 (scarlet carnation) and state bird (cardinal) on right. Reporting Marks: OH 1803. Twenty-fifth release in the States of the Union series. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. It's round on the ends and HI in the middle... yeah, I know, not the most complementary way to start the description of the Buckeye State. But it is something I remember! I also remember the first foray into the state, which was part of my Whirlwind Tour of August 1988; in fact, it was the first of the new states in which I set foot on that long driving vacation. In fact, I was in the state on August 8... or 8/8/88, and among other things, had a pleasant walk around the city in which the mythical radio station WKRP was located, Cincinnati. Just over the river in Covington, Kentucky, an all-Elvis radio station could be heard as well, but that's another story entirely. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Native American tribes like the Miami and the Wyandot were in what is now Ohio in the 1600's when the first European explorers arrived. First the French claimed the territory, then the British, and then it became part of the Northwest Territory of the United States. Marietta was the first permanent white settlement, circa 1788, and just five years later, the State of Ohio became our 17th. Chillicothe was the capital at first, then Zanesville, then Chillicothe again, and finally Columbus in 1816, which, unlike most state capitals, is at least reasonably close to the center of the state! Canals were big in Ohio before railroads, for example, between Cleveland and Portsmouth and between Toledo and Cincinnati, neither of them a short hop. This began a long history of manufacturing and commerce in the area, although there was still plenty of farmland to exploit as well. And that part about "high in the middle"? Well, I can tell you that Ohio is really not all that flat, with the highest point at over 1500 feet (stop laughing, Rocky Mountain residents!). © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Given my taste for the offbeat, I suppose you would expect that I would mention that in the former capital of Zanesville is the only Y-Bridge in the world. Y is it called a Y-Bridge? (Sorry. It's my only chance to make that joke.) It's literally built in the shape of a Y, at the intersection of the Muskingum and Licking Rivers. The bridge literally forks in the middle, forming a Y shape. And yes, I've driven on it! More along the mainstream, Ohio has given the country more presidents than any other state: U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding. Two key Halls of Fame are located relatively close together: the Football-- oops, American Football!-- shrine in Canton and the Rock and Roll in Cleveland. The R+R Hall is there because the term is popularly credited to Alan Freed, disc jockey who was on the air in Cleveland at the time. Science and technology advancements from Ohio abound in the automotive and telephone industries; the cash register was invented there, and the traffic signal was patented in 1923 by Cleveland native Garrett Morgan. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Other famous Ohioans include inventory Thomas Edison (born in Milan), flight pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright, space pioneers John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, writer Zane Grey (from Zanesville, no less!), movie mogul Steven Spielberg (born in Cincinnati), athletes Jesse Owens, Jack Nicklaus and Pete Rose, actors Clark Gable and Paul Newman, and comedians Drew Carey and Arsenio Hall. The "Ohio Memory" site has more 26,000 citations from 330 sources, which will keep anyone busy for a while. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE): No releases this month. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES:
505 00 210, Magne-Matic Coupler, $22.70, 505 00 211, Marklin Coupler, $20.90.
Green with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left. White "Damage Free" device and black and white General American logo on left. Red and white Rock Island herald on right. Reporting Marks: RI 110012. Approximate Time Period: later 1960's (1967 service date) through early 1970's. NOTE: This item (both coupler versions) has been sold out and discontinued. The MSCG for the Rock Island shows "an immaculate" Rock Island 110022 in the yards at Blue Island, Illinois in May, 1967, which was the month that it was repainted, if MTL's N Scale release of this same car is any indication. In the photo, the boxcar certainly stands out; about the only other pieces of rolling stock that are as clean are some Pittsburgh and Lake Erie gondolas-- and I'll wager they were freshly painted as well. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But I digress. The 110022 was among twenty five cars that started out with GAEX reporting marks, part of that short-lived General American and Evans joint venture, that, in fact, we just came across again with last month's N Scale reprint of the Pennsylvania boxcar of the same lineage. Hey, as long as Micro-Trains had the green paint out anyway, why not. The MSCG reports that all 25 cars were returned once they came off lease, between 1970 and 1973, so that makes for a nice neat ATP. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. And not much work to do in the ORER, either. The April 1970 edition is the best we can do, so let's look. Of the original 25 cars, 24 are left, further cementing the ATP. The cars are listed as "Box, Steel" with AAR Classification "XL" and notations indicating the lease status (from General American Transportation) and the presence of DF Loaders. The inside length was 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 55 feet 6 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet and capacity 4872 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds, except for the 110001 which was up to 110,000 pounds.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
525 00 100, Magne-Matic Coupler, $16.50, 525 00 101, Marklin Coupler, $14.70.
It's a good looking car, and includes a first for the 1:220 set with that simulated wood colored floor, but it's not really much more than a stand in for the real thing, unfortunately. The real cars were built in 1962 by Dominion Coal and Steel, as MTL notes, but they were quite a bit longer than the nominal 40 feet of this body style. A look at the Canadian Freight Cars confirms this, as does the ORER from April 1970. The series 303201 to 303699, of 300 cars, had "inside length" of 53 feet 6 inches, "outside length" of 56 feet 9 inches, and capacity of 169,000 pounds. I chose the April '70 book because the CP Rail scheme was in place by then, having been introduced in 1967. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Canadian Freight Cars site has these not all being gone from the ORER until the January 2003 edition. There is in fact just one left in the January 2002 Register, which, strictly speaking, gives you the "early 2000s" end of the ATP. Well, maybe that ATP is a little too liberal, for a change. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE REPRINTS:
501 00 050, Magne-Matic Coupler, $18.85, 501 00 051, Marklin Coupler, $17.05.
Orange with mostly black lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left and black and white "split rail" herald on right. Reporting Marks: IC 136996. Approximate Time Period: mid-1960's to mid-1970s. Previous Releases (as catalog number 14805): Road Number 196338, with Marklin Coupler, February 1987 and with Magne-Matic Coupler, March 1987. NOTE: This item (both versions) has been sold out and discontinued. Here's something different: The Fallen Flags Website doesn't have a photo of an example from these series, but it does have an example dimensional drawing from the Illinois Central's equipment diagrams book! The series 136500 to 136999 had a "1" dropped in front of it, denoting a change from 40 ton capacity cars to 50 ton capacity cars, from the series 36500 to 36999. That change was a matter of changing the trucks from 40 to 50 ton capacity; there really didn't need to be anything done to the cars. And if I read this right, the cars were delivered back in 1937 with road numbers 166000 to 166999, built by Pullman and ACF to specification number O-27. (No relation to that other gauge of model trains!) Yes, this seems to conflict with the MTL car copy giving the build date of 1958. I can't explain this. We can take the usual dimensions and then some from this diagram: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, length between truck centers 30 feet 8 1/2 inches, length over running boards 42 feet 3 inches, length over strikers 41 feet 8 1/2 inches, length inside knuckles of couplers, 44 feet 3 1/2 inches, clear door opening 12 feet 6 inches, of which 3 feet was to the right of the center of the car and the rest was to the left, inside clear height 10 feet 5 inches, extreme height to roof from the top of rail, 14 feet 10 13/16 inches, width over the door lift levers, 10 feet 7 3/4 inches... is that enough yet? I hope so! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The "split rail" scheme was introduced by the IC in 1966 so let's have a look at the ORER for April 1970, the closest I can get. There was a healthy contingent of cars, 321, in the group from 136500 to 136999 at that time, and just 17 left from in the original 40 ton rated series 36500 to 36999, so most of that run had been moved up to the 50 ton trucks-- no surprise there. In April 1976 under the listing for the Illinois Central Gulf, a big reversal: this time there were only 17 cars left in the 136's. If these cars went over to ICG reporting marks, it was with a change in road number so your ATP is pretty much gone by then.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
980 01 010, Magne-Matic Coupler, $108.50, 980 01 011, Marklin Coupler, $106.70.
I've mentioned to my friends at the red and yellow sign that frequently the hardest items to research are these F7's. I don't have a lot of printed matter at my disposal, and the 'net is often limited to say the least. So you've got to like the diligence of some folks that follow the history of the Union Pacific, and in particular its locomotive fleet. Would you believe that there is a year by year chronology of the UP's power from 1915 to 2001? Wow! Take a look at utahrails.net for this. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Since MTL said in its copy that these units were purchased in 1951, I went right to that year and found that the line did in fact purchase 15 F7 A units numbered from 1466 to 1480 as well as 30 F7 B units. That was part of the 61 diesels added to the Union Pacific fleet that year, versus 11 steam locomotive retirements. Interestingly, as of 1 January 1951, steam still outnumbered diesel by a wide margin, 997 to 565. Five years later, it was 436 steamers and 1097 diesels, and five years after that... well, never mind. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The F units didn't last too much longer. The first was retired in 1962, nine more A's and 14 B's went in 1963, and ten more A's and 17 B's were de-rostered in 1964, including the 1469. Looking at the reprints, the 1458 was out in '63, but that was really an F3, and the 1467 was also removed in 1964. MTL says they were traded in on GP35's, a model which, as you may know, is on the way from MTL later in the year; and also the distinctive DD35's which were kind of like two Geeps glued together, a unit you're probably not likely to see reproduced by MTL, though. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITIONS: No releases this month. |