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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:
033 00 170, $16.80
Black with aluminum roof. Yellow lettering including reporting marks and "Another Cushioned Load" on left and circular herald with small "Atlantic" and large "Coast Line" on right. Reporting Marks: ACL 15394. Approximate Time Period: mid to late 1960's (1965 build date given by MTL). NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. The book "Classic Freight Cars Volume 8" includes a photo of ACL 15012 from the immediately preceding series of ACL combination door boxcars which was built two years before the group from which MTL selected the model. The general layout of the lettering is the same; the big difference is the aluminum roof. Oh, and the extended draft gear... wow, it looks like you could have a picnic on it! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The April 1970 edition of the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) bears this out for the series of cars we're interested in as well: The group 15100 to 15399 has an inside length of 50 feet 6 inches and an outside length, over those extended draft gear couplers, of 58 feet 7 inches! (The 15012 and its group is even more pronounced on this stat: 61 feet 6 inches!) The inside height was 10 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 16 feet and capacity 4923 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. As I've described in frustration previously, when the Seaboard Coast Line merger went into effect they stopped giving the number of cars in the predecessor ACL series; only the listing and the notes, which in this case call out the "minimum DF equipment of four belts" and the addition of pallets on a few cars, the 15394 not being one of them. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. And this time there's good reason to check the SCL restenciling practice. By April 1970, 297 of a possible 300 cars in this group were indeed relettered to SCL 615100 to 615399, even if they weren't completely repainted, which they probably weren't, at least not right away. This means several things: First, a very short Approximate Time Period, no more than five years. Second, the ability to do your own restenciling. Third, the possibility of buying multiple cars in order to restencil, since you need to include new numbers anyway; just change the reporting marks to SCL and drop a "6" in front of the road number. Oh, and while you're at it, you could probably lose the roofwalk as well. This group of cars was used for paperboard service per MTL and multiples in a train wouldn't be out of place especially if you're modeling either a southern line or a large paperboard customer. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Although, as you may have surmised, none from this particular series remained, there were some combo door boxcars from that previous series that stayed with ACL markings into the July 1989 Equipment Register under CSX! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
105 00 120, $22.25
MTL says this is a short series of cars and they're right: just four numbered 497103 to 497107 as listed in the October 1991 ORER, shoehorned in among larger groups of other gons. (They're not in the July 1989 Register which is where I looked first.) There are other gondolas, namely, 497099 to 497102 and 497108 to 497109, that have the same dimensions, though. It's not clear whether these cars came from a predecessor railroad since the numbering scheme didn't transfer directly from the Chessie or the Seaboard System or its antecedents, although the Seaboard System seems closer. Anyway. the cars had AAR Classification "GBS" and were described simply as "Gondola" with inside length of 52 feet 5 inches, inside height of 4 feet 6 inches, outside length of 59 feet 11 inches (get out the extended draft gear trucks), and capacity of 2240 cubic feet or 170,000 pounds. These cars were in service through the decade of the 1990s but there was just one left in the January 2002 ORER and none in the October 2004 book. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. It's likely that everyone's seen at least one covered coil gondola at one time or another. But an open gondola that carries coils? Let's refer to the CSXT website: [The uncovered] coil gondola fleet is perfect for the coiled product that does not require protection from the elements and offers even faster loading and unloading. The trough allows loading of 425 inches of coil width. [It] accommodates coils with outside diameters of up to 80 inches. Product protection is assured through the use of cross members that prevent longitudinal shifting and a composite wood-rubber flooring." CSXT noted that it operated a total of 940 of these cars... but no pictures. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Why is that important? Well... almost immediately after the image of the car was posted on the MTL website, the comments came in: it's wrong, it should be black. The Fallen Flags site seems to validate this assertion given that it has a photo of the very car CSXT 497107. But to me it seems to be underexposed. No one has found another photo of a CSXT car in the series, at least not so far. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But were all CSXT gondolas really black? For example, David Graham's rail photo and video archive shows CSXT 490852, built in 1984 and captured in January 2004, and to these eyes it looks blue. On the other hand, there are other photos posted or referenced on Railwire and elsewhere in which CSX gons clearly look black, and one of these is in fact a more distant shot of CSXT 490823 from the same general gondola series! Further complicating the situation: Chessie System gons, which of course preceded CSXT, look blue as well; in fact there are examples with the yellow "coil only" panels that very much look to be painted in Chessie's dark blue. What did CSXT actually do with their gons? If that data is posted on the 'net, I couldn't find it. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. From a source I trust, the Modern Freight Car List, comes what I consider to be the final word via the following post from Joe Fehr: "The MT car is a dead on match for the CSX publicity shot that MTL used to make the paint. CSX blue fades a lot and looks black in time. The car as produced is accurate." MFCL is quite the group of folks that like to be precise, and I don't doubt that they are this time as well. Does that mean that the blue cars didn't "fade to black" with the effects of weathering? No, not at all. But MTL is, as always, capturing the "as freshly painted" version. And in this case, given the center yellow panels with blue lettering and particularly those "Ease Up!" warnings, that freshly painted version is a considerable contributor to the price. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
111 00 051 and 111 00 052, $39.40 each
It's been the butt of numerous jokes around the model railroad domain: Union Pacific's "We Will Deliver" slogan. It probably would have been OK if the only issue was that it sounded so close to the "We Deliver For You" slogan of the United States Postal Service. I wonder if that, or the shorter "We Deliver" was a first choice? It probably wouldn't have made all that much difference, since the introduction of the "We Will Deliver" slogan more or less coincided with a meltdown of service that resulted from the difficult integration of the Southern Pacific into the Union Pacific. Although the slogan is officially gone, the legacy of the bad feelings among shippers and railfans isn't, as evidenced by the title of a Railway Age article from May 2004: "We Will Deliver-- Eventually." That's probably the most common parody of the slogan. From that article comes this general observation, that is, not limited to Uncle Pete: "Finding the means to add capacity is only part of the problem. Even if you've got the infrastructure in place, you've got to have enough people to run it... Capacity--specifically, an inadequate amount for current and projected traffic growth--is the single-biggest problem the railroads are dealing with." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Utahrails.net, citing multiple sources, noted that "The 'We Will Deliver' slogan was based on a mission statement by Ron Burns during his tenure as CEO of Union Pacific Railroad, from August 1995 to November 1996. The slogan was first used on a group of new covered hoppers delivered in early 1996, and first appeared on repainted locomotives coming out of North Little Rock in April 1996. On freight cars, the slogan included either three ending periods (known as an 'ellipsis') or a single ending period. On the locomotive fleet, the slogan did not include an ending period." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A quick look at an ORER from July 1997 shows both cars with your typical dimensions for autoracks. Inside length is 89 feet 4 inches, outside length 93 feet 10 inches-- just a little less than the width of my front yard, by comparison. There is variance within the ETTX series 820302 to 820565 in both the extreme height and the nominal capacity, but the main series is at 18 feet 9 inches and 62,000 pounds. It looks like both cars were still in service as of the October 2004 Register. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I'm calling the ATP "to present"; although all it takes to remove "We Will Deliver" from these cars is the replacement of a few aluminum panels-- not difficult, and probably routine maintenance as well, there are some still around according to the UMTRR Spy Network. UP's current slogan is "Building America" and I wouldn't be surprised to see an MTL release with that motto coming shortly. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
114 00 040, $15.95
Well, the term "modern" is of course relative in this case, but just the same, a version of the skeleton log car that would have a somewhat later ATP makes its single release debut this month. (Three of these cars with three different loads were part of last month's Chehalis Western Special Edition Set.) The continued use of archbar trucks limits the "strictly speaking" deployment capabilities, although these, like the other unlettered cars, wouldn't have been used in interchange service anyhow so the archbars will be OK for the most part. On the prototype, stakes were collapsible or fixed, and that made a big difference in terms of unloading. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Which leads to an interesting question that was asked recently on several different model railroading forums: How did one unload these cars? For many years, it was "by whatever means necessary." Cursory 'net research showed several methods. One was the "jill poke" which was basically a lever-- not compatible with stakes, good to go with chained logs once the chains and wedges were off. A basic dump off the side into a log pond was another way, and I couldn't believe the angle at which the track was banked along the pond. Superelevation indeed! How did the entire car not go into the water right along with the load? Large cranes could and did assist with the process in some operations. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Eventually, direct unloaders of some sort supplanted the log dumps; this was made necessary at least in part by the change to fixed stakes on the flat cars. Yes, stakes made the log load more stable and less likely to fall out prior to reaching its destination, but then, at that destination, something had to reach around, or more likely over, those stakes. Thus machinery like the "Lumberjack" were developed. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE REPRINTS:
024 00 280, $16.35
Box car red with white lettering including small CN "wet noodle" herald just left of door, and "Canada" logo and Manitoba" logo on right. Yellow stripe on door. Reporting Marks: CN 446220. Approximate Time Period: 1987 through 1996. Previous Release (as catalog 24280): Road Number 446214, January 1998. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. When this car was first released back in 1998, the ATP had, believe it or not, just drawn to a close for these forty foot boxcars. They were certainly an anachronism in the late 1980's, but the CN needed them for grain service on branchlines that they believed wouldn't be robust enough to handle modern covered hoppers. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I was all set to "reprint" myself from the original release from '98 when I received a guest commentary from Ryan Laroche, a relatively new member of the UMTRR Gang. Start quote: The cars were used to haul grain mostly from Saskatchewan (ironically enough) to Churchill during the very short Hudson's Bay shipping season (Late Spring-Summer) and to the Sask Pool 7a Elevator in Thunder Bay, Ontario the balance of the year (which on a side note is the largest grain elevator in the world at 11 million bushels). The Churchill trains ran up to 165 cars long on account that there was nothing else significant running on that line (Locals as needed and Via which was never more than 10 cars) the TBay trains where significantly shorter. A good photo of one of the cars in OCS service is on the CNSIG Website. As for the time period, Micro-Trains has it bang on but I can narrow it down for you. In 1996 CN lifted the ban on 100 ton Covered Hoppers on the Churchill line and December 5th, 1996 the last boxcar train departed Canora, Saskatchewan with 114 cars for Thunder Bay. After unloading they where sent to Mandak in Selkirk, Manitoba to be scrapped. Only a handful survived in MOW service and I haven't seen any. The Micro-Trains model is very nice but there are a few nits to pick, it should have a eight foot door (Some of the cars had superior doors 445505 being one of them), the brake wheel should be full height and the brown should be darker (In my opinion at least). My source for dates and train lengths was "Wheat Kings" by Greg McDonnell, Boston Mills Press 1998. It also has pictures of the cars in service and being scrapped. End quote. Thanks, Ryan! From the ORER of July 1989, the first edition I have in which these appear, the series 445956 to 446612 was described as "Box, 8 Foot Doors, Grain Service" and there were 657 cars in the group. The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, extreme height 14 feet 8 inches, and door opening 8 feet-- yes, there is a "door thing" as Ryan noted. Capacity was 3900 cubic feet or 116,000 pounds. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In addition to Ryan's citation on the CN SIG, the Canadian Freightcar Gallery has a shot of CN 446082 complete with "grain service only" disclaimer bottom left of the door as lensed in October 1996 in Portage-La-Prairie, Manitoba. That same disclaimer appears to say "This car not to be interchanged" as well, which would limit your Approximate Railroad Range, strictly speaking. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
065 00 270, $22.50
Though built in 1941 according to the data on the first run of this car, these Alaska tank cars don't show up in my ORER accumulation until the April 1970 book. This more than likely means that as with other of the line's equipment, it was obtained second hand. Remember the troop sleepers turned boxcars? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In that April 1970 ORER there are 19 cars numbered 9005 to 9026, with 100,000 pounds capacity being the only vital statistic listed, plus a note that these are ICC 103 cars with rated capacity of 10,000 gallons. It's unusual that there would be any ORER listing at all for company service tank cars so I'm not complaining. There's also a series 9050 to 9059 of another 10 cars but no way of knowing from the Register whether they're similar. By April 1976 there are 81 tank cars in the series 9005 to 9099. Useless trivia item: The Alaska is second among lines listing equipment in the alphabetical railroad sequence that the ORER had gone to by this time, after the Akron, Canton and Youngstown. In the April 1981 Register there are 51 cars left in the group; by October 1985 they are off the roster, but, given that they are company service cars, they may not have been off the property. That would make the Approximate Time Period the decade of the 1970's. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But... Additional tipoffs to the true ATP are the U-1 wheel stencil and the consolidated stencil, which, according to the information I have, appeared circa 1978 and 1974 respectively. That would really cut down the ATP but I think this time we shouldn't rely on the ORER even though they only list the cars from in 1970, 1976 and 1981. It's that company service stuff again. Realistically, if you're not modeling the Alaska Railroad, you probably wouldn't be able to justify having one of these cars anyway, so why not just show off a good looking silver tanker? © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. It would have been nice to find a proto shot of these cars, but nothing could be teased out of the 'net. One site does have a couple of shots of later ARR tankers; ARR 9300 has special heater coils (not a surprise!) and ARR 9401 looks more like the MTL 110er general service tank car. Both are black with what looks like orange lettering; they are both weathered enough that it's hard to be completely sure. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES:
100 00 240, $19.85
Midnight (dark) blue with mostly white lettering and "U*S*A" in red, white and blue. Reporting Marks: USA 1776. Companion to the States of the Union boxcar series. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. MTL takes a break from the individual state cars to honor all fifty for this 229th birthday month of the United States with this pre-announced caboose. And I'll take a break from the historical perspective that I've been lending to the various state cars... well, with an exception... © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Speaking of historical, at least from an MTL point of view, this is the first regular run release of the 100er body style with window inserts. I confirmed this with MTL. Therefore, we now have windows in all of the N Scale cabeese varieties including the narrow gauge entry. Certainly worth celebrating! And of course, those of you who run the Special Edition State Cars (do I hear the sound of collectors falling over?) now have a proper ending to your train. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
032 00 402, $18.35
The 1959 poster that is the basis for this second in the series asks a simple question: "Why?" Smokey is in the foreground tending to a bear cub while the forest behind him continues to burn. In this case, the portrait to landscape conversion seems to have required some "new material" to the left and right of the original image. The "Why" has been moved down and to the left as well. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Why indeed, you might say? But a BBC-produced program (or perhaps that should be "programme") that I happened to catch mid-way through postulates the contrarian view that forest fires are not entirely a bad thing. The show presented hardy survivors of forest fires that would work to repopulate the area, all part of a natural cycle of birth, death and rebirth. But darned if I can remember the name of the program! © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Meanwhile, the Smokeybear.com website not only includes posters from the 1950's, but radio advertisements-- what we now call PSA's (Public Service Announcements)-- featuring, among others, the Sons of the Pioneers, Art Linkletter, Roy Rogers, James Arness, and Bing Crosby. "It only takes one tree to make a million matches," intones Linkletter, "but it only takes one match to ruin an entire forest." The museum notes that it's still looking for relevant television advertisements from the fifties; now that's something I'd like to see, if they actually exist. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE):
Reprint:
Boxcar red with white lettering including herald and road number on left. Road Number: 163 (will be "EBT 163" in website listing). Approximate Time Period: 1940's to present (considering tourist operation). Previous Releases (as catalog 15107): Road Number 170, June 1996; Road Number 154, August 1999. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. MTL helps out with a key data point for the ATP by remarking in its car copy that the herald depicted on the car was introduced in the 1940's. That helps me correct the August 1999 UMTRR in which I guessed that the car belonged in the 'teens and 'twenties. Cue sound of obnoxious "wrong" buzzer. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. It's kind of interesting that a 'net search puts two other sites, the Friends of the East Broad Top and the "Unofficial EBT Visitors Guide" ahead of the official site. That official site has a one page history of the line from its charter in 1856 through actual start of operations in 1871, including its 1956 closure, sale and rebirth as a tourist line. The EBT was remarkably self-sufficient, had a unique belt-driven shops complex, and built its own freight cars. It's a good thing that the Kovalchick Salvage Company didn't directly dismantle the line after buying it for scrap-- they'd have trashed what is now a National Historical Landmark. And a significant tourist attraction as well. I suspect other railroads might lay claim to the title "most authentic narrow gauge line in America," but it's certainly the only truly surviving operation in the East. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The "Unofficial Guide" includes a roster of equipment with photo citations in EBT books. Boxcars numbered from 165 to 184 inclusive are among those. What, no 163? A picture of the 181 shows it with steel sides, not wood; but recall that one-offs were common and that doesn't mean that's what the rest of the boxcars looked like. In fact, two boxcars look very different, having been converted to open cars for passenger train service. The majority of the cars were actually hoppers of varying two and three bay types, what you'd expect from a coal hauler. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES:
523 00 020, Magne-Matic Coupler, $14.10, 523 00 021, Marklin Coupler, $12.30.
Red oxide with white lettering including roadname and road number on left and circle keystone on right. Road Number: 352819 (will be "PRR 352819" in website listing). Approximate Time Period: 1930's through 1950's. NOTE: This item (both coupler versions) has been sold out and discontinued. We go right to the source, Rob's Pennsy Page, for the best 'net-based information of which I'm aware on the "P" Company's fleet. The road number chosen by MTL for this car, and also for the December 1978 release of this car in N Scale as Catalog 48010, corresponds to the PRR Class G22, which was in several series including 352000 to 352831. These were built in the teens and some were rebuilt in the 1930's. There were 769 of these cars in this group in the October 1944 ORER, and over 700 remaining into October 1953 based on a table on Rob's site. From my January 1953 ORER (NMRA Reprint) we have the description "Gondola, All Steel, Tight Ends, Flat Bottom"... No, wait, the model has drop ends. Uh, well, it looks like the real G22s didn't. Continuing with the dimensions, the inside length was 46 feet 2 inches, inside height 3 feet even, outside length 48 feet, extreme height 7 feet 4 inches, and capacity 1288 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. There were 728 cars in the main series, another 20 equipped with bulk containers (the 352819 not among those), and one that was given a drop bottom. There might have been better numbering selections, such as those corresponding to the Pennsy's G27 class which were a little longer and had drop ends, example series 344500 to 348999. Such is the risk of just taking a long ago N Scale release, released when research data wasn't as plentiful, and dropping it down to Z Scale. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Rob cites photos online including two on his own site of PRR 353064 from an adjoining series; both of these show containers, which would make a nice detail part, as well as an end mounted vertical staff brake wheel. The "circle keystone" scheme as depicted by MTL looks fine. The series was all but gone by the Penn Central merger but the paint scheme should have been replaced prior to then as it was supplanted by the shadow keystone in 1954. We'll give them at least through the fifties to get around to a repaint with respect to the ATP. Given the build date, the front end of that
ATP will be the start of the circle keystone scheme in 1930. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
530 00 210, Magne-Matic Coupler, $21.10, 530 00 211, Marklin Coupler, $19.30.
Back in February 2001 when the second run of this car was done in N Scale, long time UMTRR Gang member Roger Beckett helped with a contribution that still works. He received a list of the MRL's Maintenance Of Way cars with some history from an MRL employee. He related that MRL 100015 was formerly Butte Anaconda & Pacific 1015 and was of 7865 gallon capacity, used for Waste Fuel Oil. The build date of May 1958 was correct. "It's thought that these cars (along with 100017, ex BA&P 1014) are most likely ex-Union Pacific 68100-68149 series acid tank cars." © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In 1994, I videotaped the MRL yard in Missoula, Montana and shot a view of MRL 100017, not the same car but from the same series. As with the N Scale offering, the prototype and model don't match precisely. The most notable difference is the dome; it's smaller and it has a chemical tank car-like platform surrounding it. The tank itself is also smaller than the model's at a 7865 gallon capacity. And the ladder and brake wheel are different as well. Roger Beckett has photos in his collection and concurred with my assessment. And as with the N Scale, I don't think any other N Scale tank commercially available right now will fill the bill either, although the Marklin tanker might be a little closer. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE REPRINTS:
502 00 020, Magne-Matic Coupler, $18.15, 502 00 021, Marklin Coupler, $16.35.
Sky blue with mostly white lettering including Reporting Marks: GN 7217. Approximate Time Period: 1967 (introduction of paint scheme) to mid-1980's, but see text. Previous Release (as catalog 14902): Road Number 7025, October 1986 (Marklin) and June 1987 (Magne-Matic). NOTE: This item (both coupler versions) has been sold out and discontinued. OK, well I guess I'll start by saying that this is a nice looking car. But it's more than likely also a significant compromise. My information is that when the GN repainted their boxcars into the final scheme before the coming of the Burlington Northern, they removed the roofwalks. MTL doesn't make a 40 foot boxcar without a roofwalk, so there's your compromise. This was addressed in N Scale when the release was flipped from the 21000 series to the 74000 series for the most recent reprint. But wait, there's more... © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I'm assuming that this car is nominally a part of the 6000s and 7000s cars that were part of the GN roster. The closest ORER I have to the rebuild date is April 1970 and we're already in the start of the Burlington Northern, but I think the GN roster is more or less intact, including these plug door box cars. Which come in four groups, ending with road number 7199, not 7217. The next road number is 10000, so something appears to be amiss. The Great Northern Empire website has a boxcar roster and it skips from 7199 to 10000 as well. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Let's further assume that the MTL folks meant to put the car into the 7000 to 7199 series. The ORER entry for that does show the cars as AAR Classification "XL" with description, "Box, All Steel" and the dimensions are reasonably on target-- with one exception. The door. It's ten feet wide, versus six feet on the model. Even in Z Scale, that would count as a "door thing". In addition, photos of the cars that I found including on the GNE site show various types of plug doors. So, although a nice reprint and one that will no doubt do well in the market, it is more or less a "stand in." For the record, using the 7000 to 7199 set as a proxy, these cars were off the BN roster by the October 1986 Register. © 2005 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITIONS:
507 00 320, Magne-Matic Coupler, $23.70, 507 00 321, 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, "Why?" Reporting Marks: SBX 1959A. Second 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.
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