|
©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:
021 00 520, $17.90
Yellow with black side sill. Mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left and large "Liberty" Jersey Central Lines herald on right. Red, white and black "North American" logo on left. Reporting Marks: NJDX 1476. Approximate Time Period: 1956 (rebuild date) to mid 1970's. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. This is a fun car for me, both for the railroad that leased it and the cargo that it carried-- even though I've never had more than a couple of sips of beer in my life. Where to start, where to start? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Well, as I would say in my best Native Jerseyan, "You got five rings, you got the Olympics. You got three rings, you got a Ballantine." The three rings, for Purity, Body and Flavor, were the trademark of P. Ballantine and Sons, based in Newark, New Jersey, and it's said that Peter Ballantine came up with it after looking at the wet rings that the bottom of his beer glass left on a table. Its large sign was visible from the Jersey Turnpike, the end of the Pulaski Skyway, and, if you were sitting in the right place, the flight path north of Newark Airport. Ballantine was started in 1850 and is better known for its ale than its beer. The three rings trademark has been around since 1877. Ballantine was notable as being a single plant brewery for many years and in 1950 was the third largest brewer in the United States (behind only Schlitz and Anheuser-Busch). But by 1960 a steep decline began, and the company passed from owner to owner, eventually winding up with Falstaff and then with Pabst. Ballantine Ale is still available, but it's "contract brewed" and doesn't come from Newark. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The area of Newark in which the Ballantines brewed beer was called the "Ironbound" section. This is a reference to the extensive trackage in this area; at one time it was literally surrounded by railroad, or "ironbound". By one definition, at least two sides of the surround were the Pennsylvania's freight and passenger lines, which were separated south of the city proper; but the Central of New Jersey's industrial trackage was so complex that it actually formed a continuous loop at one point! Ironbound indeed! And a great idea for a trackplan, eh? Vic Roseman's "Let's Model the Newark Branch" in the June 1986 issue of Model Railroader provides ideas. Newark was initially reached by the CNJ straight out of Jersey City by an important branch that jumped across both the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers. The Hackensack River Bridge was hit and went out of service, bisecting that line. (Some of it is in use as part of Hudson County's light rail.) After that, freight and passenger service from Newark to Jersey City Terminal took the more circuitous route through Elizabethport and Bayonne, crossing the Newark Bay Drawbridge in the process. Much of Ironbound's industry is gone, as is much of the CNJ trackage; but the neighborhood, which played host to one immigrant group after another, has resurged in recent years. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. We go to the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for January 1959, the closest I have to the rebuild date of March 1956 that's on the car. The NJDX cars which carried Ballantine were leased to the Jersey Central by North American Car Company. This is another case of the insulated boxcar being described as a Refrigerator, with the usual classification "RB". The inside length was 40 feet even, inside height 9 feet 2 inches, outside length 42 feet 2 inches, height to top of running board 14 feet 9 inches (no extreme height given this time), door opening 8 feet, and capacity 3270 cubic feet or 80,000 pounds. There were 100 cars in the NJDX series 1400 to 1499. In January 1964 there were the same 100 cars; in the April 1970 ORER there were 95; in the April 1976 there were just 24. The NJDX reporting marks were gone from the April 1981 Register. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A blurry but discernable shot of what's either NJDX 1426 or 1476 (it's identified as NJDX 1476) appears on the Fallen Flags website as lensed in the early 1970's at Wharton Junction, New Jersey. It's enough to validate the ATP into the early 1970's.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
056 00 370, $39.95
Well, this certainly isn't something you'll see every day from a mainline N Scale manufacturer! The prototype is pictured on Page 96 of the Morning Sun Color Guide (MSCG) to the Southern, and regular UMTRR contributor Joe Shaw has this to say: "The lettering looks fairly close, although MTL left off the A.G.S. [Alabama Great Southern] subownership mark to the right of the big N, and some other small lettering (around pulling loops in the middle of each car, and on the small horizontal sections under the slope sheets (the part the sill steps connect to). Pictured below it in the MSCG is the SOUTHERN 102496 with both hoppers in black, so that's a possible future release. The ATP from their blurb comes straight from the two captions, but their blurb left out a caveat that might limit the ATP for the 102077. Quoting the caption for 102496: 'As an interesting aside it was found that even though the numbers of cars dwindled in the mid-1970s the car series was expanded downward (explaining the larger series limits on the car shown above).' The photo of 102077 is dated November 1970, with the series limit 102050 to 102999. The photo of 102496 was dated September 1966, series limit 102263-102999. Hope this helps!" © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. It certainly does, as does a succinct review from Railwire member "Kisatchie" who also has the MSCG to the Southern: "The photo of the Southern car(s) on the Micro-Trains site looks overexposed except for the first 2 or 3 panels on the left car (which includes the S and O letters. However, the M-T color isn't a perfect match to the real car since the real one has been in circulation and is noticeably weathered. After trying to compensate for all the variables, I would say the Micro-Trains car is extremely close to what a new car would look like." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. There is of course one detail that does differ between the prototype and the model: the MTL offering is two actual 56er cars that couple together, while the real Southern 102077 and its kin had the two units drawbarred. It will be interesting to see if anyone attempts to model this permanent coupling with the MTL cars. The car, or cars, come in an MTL large box with what is probably a new insert. Which adds to the price, and as a more important explanation I note that the two cars each have differing printing on each side, otherwise you'd have SOUT-HERN going one way and HERN-SOUT the other way. Which wouldn't be a bad practical joke... © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Enough of that, let's check out in the ORER accumulation, starting with the January 1964 edition since MTL said this practice started in the early 1960's. Well, no, let's not, they aren't in there. Rats. That pushes us out to the next Register I have chronologically, the April 1970 edition. The AAR classification is "HM" and the description is "Hopper, Articulated." Note 81 states, "Cars in series 102050 to 102999 consist of two units permanently coupled. Each unit is a self-clearing hopper with an average cubic capacity of 2045 cubic feet." You're going to love these dimensions: Inside length, 33 feet, outside length, 73 feet! Well, that's 2 times the 33 feet for the inside length, right? But that's not exactly 66 feet, is it? There is, as Joe Shaw suggested, plenty of room for reprints, for in April 1970 the Southern rostered 757 of these cars! Or is that 1514 of them... Anyway, by the April 1976 ORER these were, as MTL noted, gone; and in fact the numbers were beginning to be occupied by larger, and single unit, aggregate hoppers such as those that appear on the Fallen Flags site.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
101 00 020, $21.45
The ORER for April 1970 shows adjacent series of cars with the same dimensions, one from 4600 to 4607, and the other from 4608 to 4624. Together there are 24 cars out of a possible 25 and I'm going to assume, perhaps wrongly, that these were built at roughly the same time and were visibly similar on the outside. The description on both was "Box, Cushion Underframe," and the inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 12 feet 9 inches, outside length 48 feet 4 inches, door opening 10 feet, and extreme height 16 feet 9 inches. The first group had interior devices so the cubic footage was a bit less, at 4814, than the second series, which had 4900 cubic feet available. Both sets of cars had 154,000 pounds capacity. The second set, with the 4608, had specially equipped interiors and were not suitable for general service. We know that service included the New York Central at Evansville, Indiana based on MTL's car copy; this was probably the Whirlpool plant and the cargo was probably appliances. (We're probably going to see more of these assignments to Evansville on other releases.) The Milwaukee only got as close as Seymour, but hey, that was rock musician John "Cougar" Mellencamp's home town. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The April 1981 ORER shows one less car in the 4608 series and two less in the 4600 series, for a total of 21. All of these are now restricted out of general service and the 4608 clan is reported with DF-2 loaders. Why that wasn't called out in the '70 book, when that was less common a feature, I don't know. By October 1986 the Milwaukee is gone and so is the special service notation on 4608 to 4624, which was down to 14 cars, while the 4600 group had just four cars left. And of course the New York Central was long gone from Evansville as well. There are 4 and 12 cars left in July 1989 but they are gone by October 1991's Register. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Unlike the first release of this car for the Northern Pacific, this car does indeed sport the usual "Excess Height Car" black and white band at the top of the ends. Dennis Rockwell was among others who surmised that when the NP cars were first built, that warning wasn't required, which led to "too many bridges used as can openers." Ouch! My small cache of "railroad dates" doesn't have the exact date on which the Excess Height Car stencil was required, though.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
109 00 250, $21.95
The January 1955 edition of the ORER (Westerfield CD-ROM) describes this single car, number 3900, as "Flat, Steel, Depressed." Well, I guess I'd be a little depressed too if I didn't have any other flat cars like me to pal around with. (Sorry.) The inside length was 21 feet on the lower platform and 57 feet 9 inches overall, inside width 9 feet, and "outside" length 58 feet 4 inches, and extreme height 5 feet 10 inches. Capacity was listed at 250,000 pounds. Note B reported the load limits inside the depressed platform, namely, all 250,000 pounds over 18 feet down to 230,600 pounds over 2 feet at the center of the car. I can't immediately come up with anything with a two foot wide footprint that weighs 115 American tons, except possibly that old N Scale locomotive weighting standby, depleted uranium. (That IS a joke. Please don't write in.) "This car is equipped with steel loading floor and has two six-wheel trucks," Note B continues. "Spacing between truck centers 41 feet, between axles 4 feet 6 inches. Light weight 125,600 pounds." Getting the N Scale ruler out and checking against a previous 109er, we see that we're either pretty durn close or dead on with respect to the key dimensions. It probably helps that the prototype was built from a kit, as MTL notes in its car copy, which would suggest a more standard design. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. This car was in service through the rest of the independence of the Frisco, and made it into the SL-SF's merger into the Burlington Northern. It's present in the April 1981 Register but gone by the January 1985 book. I didn't dig out any photos of 3900 on the usual sites, but I did see its "bigger" brother 3901, a four trucked 500,000 pound capacity flat, on the Fallen Flags site, and it too was painted in yellow. While poking around looking for the 3900, though, I came across a 1967 shot of a crane and flat car in front of the Springfield (Missouri) Shops. I could tell this by the large sign on the building: "Springfield Shops." It certainly didn't have that sign atop the roof when I visited back in 2000. Pity. Finally, the SL-SF Resource Center yielded a black and white photo of the 3900 from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, and I also found out that as of November 1967, the per diem rate on the 3900 was $6.15. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS:
024 00 140, $15.95
Sky blue with white and red lettering including roadname across car, reporting marks on left, and slogan "The Route of National Railway Utilization" in red on left. Circular NRUC logo in red, white and blue on right. Reporting Marks: PICK 20039. Approximate Time Period: about 1974 to 1980. Previous Release (as catalog number 24140): Road Number 40017, February 1983. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. So the first question here is, given that the Pickens Railroad was one of the lines that had a bunch of 50 foot exterior post boxcars, and is perhaps better known for them, is, is this little 40 footer legit, or just a rerun of a figment of someone's imagination? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The answer is, "legit." The exact car PICK 20039 appears on Page 39 of Classic Freight Cars Volume 1, and in fact, it was photographed in what I believe to be the freight yard just south of Newark Penn Station on the former Pennsy. The Frank Szachacz photo was dated April 1974 and the caption notes that this was one of the first boxcars owned by the road. Yes, it's legit alright, down to the improper use of capitalization, as long as you ignore the "door thing." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The real Pickens probably would have been no more than a footnote in the annals of American Railroading unless you lived in Pickens County, South Carolina. The railroad was chartered on December 24, 1890 and served a county that by 1900 "could boast of 3 cotton mills, 2 railroads, 3 banks, 3 roller mills, 37 sawmills, 10 shingle mills and 4 brickyards" according to a history of the county. The railroad was locally called "The Doodle" "because it could not turn around on the tracks so to return from Easley it backed into Pickens 'like a doodle-bug'". (Is that where the name for gas-electrics originated?) In 1939, a division of the Singer Company bought the railroad, and operated it with a Baldwin VO-660, a rare diesel that was still on the Pickens property as of February 2005. Speaking of rare diesels, the Pickens is the owner of the largest fleet of U18B's, also known as "Baby Boats," still extant; these former CSX (and Seaboard Coast Line before that) units are painted in the same color orange that CSX used when they were in Maintenance of Way service. The railroad still operates its original trackage from Easley to Pickens, as well as CSX trackage around Anderson and a leasehold on Norfolk Southern from Belton to Honea Path. It was purchased by the National Railway Utilization Corporation in 1973 as, among other things, a vehicle for thousands of Incentive Per Diem cars. The NRUC went bankrupt in 1986 after the Interstate Commerce Commission ended IPD and said thousands of boxcars were returned to "home rails"-- where they often couldn't fit! The NRUC's successor was the Emergent Group and there is conflicting information on the 'net as to whether they still operate the Pickens. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But back to the 1970's when the Pickens was just getting started with boxcars; the April 1976 ORER the series PICK 20000 to 20059, of all 60 possible cars, had an inside length of 40 feet 6 inches, inside height of 10 feet 5 inches, outside length of 44 feet 4 inches, extreme height of 15 feet, and door opening of 8 feet-- the "door thing" again. (The MTL model has a six foot door.) Even then, the other 976 boxcars were of 50 foot inside lengths, so the 40 footers were in the minority from the start. They were all gone by the April 1981 ORER, meaning a pretty short Approximate Time Period.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
105 00 050, $17.70
Now, class, always make sure that you do your research before drawing conclusions. I was about to wonder in "print" why this car would be reprinted so soon, and then I checked the records and it's been more than five years! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. According to Ian Cranstone's Canadian Freight Cars site, the series BCOL 9048 to 9072 was built in June 1955 by National Steel Car Company. These were originally Pacific Great Eastern series 948 to 972 but were apparently renumbered circa 1963 to PGE 9048 to 9099. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER for April 1981, the closest ORER I have to the August 1979 repaint date, shows "Gondola, Steel, Solid Bottom" of numbered 9019 to 9175, incorporating several subsets that Cranstone calls out, for a total of 121 cars. The inside length was 52 foot 6 inches, outside length, 57 foot 6 inches, and capacity 158,000 pounds. It gets more interesting from there. The July 1989 ORER shows a split in the series, with listings for 9036 to 9175 of 95 cars and 9201 to 9225 with another 25 cars, all with BCOL markings. But there are still five cars with PGE reporting marks in that same group. There are even two left marked PGE as late as October 1996 plus 95 cars in three groups lettered BCOL. Ian Cranstone has these cars as still in service as of January 2005. My look at the October 2004 Register shows 44 cars remaining and an interesting anomaly-- cars with 52 foot 6 inch interior lengths listed in the description as "54 foot 6 inch gondolas, 80 ton"? Note that lowered capacity, though; I guess the gons are showing their age. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Canadian Freight Car Gallery shows photos of badly faded BCOL 9126 and 9172, which are from the larger overall series of cars, as lensed in May 2004, lending credence to the "to present" part of the ATP. The 9172 has the roadname and dogwood herald on a placard, in reverse position from the MTL model (dogwood on left); the 9126 either doesn't have a herald at all or it's long gone under the punishment of weathering.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
125 00 020, $22.10
The car that has the honor of being the first reprint with a new format catalog number is this one, right here. Since then, though, I have come up with some Incremental Information including a new ORER in the UMTRR Accumulation. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Back in January, I noted that there were more than 1000 cars in the FEC's Ortner collection. I can update that using the October 2004 Register. The series 15000 to 15299 has 297 cars, the series 15300 to 15399, 99 cars; the series 15400 to 15499, 100; the series 15500 to 15699, 200... well, you get the idea. Just going to the 15999 yields 996 cars, and there are other hoppers listed as well. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A few data points furnished by UMTRR gang member Jon Hollahan bear repeating: "The Approximate Time Period for the particular paint scheme with the skull and crossbones Operation Lifesaver logo is 1990 to present. The cars are used 99.99% on-line in rock service between the limestone quarries in Medley west of Miami to concrete and asphalt producers along FEC's line from Miami to Jacksonville, Florida. Small numbers of the cars occasionally travel off-line, usually returning loaded with coal for Portland cement production." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. From rrpicturearchives.net we have evidence that the all red with plain white reporting marks only scheme has invaded this particular series: FEC 15283 sported that rather humdrum lettering in February 2001 in one of those rare offline moves to Waycross, Georgia. And from the same site we also have evidence that these cars can get real dirty, or should I say, sandy. FEC 15868 was in sand service, also in February 2001, and looks it. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES:
021 00 391, $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 (Sego Lily) and state bird (California gull) on right. Reporting Marks: UT 1896. Twenty-seventh release in the States of the Union series. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. After the Ute and the Paiute, the Goshute and the Shoshone and the Navajo, after the Spanish exploration of the territory, after John C. Fremont and Kit Carson explored the Great Basin, there was the famous pronouncement: "This is the right place." Spoken by Brigham Young, it was the signal that the Mormons had arrived in what would be their final destination: Deseret, from the Mormon word for honeybee, reflecting their use of the honeybee as a symbol of co-operative industry. Deseret is also an alternative 38 character alphabet for writing of the English language that was developed during the 1850s. Before the main party that followed Young's advance detachment arrived, Young was already laying out the streets of what would become Salt Lake City. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Yes, Deseret would have been the name of Utah, had not Congress rejected it, and chances are that Utah, or Deseret, would have been a state a lot sooner than 1896, what with the settlement of the members of the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the official name of the Mormons), and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Point in 1869. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But there was this "plural marriage" issue, among others. In 1849, the first Constitutional Convention proposed that the entire Great Basin be named as the Territory of Deseret; the United States Congress nixed that and created the Utah Territory instead. In 1852, the LDS Church publicly acknowledged the doctrine of plural marriage-- uh, that's at least bigamy, and maybe polygamy, and it just wasn't that popular Back East. Five years later Brigham Young was removed and replaced as territorial governor, by force of the U.S. Military, starting the brief "Utah War"-- which, I admit, I knew nothing about before starting this research. By 1862 the region was on its third try for statehood, which ended as the first two did-- failure. Or worse: The Poland Act of 1873 made it legal to prosecute Mormons for practicing polygamy, and that was followed up in 1882 with the Edmunds Act which made it illegal to co-habitate. (Yikes! I guess that's been repealed.) It wasn't until the 1890 LDS manifesto removed church sanctioned plural marriage that statehood became acceptable to the Federal Government, and it still took until January 4, 1896. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Famous Utah residents include... OK, well I guess you need to start with the Osmond family, including Donny and Marie, she's a little bit country, he's a little bit rock and roll. (Anyone under thirty is now saying, "What is he talking about?") Jake Garn was the first Governor in Space. Actors and entertainers such as Maude Adams, Wilford Brimley, Anthony Geary, Roseanne Barr and Loretta Young called Utah their birth state, as did quarterback Steve Young, "7 Habits" author Steven Covey, and television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth. The onlineutah.com site also names a few "Utahns" not born on the native soil: cookie maven Debbie "Mrs." Fields, Robert Redford, first female senator Martha Hughes, and of course Brigham Young. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I've only done one trip to the Beehive State, but it was most memorable. It was one of those Saturday Stayover leverages that Corporate Officials liked, for the cheap airfare, and I loved, for the securing of a weekend in a new state. (Or three new states; I logged Idaho and Wyoming as well as Utah on that trip.) My visit there provided what had to be the ultimate in contrasts. First, there was the modern city of Salt Lake, which, under a cloudless cobalt blue sky in the middle of August, with the mountains in the background, certainly seemed to be the Right Place. Whether religiously affiliated or not, Temple Square and the world-famous Tabernacle are breathtaking from an architectural as well as a liturgical point of view. View some images over on Google if you don't believe me. (And no, I'm not a member of the LDS Church, although it began not far from UMTRR HQ here in Western New York.) A visit to the Family History Library uncovered a few more data points about the Irwin Family. And the rest of my wanderings were, though in quite the "dry heat" of the summer, altogether pleasant. The only quibble I had was trying to figure out the street names: "300 West Street" and "Fourth South Street" took a little getting used to. Second, there was the diametric opposite of the urbanity of Salt Lake: the 89 miles of Utah Route 30 in the northwest part of the state, from Interstate 84 to the Nevada State Line. I saw a grand total of fourteen cars in those 89 miles across the high desert, and when I stopped the car to shoot video, it was so quiet that the whirring of the camcorder motor was caught on the tape. And oh, by the way, one of those fourteen cars stopped to ensure that I was not pulled off the road in distress. That's friendly! Scooting back on Interstate 80 along the Bonneville Salt Flats, where 70-something miles an hour is nothing compared to what the experimental race cars do, I had one of those weird experiences of distance, where you drive for an hour and seem no closer to the destination. Route 80 is an arrow-straight tangent for about 50 miles, which didn't help; fortunately, a baseball game on AM radio, bounced off the ionosphere from Back East, helped keep me awake for the conclusion of what turned out to be my all time record for a single day's drive. Overall, my experience of Utah was one of the best I've ever had traveling.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
032 00 401, $18.35
"Celebrating the longest running public service campaign in U.S. history, each June, July and August the Smokey Bear ‘Forest Fire Prevention Series’ will showcase the prevention message portrayed through colorful posters from the past 60 years," says MTL. The first of these depicts a poster from 1953-- thanks to Micro-Trains for the big hint by way of the road number on the car. That metallic charcoal gray is an interesting choice for a body color. Don't be surprised if it turns out to be automotive paint! One of the few other times that the "sparkler" appeared on a car was the 1991 Holiday Car, and that was just the roof and ends in Christmas green. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. There is, as you might expect by now, a website that has a section devoted to such things, it's "The Museum" section of smokeybear.com and there you can view the posters' original appearance. The bottom of the original poster, with the "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" slogan that was used for many years, was pulled out and moved to the right hand side of the car, but except for the fine print at the bottom, it's reproduced on the MTL car. The "Forest Fires" slogan was replaced with the more general "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires" in 2000. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. What's very interesting to me, and perhaps a commentary on how the relationship between State and Religion has changed in the United States in the past 50 years, is that Smokey's words "Please... help people be more careful!" is not directed at mortal beings. The mascot has his hat held to his heart and his eyes to the sky. Not to take one side or the other on this, but I would be surprised if a government agency could get approval for such a poster today. The mourners at the gravesite in the background appear to be bears as well, which makes me think that the deceased isn't human. Most of the casualties of forest fires aren't either, for that matter. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE): No releases this month. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES:
506 00 600, Magne-Matic Coupler, $21.95, 506 00 601, Marklin Coupler, $20.15.
Pullman green with delux gold lettering including reporting marks on left. Black and gold 1940's style "circle cross" herald on left. One side of car has large "The Chief" slogan on right. Other side of car has large straight line map with "ship Santa Fe all the way" on right. Reporting Marks: AT&SF 10197. Approximate Time Period: 1941 to 1944, December 1941 build date. NOTE: This item (both coupler versions) has been sold out and discontinued. A journey that began back in October 2001 ends this month with the release of the fifth and final car in the "Name Trains" quintet for the Santa Fe in 1:220. That October '01 date refers to the debut of the same five-pack in N Scale, that year's Chicago Show Special (speaking of fallen flags, MTL doesn't do that promotion any more either). Let's take one last look at one of these Name Trains, specifically, The Chief that's memorialized in delux gold on pullman green on this boxcar. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The November 1946 edition of the Official Guide of the Railways, page 932, describes this extra fare train, beginning with the through sleeping car connections from New York, Philadelphia and Washington provided by the New York Central, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio, each leaving in the evening before and arriving on the morning of the Chief's departure from Chicago at 12:01 PM. Arrival of Train 19 in Kansas City was advertised at 9:40PM for connection from St. Louis on the Missouri Pacific, Wabash or combination of the Alton and the Burlington. From Kansas City, it was westward beginning at 10:10 PM for arrival in Emporia just after midnight, Albuquerque at 2:45 PM the next day, and Los Angeles at 10:00 AM the second day out from Chicago. Train 20 left L.A. at 12:01 PM for arrival in Chicago at 1PM the second day out, and don't forget those two time zone changes. The completely air-conditioned train included a valet, maid-manicure service, barber service, shower bath and radio, and Fred Harvey diner service for all meals, for a $10 extra fare. Which was a lot in 1946 unless you were a movie star or other luminary that rode the Santa Fe rails in and out of Hollywood. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. To recap once more 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. As passenger equipment, this series of cars would not normally appear in the ORER. Various sources note that there is no perfect N or Z Scale match for the Santa Fe's Fe-24 class of car, which these were, but in Z Scale that seems to be a little less important.
© 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
980 01 160, Magne-Matic Coupler, $110.95, 980 01 161, Marklin Coupler, $109.15.
F7 A Diesel Locomotive, Powered, Rio Grande (D&RGW). MTL reports that when the Rio Grande was finished with this F7, they sold it to the Alaska Railroad; yepper, according to the roster on the Rio Grande Modeling and Historical Society. In fact, the Alaska got a bunch of these units: the 5653, 5654, 5664, 5711, 5714, 5724, 5732, 5743 and 5744, all F7As, all went north. (And others went east, to the Penn Central of all places, and several survived into Conrail.) The D&RGW was buying F7's from later 1948 to mid-1952, and it's in the later timeframe that the 5714 arrived. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As delivered, these were painted in Orange Duco, also known as Aspen Gold, with Aluminum Duco and black, with four stripes. About 1961 the decoration was changed to the one stripe version, which MTL modeled, and which therefore yields an ATP shorter than the career the loco had on the Rio Grande. The RGM&HS has a nice selection of photos on their site, most in black and white but a couple in color. From that, I note that at least one F7, the 5641, stayed in four stripes through no earlier than August 1966, so the two schemes can co-exist; and of course MTL has most of what it needs to do that earlier scheme as well. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. One more note on MTL's copy: I think that what they meant to say was that the Alaska Railroad retired the former D&RGW 5714 in 1976, not rebuilt it; it was traded in to EMD in that year, and they wouldn't have rebuilt it first. But then again, the caption to a 1971 photo of what became Alaska Railroad 1528, on the alaskarails.org site says it was "rebuilt in 1976"... hmm... © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE REPRINTS:
500 00 030, Magne-Matic Coupler, $18.10, 500 00 031, Marklin Coupler, $16.30.
Jade green with white lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left and large herald on right. Reporting Marks: PC 103601. Approximate Time Period: late 1960's (1969 repaint date) to early 1970's. Previous Release (as catalog 14103 and 14103-2): Road Number 103809, January 1987 (Marklin Coupler) and September 1987 (Magne-Matic Coupler). NOTE: This item (both coupler versions) has been sold out and discontinued. Should this or shouldn't this car have a roofwalk? That is the question. The answer is, well, probably not; depending on the source material, they were outlawed for interchange service in 1966 or 1969... with various extensions, that is. The date of the Penn Central merger was February 1, 1968. It appears that the Z Scale reprint uses the same dimensional data as the original N Scale release, which gives a service date of July 1969 and a build date of April 1945 (too early for the PS-1 boxcar, but I digress). There is a photo of similarly painted PC 126086 on the Fallen Flags site that's dated 1969, and it doesn't have a roofwalk or full height ladders. You'd think this would be the norm, but never say never when it comes to the Penn Central. For example, an ex-PRR X26f class boxcar is in PC regalia with a full roofwalk, as captured in 1970 and displayed on Jerry Jordak's Penn Central Railroad Home Page. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Be that as it may, or may not, the ORER for April 1970 shows all of 24 cars in the series 103025 to 103884, with the basic description "Box, Steel" and the AAR Classification "XM", but no former PRR or NYC class designation. The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet, outside length 44 feet 4 inches, extreme height 14 feet 6 inches, and door opening 6 feet. Capacity was 3712 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. Most of the PC's fleet was still lettered for the predecessor railroads; for example, later lines in the equipment table simply list the pending road numbers with a description of "Box, 49 feet 8 inches but less than 59 feet 8 inches"! Well, that narrows it down, I suppose. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. If the Penn Central had ever gotten around to adding to that scant total of 24 pieces for the group of cars from which this model is drawn, by the coming of Conrail they're gone again; just one car in the entire series is listed in the Conrail roster in the April 1976 Register. That is indeed a short ATP, but then again, the PC was a pretty short lived railroad. And yes, it has in fact been twenty-nine years plus since it went away, hard as that may seem to believe. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITIONS:
507 00 310, Magne-Matic Coupler, $23.70, 507 00 311, Marklin Coupler, $21.90.
Metallic charcoal gray with aluminum trucks. White lettering including reporting marks on right. Black and white slogan banner "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!" on right. Four color process "poster" with Smokey Bear mascot at gravesite and legend, "Please... help people be more careful!" Reporting Marks: SBX 1953A. First in a series. NOTE: This item (both coupler versions) has been sold out and discontinued. Please see the commentary on the N Scale release above.
|