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©2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting Prohibited. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Legal Stuff NOTE: This archive edition covers most single car releases only. Reviews of and commentary on Micro-Trains locomotives (including the FTs), most Special Editions such as the U.S. Army Sets and the "Twelve Days of Christmas" cars are available exclusively in the e-mail subscription edition of the UMTRR. N SCALE NEW RELEASES:
038 00 390, $15.95
Blue with aluminum roof. Mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left. Multicolor Fraser Paper logo on right. Reporting Marks: BAR 501. Approximate Time Period: 1990's. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. According to the Fraser Paper website, the firm "is a leading manufacturer of specialized printing, publishing and converting papers. As one of North America's largest producers of specialized paper products, it operates 13 paper machines at two integrated operations in New Brunswick, Maine and New Hampshire in addition to a market hardwood kraft pulp mill in Quebec and 4 sawmill operations in New Brunswick and Maine." Some of its specialized papers include lightweight text and reference grades for books, paper for bibles, stamp and chart papers, and coated grades of paper for catalogs. Headquartered in Toronto, the company has a large operation in Madawaska, Maine, an important fact to which we will return. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I found the BAR 501 as a single car listing in the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for July 1992 with the following information: description "Box, Steel," AAR Classification XM, inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 60 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 9 feet, and capacity 5000 cubic feet or 149,000 pounds. The 501 differs on just that last dimension, capacity, from cars numbered 502 to 511 and another one numbered 516. I have the BAR 501 appearing in ORER listings only as early as 1991, but out to my most recent copy, January 2006. That's later than the BAR itself lasted as it was sold off to become the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic which began operations in January 2003. Much of the equipment was shown as still lettered BAR in that January 2006 Register. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The New England Photo Archive has an undated shot of BAR 501 taken by Brad Libby and posted to the site in 2004. Brad's caption is pretty succinct: "The Bangor & Aroostook painted this 50' box car in the hopes to gain Fraser Papers business. It didn't work. Nice try though. Information has it that there were 10 cars in this series." The plug door on the prototype doesn't match the MTL version and the prototype has shortened ladders as well, which the 38er body style doesn't. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. A posting on Railroad.net in response to a query I made there cites the book "BAR In Color" as 1991 for the paint date of this car. I will extrapolate that into an Approximate Time Period of the 1990's. The BAR book notes 10 cars painted in the scheme as well. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In October 2003, the MM&A filed with the Surface Transportation Board to cancel the trackage rights of the Canadian National that the CN was using to service the Fraser plant at Madawaska. Well, if painting cars doesn't work, I suppose. Also from Railroad.net, "The outcome of the trackage/haulage rights case is that the CN still has access. MMA hauls the cars in the Madawaska-Van Buren turn. CN has used these rights to capture all of the inbound business to the mill while MMA still has a good share of the outbound business." The poster added that while it owned the BAR, Iron Road sold the access rights to Fraser to the CN and the MM&A tried to get them back after it bought out Iron Road.
© 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
053 00 061 and 053 00 062, $25.95 each
We're coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of the building of the specific centerbeam flat cars that were modeled by Micro-Trains. In that 1977 group of orders were cars for the Burlington Northern, Union Pacific and Milwaukee Road, all of which have been modeled by MTL, and the Western Pacific, which hadn't been modeled. Until now, that is, and with the first "virtual two pack" that represents fully twenty percent of the entire WP roster. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The ORER for April 1981 shows the short series 1401 to 1410 described as "Flat, Center Beam, Bulkheads" within Plate C dimensions with the AAR Classification of FBS. The inside length was 60 feet 8 inches, the inside height 11 feet 11 inches, outside length 68 feet, extreme height 15 feet 6 inches, and capacity a hefty 198,000 pounds (no cubic footage is given; well, it is still a flat car!). The extra weight allowance comes from the fact that for the capacity, centerbeams are pretty light in weight. I'm not terribly concerned about prototype fidelity here as we already know that the Thrall design was the prototype for the MTL body style; in other words, this should be as dead on as you can get for an N Scale model. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. These ten cars made it into the merger of the WP into the Union Pacific, as they are in the July 1989 Register; however they are gone from the October 1991 ORER. That's a fairly precise Approximate Time Period. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. I'm told that there is a photo of this car in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Western Pacific and that it's noted therein that after this small group of ten the WP went back to the "standard" bulkhead flatcar. There is also an undated photo of WP 1406 on George Elwood's Fallen Flags site; undated, but I think I can make out a reweigh date in the 1980's, perhaps 1986. That large "Center Beam" in all caps really does shout out to the observer. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. As is becoming a pattern with MTL, both numbers of this car include representative loads. I'm not sure how representative a partial load is on a Centerbeam car. Certainly an unbalanced load would cause a situation described by the "stick figure" drawing that is present on most all prototype cars of this type (and is reproduced on the Centex and Union Pacific "center partition" cars from MTL). I have seen partial loads go by on bulkhead flat cars for sure, but I don't remember whether I've ever seen this on a Centerbeam. However, it is very difficult to prove the absence of something so I'd better stop right there.
© 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
076 00 080, $23.45
The April 1970 edition of the ORER shows the 100 car series numbered from 63200 to 63299 listed as just "Box, All Steel" with AAR Classification "XM" and a cubic foot capacity of... 971? No, methinks that is a typo. How about 4971 cubic feet? How about 4960, as reported by the Rio Grande Modeling and Historical Society? Yeah, that's better than 971. Anyway, the inside length was 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 57 feet 11 inches (meaning that the supplied extended draft gear trucks are more correct), door opening 15 feet, and weight capacity 154,000 pounds. Note "TT" gets pretty specific: "Cars in series... are steel sheathed, wood lined with hardwood floor and equipped with roller bearings, cushion underframe and double doors, consisting of one eight foot sliding main door and a seven foot, plug-sliding auxiliary door." I should mention that with the prototype coming from General American, and the model being based on a Pullman-Standard offering, I wouldn't expect an exact match. There is a photo of the car in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Rio Grande, unfortunately not in the UMTRR Research Accumulation. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. By April 1981 the group was down to a total of 96 cars, and 12 of these were lined for food service and reclassified to AAR code XF. Those twelve were numbered 63255 to 63566. Oh, and the cubic footage was corrected to 4960. But that's about all she wrote on this group: by January 1985 there were just two cars remaining, the 63298 and 63299. Talk about a big drop, as our son Kieran used to say. There isn't anywhere obvious I could see for a possible renumbering, either. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. There is a multitude of detail on this latest offering for the Rio Grande, from the four colors to the lettering inside the rungs of the long ladders on the right hand side of the car, that contribute to the multitude of price. And of course the Uncle Pete Payoff-- oops, I mean the royalty paid to the Union Pacific-- doesn't help either. Still, D&RGW Grande cars general do well for MTL and I think this one won't be an exception.
© 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
110 00 090, $25.15
Another car that is right up to date! The previous release of a Procor tank car in this body style series by MTL included the "Tank Qualification Stencil" that was mandated on all tankers on North American railroads by July 2000. Check my comments on the previous car in the April 2004 UMTRR archive and the article by Stuart Streit in the September 2000 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman for more details on that item. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. But go one better with that horizontal vertical striping, meant to be reflective and, hopefully, lessen the chance of collisions between motor vehicles and trains. It's no laughing matter; depending on the cargo, such a crash could be deadly, and believe it or not, I have been on a tourist train that was, in fact, hit by a car, not the other way around. (The driver underestimated both the train's position and his ability to stop before reaching the crossing.) The website of the Federal Railway Administration was not especially helpful in pointing out exactly when this requirement went into effect, although other sources seem to converge on the year 2010 as when the striping of locomotives and rolling stock in either yellow or white must be completed. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Meanwhile, good thing I have acquired the January 2006 edition of the ORER, although as usual it's not terribly helpful with respect to tank cars. We do get the series that is nominally 23000 to 24116 as a subseries of the huge number span from 101 to 29003. Yeah, thanks. The 23003 is part of that subgroup of 412 cars which is just called "Tank" with an AAR Classification of "T" and a gross rail weight of 263,000 pounds. The AAR Car Type Code is T107. And guess what? Those code translations are no longer carried in the ORER; instead, you're directed to a railroad industry pay to play website which I'll bet is restricted to the industry only. Which makes me wonder how much longer print versions of the ORER will be available... anyway, the obvious workaround is an earlier edition of the ORER, which offers that a T107 is a car with a carbon steel tank, welded or riveted, perhaps with a rubber lining, that has a capacity of 22,000 to 24,000 gallons. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Fallen Flags website offers a May 2006 Shannon Edwards photo of PROX 23009 as lensed on a bridge in Chicago. The weld lines are particularly noticeable on white cars, aren't they? Weathering seems to congregate along them. The stripes and tank qualification stencil are in evidence, and although there is an apparent slope downward toward the center of the tank from both ends, it doesn't seem to be as pronounced as it does on the prototype for the green Procor tank car that MTL did in 2004. There is also a shot of PROX 23030 by Shannon Edwards, which illustrates that the bottom of those ends get really dirty as well.
© 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
N SCALE REPRINTS:
074 00 010, $21.35
Yellow with mostly black lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left. Black and white Multimark on right. [Multimark is on right on both sides of car.] Reporting Marks: CP 165181. Approximate Time Period: late 1970's or late 1980's (see text) to late 1990's. Previous Release (as catalog 74010): Road Number 165204, July 1996. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. There aren't too many cars that I know of that use an italic font for dimensional data, but this is one of them. Yeah, I'm getting to the point of needing assistance to read said dimensional data, but getting older still beats the alternative of not getting older. (Ahem.) If the reweigh date on the original run of this car is accurate- it reads "CP 11 88" this car would have been at the tail end of the time period in which CP Rail used the famous Multimark. But the Multimark, and the yellow for insulated cars, had been in use from the start of the CP Rail time period, so we kind of have a split ATP here. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Ian Cranstone's Canadian Freight Cars website has the series 165000 to 165200 showing in Equipment Registers from 1963 to 1998. The 200 cars were built by DOSCO, or Dominion Steel Car, in October 1962 and have those famous underslung alcohol heaters-- we're still waiting for that aftermarket detail part, folks! There were similar cars taking the next 100 numbers built by National Steel Car in 1963. Ian says that 15 of these cars from the two groups were converted to mechanical refrigerators numbered 285600 to 285614. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Let's grab a sample ORER from July 1989. The two groups Ian shows are combined into one series, 165000 to 165299, of which there were 179 extant at the time. The description was "Box, Steel, Bulkhead, 3 Inch Insulation, Thermostatically Controlled Underslung Alcohol Heaters" and the AAR Designation is XLI. The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 8 feet 9 inches, and inside height 9 feet 2 inches, all somewhat constrained by that insulation. The outside length was 45 feet 3 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet, and capacity 3100 cubic feet or 114,000 pounds. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. The Canadian Freight Car Gallery nails the larger series with a 1997 photo of CP 165282. The plug door is different from that on the MTL model, and there are those trapezoidal channels on the car sides, one to the left of the door, one to the right, that I believe contain equipment related to the temperature controls-- hey, more aftermarket part possibilities! Despite the roofwalk removal, the high ladders are intact, and yes, that dimensional data is indeed in italics.
© 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: Note: Releases not listed are covered exclusively in the subscriber edition of the UMTRR.
021 00 405, $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 bird (Western Meadowlark) and state flower (Wild Prairie Rose) on right. Reporting Marks: ND 1889. Forty-first release in the States of the Union series. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued. As we mentioned when the South Dakota car was released, back in October 2003, the order of admission into the union of North and South Dakota is forever unknown. President Benjamin Harrison signed both statehood bills on the same day but mixed them up and didn't look (or so it's told) when signing them. (Harrison did pretty well in terms of states; six were admitted during his single term.) So technically the two Dakotas are the 39th and 40th states, but we don't know which is which. Alphabetically, N comes before S, so North Dakota is viewed as the 39th State in many accounts. So far three initiatives to drop the "North" from the state name have failed, most recently in 1989. © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. Here's a bit of trivia: while we know North Dakota as principally agrarian, the first export was flint-- in approximately 9500 BC! The Native Americans were still hunting mammoths and giant bison. Tribes like the Cheyenne, Hidatsa, Sioux and Dakota inhabited the area thousands of years later; "Dakota" comes from the Sioux for "friends" or "allies." © 2006 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. In the major claims department, Henry Hudson claimed the area for England as part of the Hudson Bay watershed in 1610 and LaSalle claimed it for France as part of the Mississippi River watershed in 1682. It wasn't until 1738 that the first European visited the area, 25 years after England received the northern part of the territory from France. Spain got into the act as well, taking from and then relinquishing to France the Missouri River basin. France in turn sold off the "Louisiana Purchase" to the United States. Louis and Clark explored it, including the area along the Missouri River in both directions of the historic cross-country trek, with more than |