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©2008 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 most Micro-Trains locomotives, most Special Editions such as the U.S. Navy Sets and the Canadian Province & Territory cars are available exclusively in the e-mail subscription edition of the UMTRR. N SCALE NEW RELEASES:
020 00 766, $14.75
Not counting the Runner Packs, there was exactly one release of the venerable PS-1 single door boxcar in all of 2007. So this release equals last year's total. I'd been wondering after Eric Smith's disclosure that MTL was working on retooling of some of their older cars if this was the reason why we hadn't seen a 020 release since March; perhaps I've got that one wrong!
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The challenge when doing a review is comparing the example car to the entire series in order to discern prototype accuracy, ORER data etc. Unless I explicitly know otherwise (e.g. the CN "newsprint" boxcar, below) I tend to treat the MTL release as being representative of the entire series. That doesn't appear to be true in this case.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Let's start with the main series. For that we turn to information posted on the Baltimore_and_Ohio YahooGroup, a resource heartily recommended for scholars of the B&O, for a significant amount of help on this review. While these cars are Pullman-Standard design as noted (somewhat confusingly) in the MTL car copy, they weren't assembled by P-S. Instead, "kits" were sold to the B&O and assembly was done at their DuBois shops. These 400 cars numbered 470600 to 470999 were classed M-67 and were of 10 foot interior height, not 10 foot 6 inch inside height of the "standard" PS-1s and, we assume, the MTL model.
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Initially these cars were painted in the "Time Saver Service" scheme-- the "plain" one that is, not to be confused with the special blue and orange scheme that was done on very few cars. This scheme was offered by MTL on a "Runner Series" of four PS-1 boxcars in 1996 and 1997 (catalog 20346). The "Sentinel Service Dependability" slogan followed starting in October 1958 according to an internal B&O memo cited on the YahooGroup, so this was not the initial paint scheme for these cars. The Morning Sun Color Guide (MSCG) to the B&O indicates that Sentinel Service was for expedited carloads (not via special trains, though) while Time-Saver Service was for less than carload shipments. But to further confuse things, the circled T next to the road number on the MTL car indicated suitability for Time Saver Service regardless of what the slogan said. (Any clean boxcar would do, actually, and these were new.) There are examples of this practice in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the B&O. The circle T became meaningless after 1962 when Time Saver Service was discontinued.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
There is one key flaw with respect to the MTL model, though, picked out for us by UMTRR Gang Member Bill Hebb: "Sadly, once again MT has got the color completely wrong. Depending on aging, post-World War II B&O boxcars should be in some variant of Floquil zinc chromate primer to be usually considered 'correct' on the BOHS (B&O Historical Society) list." My review of messages in the Baltimore_and_Ohio YahooGroup confirms this. In March 2007 on that group, B&O expert (and group moderator) James Mischke reported that "The M-67 Pullman-Standard PS-1's of 1957 were bright red oxide." Bill points to Page 70 of the book "Trackside Along the B&O 1957-58 with Edwin Griffith" for the most accurate color photo he's seen. It's of a B&O boxcar leaving the shop freshly repainted. That bright oxide red got dirty in a hurry; there are plenty of examples of this in the MSCG. George Elwood's "Fallen Flags" site has an online example of how B&O 470896 looked in 1972 although it carried the Time Saver Service slogan.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
All this, and we haven't even referred to a single Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER). We'll do that in brief. The January 1959 Register shows the series with all 400 cars with these dimensions: Inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet as already noted, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 14 feet 7 inches, door opening 8 feet (oops! a "door thing" too) and capacity 3719 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. I expected a lot less, but there were still 363 of the original 400 cars in service in July 1974, 25 years later. Ah, but there were just 53 in April 1981 and a mere two in April 1984. Roofwalk removal would have been order by that time in any event. I should note in conclusion here that though MTL gives a service date of 1968, had it been repainted at that time, the scheme would have been changed to the small capital dome version without a slogan which was adopted in 1962.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
But now throw all of that away, perhaps. "In all fairness to Micro-Trains," B&O Historical Society member Brian DeVries notes, "their car is based on an actual photo but the car, itself, may be an aberration." (That image was provided to UMTRR HQ.) "The shop date on the car is September 1968 and that, in all probability, is the date that the slogan was changed. It is obvious that some of the as-built lettering remains, but the Sentinel Service slogan has been applied (not too straight) over the old Time Saver slogan. The ATP for this car is, probably, 1968 onward - but it certainly didn't look pristine in the photo - it did show the ACI label on it, if that is a clue to the date of the photo." ACI labels were applied to railroad cars starting in 1967, were required for interchange service in 1970, and were discontinued in 1977 though not removed from cars until perhaps years later.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
As noted above, while the Sentinel Service slogan was initiated in 1958 per the Baltimore_and_Ohio YahooGroup citing official source, that logo had been discontinued as of early 1963 in favor of a non-slogan paint scheme with large B&O and the plain capitol dome herald (plain meaning without the "13 States" logo). How it ended up with a "Sentinel Service" at least five years later is a matter that is probably lost to the (perhaps sheepish) explanation given to the Car Department. And the final clue to the much later date of the repaint, perhaps a partial repaint, is the use of sans serif lettering on the car's dimensional data, essentially the "C&O style" that's seen on their cars, as the C&O controlled the B&O by this point. So what we might very well have here is a unique car among a series of four hundred.
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025 00 690, $21.45
Cadiz, Kentucky, seat of Trigg County, is in the western part of the state not far from the "Land Between The Lakes." In 1901 the Cadiz Railroad was built to haul tobacco from there east to the town of Gracey for connection with the Illinois Central. (Websites refer to a connection with the Louisville and Nashville as well, but I could not confirm that in my Official Guides.) A January 1954 article in the "Nashville Tennessean Magazine" transcribed to several points on the 'net provided a short and colorful history of the line to that point. In that article it's stated that "back in 1901 when the line was organized, a company had to have more than 10 miles of tracks to be classified officially as a railroad. So William Cleland White, the founder, constructed two extra miles of curves to get the line over the 10-mile-long minimum." No, I've never heard of this requirement either, but it was an interesting enough tidbit to MTL to be included in their car copy! Thomas S. Shaw was the first engineer for the Cadiz; he was present at the driving of the Golden Spike, retired as engineer in 1912 but stayed on as conductor until his passing in 1920.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
As has been noted with respect to other MTL releases, that "Cushion Service" legend is a tipoff to the real owner of this boxcar: it's SSI Rail, later Itel Rail, and still later but out of scope of this ATP, General Electric Railcar Services, which picked up the Itel fleet. This was all part of the Incentive Per Diem (IPD) program that resulted in a bunch of previously obscure shortlines leasing cars in order to collect some pretty positive cash flow through higher car rates, and getting their names out all across North America to boot. (I know that a goodly part of my interest in shortlines stemmed from seeing cars like this and wondering about where these lines were located. See what you started, Itel Rail?!?) The IPD program lasted about ten years, but when the bubble burst, a number of shortlines found themselves choking on those leased cars.
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A photo of Cadiz 1089 from April 1977 on the "Fallen Flags" website shows the "Leased from SSI Rail" quite clearly in bright sunlight. The car itself looks quite nice and clean in a three-quarter view that confirms the dark blue ends of the car. The car was about three months old at the time of the photo, and looks good. There are three other photos of Cadiz cars posted on Fallen Flags as well.
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There's a not so nice looking Cadiz 1065 as of December 1983 as photographed by Jim Eager and included with his seminal multi-part series on IPD boxcars that spanned many 1999 and 2000 issues of Rail Model Journal. This time, it's part two of his coverage of the FMC built boxcars. The Cadiz series 1000 to 1099 was of FMC Plate B 5077 cars, which is the basis for the MTL 025 body style-- which means there should not be much worry about prototypical fidelity. Eager noted that the Cadiz was an early shortline to sign up for leases of SSI boxcars. And SSI was the first buyer of the FMC 5077s, which they purchased specifically to lease to shortlines.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for April 1981, but showing an update date of October 1979 in the listing, shows 150 boxcars operated with Cadiz Railroad markings, including the one hundred numbered from 1000 to 1099. (The other 50 cars are 5347 cubic foot boxcars). The description is a pretty simple "Box, Steel, Nailable Steel Floor" with AAR Classification XM, inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 7 inches, outside length 57 feet 3 inches, extreme height 12 feet 9 inches, door opening 10 feet, and capacity 5077 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds.
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By the July 1987 ORER the line had almost tripled in size to 29 1/2 miles, and instead of connecting with the Illinois Central-- actually the Illinois Central Gulf by this point-- at Gracey, it went up to Princeton, Kentucky for interchange with the Paducah and Louisville, which had taken over the Illinois Central's line between those two cities in 1986. I imagine that the Cadiz used a piece of the former IC line branch line to Hopkinsville, Kentucky to get to Princeton lest it be "orphaned." Meanwhile, the roster of boxcars was down to just 46 of which 32 were in the 1000 to 1099 series. San Francisco, the home of Itel Rail, continued to be shown as the contact point for car hire and mileage reports and repair charges.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Cadiz Railroad apparently did not last much beyond the collapse of the Incentive Per Diem "bubble". A 1990 photo on Fallen Flags of the line's switcher Number 8, an S-1 formerly from the Tennessee Central, is captioned "All other track pulled up. Road is defunct." Alas, it is so-- it was already out of the ORER by the July 1989 issue and the trackage was torn up in 1990. But the Number 8 sits on a short disconnected section of track along US 68 a bit west of the interchange with Interstate 24. Or, for you geocachers, it is a "waymark" located at 36 degrees 52.562 minutes North and 87 degrees 44.589 minutes West as a "waymark". Sorry, I can't be more exact than that! A mile and a half of the right of way starting in downtown Cadiz is a paved rail trail, the first so designated in Kentucky in fact.
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027 00 300, $15.20
The presence of the Cooper Black font for the reporting marks (not the road number, though) pegs this car as being more toward the start of the BNSF than the present. The current font for the reporting marks appears to be of the Arial family. The sadly small herald was being ignored on repaints for a while, although the "swoosh" logo (I hesitate to call it a "herald") appears to be a bit more present these days. You might already know that the official name of the line is now "BNSF Railway" as opposed to "Burlington Northern Santa Fe" and so much for tradition there as well. At least the nice museum is still in place at the corporate headquarters in Fort Worth... uh, right?
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Well, anyway, the first ORER I have dated after the merger is from July 1998 and there is a not very full series numbered 713955 to 704315. Just 36 cars are in place out of a possible 360. They are described as "Box, Steel, 50K, 20 Inch Travel, Nailable Steel Floors, Movable Bulkheads" with AAR Classification XL and AAR Type Code A435. First, that "20 Inch Travel" doesn't refer to how far it can go! It's most likely a reference to the Cushion Underframe, so get out those extended draft gear trucks. The XL refers to Loader Equipped and the A435 decrypts to, character by character, equipped box car; 49 to under 59 feet inside length, cushion draft gear or underframe; Class XL; and plug door 9 feet to under 11 feet wide. Who needs the dimensions after that? We do! Here they are: inside length, 50 feet 7 inches, inside height 9 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 7 inches, outside length 58 feet 4 inches, extreme height 15 feet, door opening 10 feet, capacity 4973 cubic feet or 148,000 pounds. MTL's 027 series body style more or less follows the FMC 5077 cubic foot x-post boxcar, so this might not be a match, but don't forget the interior bulkheads will cut down the cubic capacity. There were 93 cars in the January 2000 ORER and then 150 cars in the group in the January 2002 Register, but I'm not sure that the group reached its potential count as there were just 55 cars in the January 2006 ORER. I think we're still OK to "the present," however, even if just barely.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
To Railcarphotos.com, Paul Graf contributed an August 2006 photo of sister car BNSF 714230 with the sadly small herald on the right side instead of the left, and some large "aftermarket decoration" over which the car number needed to be restenciled. A much cleaner BNSF 714042, also with the herald on the right, was lensed in January 2006 in Ohio and February 2006 in Indiana; both on RRPictureArchives.net. (Narrow down the list by choosing the A435 class lest you wade through over ten thousand BNSF freight car shots!) In terms of prototype fidelity, it looks like we have a pretty decent match here; there can be some quibbles on the side sills. The biggest delta is that the MTL model is of a Plate B car, but FMC only built Plate C cars with plug doors. That amounts to a five inch difference in height.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
MTL states in its car copy that this car were built in March 1975. I'll leave to the reader to more thoroughly research whether these were ex-Burlington Northern or ex-Santa Fe but I will note that a very quick pass through "Santa Fe Freight Cars in Color Volume One" did not find any exact matches. Micro-Trains suggests that the cars in this BNSF group could have been part of multiple series of the predecessor railroads, and that's certainly possible. The Burlington Northern utilized the 700,000s for boxcars as the BNSF does, but we could still have a "merger" here. Wait, I guess we actually DO have a merger here, don't we?
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038 00 460, $29.60
You might be familiar with this "newsprint" boxcar from its various previous model iterations in other scales. But did you know that it starred in a television commercial? According to the Morning Sun Color Guide to the CN Volume 2, in 1970 the railway decided to try to make freight "interesting" by illustrating what cargo could be carried in CN freight cars. The choice of newspapers was obvious for a boxcar built for newsprint service, but what a way to depict them! The MSCG states that the eighteen newspaper mastheads were "enlarged photostatically to final size and used as a basis for a spray mask." What did they do, put a newspaper into a copier and set it to 10,000 percent or something? (I am exaggerating... I think.) "CN Public Affairs selected the mastheads as representative of newspapers across the country and of both official languages." The only one I recognized immediately and fully was the Globe and Mail which is out of Toronto, but I did see papers from Montreal, Moncton, Ottawa, Kamloops and Winnipeg. I'll bet many of my "north of the border" readers can help with the entire list. After the commercials were filmed, the cars were released to regular service but were reunited for special events-- which must have made things interesting for the waybill department. The photo in the MSCG was taken in July 1971 so we know it was around at least that long. No, make that July 1975, the date of a photo of the car I found on the Canadian Freight Car Gallery.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The 401527 was part of the series 401483 to 401882, built in 1966 and 1967 by National Steel Car. A photo of CN 401000 from the previous similar series on appears on Page 27 of the MSCG above the 401527, so we see what the other side of the car should look like. (The promotional graphics were done on only one side of the car.) The key spotting feature would be the yellow door which indicated dedicated newsprint service through the 1970's (that practice was discontinued by 1981). As delivered, at least some of these cars had roofwalks and full ladders. From 1967 onward roofwalks weren't included in new build cars. The 401527 had its roofwalk removed and ladders cut down by the time it was repainted; however MTL does have full ladders on its 038 body style. The different color red band for the "newspaper" side is correct as is the black door detail.
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For completeness, I'll grab the ORER for July 1974 for some vital statistics: inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 11 feet, outside length 57 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet 5 inches, door opening 9 feet, capacity 5082 cubic feet or 160,000 pounds. There were sliding sills on these cars and the "20 inch travel cushion underframe" and plug doors and roller bearings were called out in the description. Just six cars were left in this series in the January 2006 ORER although given the very special paint scheme that the 401527 alone wore, that's not really the point this time.
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065 00 650, $20.45
It's quite unusual for railroad owned tank cars to be used in revenue service; it's even more unusual for a smaller Class I road such as the Delaware and Hudson to have them. But as near as I can figure it, the D&H had them, and as MTL's car copy states, they were for a sweet little commodity: molasses. Cobbling together posts on the "DandH" YahooGroup, it seems that the Port of Albany would occasionally receive molasses and the D&H would load it into tank cars for shipment to on-line graneries. The molasses would be mixed with grain and the resulting products sold locally. The 57 is mentioned as one of these cars. I didn't know this before I started looking into this car, but I did dimly recall seeing a D&H red tank car somewhere in my Research Accumulation.
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And indeed, my often faulty memory was correct: Page 56 of the book "Classic Freight Cars Volume 2" has a circa 1980 shot of a D&H tank car, more like a reddish brown than a bright red, but carrying the legend "molasses loading only." Right about the photo, wrong about the road number! The car pictured is D&H 51, not D&H 57. Back to the drawing board?
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It gets worse. From July 1974 to July 1992, there are indeed tank cars listed in the ORER entry for the D&H, and as revenue equipment. But I never get a road number 57; there are several numbers from 50 to 56, and from the mid 1980's on it's just the 56 that's listed. What happened to the 57?
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Well, it did exist: I've confirmed that it's pictured in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the D&H (under "miscellany"). The prototype 57 has differences from the model, perhaps most notably the use of a platform all around the dome on the real 57. There are probably enough deltas to term this a "stand in" but again we run into the likelihood of an exact model ever being available in the mass market, quite a low likelihood I would say. Thanks to folks on the DandH YahooGroup for the MSCG citation.
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027 00 070, $20.20
This attractive scheme was the last in the series for Rocky's road, having been the product of a top to bottom image change for the GN begun in 1967. I still haven't quite figured out why the road would bother to do such a thing, considering that the merger talks that would result in the Burlington Northern were well under way. Perhaps this was a contingency plan of some sort, or an admission that the formation of the BN was still going to be a ways off. The deep blue was a nod to the typical color of the sky in the territory in which the Great Northern operated (unless we're talking Seattle). Rocky the antelope (not a mountain goat!) became a more modernish-icon looking in place of the cartoon-like character that he was in the 1950's. More than four decades later, I think the scheme still holds up well.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
And good thing, for as we already know, the Burlington Northern tended to take its time repainting cars from its predecessor lines. Considering the 1968 built date of these cars, it would probably not surprise you to know that the original series of 150, numbered 138700 to 138849 in the April 1970 ORER, had only dropped to 140 by April 1976 under the BN listing. Of those, 27 had lost their Car-Pak loaders and been demoted to AAR Designation "XM" from the more specific "XL," but they were still there. The vital statistics: inside length 50 feet 8 inches, outside length 57 feet 10 inches, door opening 10 feet, capacity 5,266 cubic feet and 143,000 pounds. A healthy 126 cars were active in April 1981 and 99 in July 1987; we don't see the last of these cars until sometime after 1996!
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There's a circa-1992 photo of GN 138742 on Fallen Flags. Rib counters, or should I say exterior post counters, will note that the MTL model is one short on either side of the door versus the prototype, and end noters will observe that the real GN car had what looks like 4/4 Dreadnaught ends, if I have my terminology correct. The roof design looks OK based on a shot of "lucky" 138777 on the same site. Fallen Flags also has shots of a very washed out looking GN 138739 from July 1995 and GN 138717 from 1972 which shows quite the extended draft gear. Whether this all adds up to a "stand in" is up to the reader, although I'll wager that some of the craftsmen out there will quickly modify copies of the MTL car to yield a more accurate model.
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089 00 010, $19.60
It's been more than ten years since the first and only release of this body style was issued; so much for amortization of molds. If the information I've been reading is accurate, this car represents a PS-3, not the most common Pullman-Standard design you'll hear of. The ORER for April 1954 shows 1601 cars in the series with this road number, so there are plenty of opportunities for more releases... can you say "Runner Pack," perhaps?
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Sticking with that ORER, the series is described as "Coal, Hopper, Steel" with AAR Classification "HM" with numbers 82200 to 85199. There's room for more than 1601 cars in that range but this is still a lot of cars. However, it's just a fraction of the L&N's roster of over 62,700 pieces of rolling stock and even just a small part of their hopper accumulation at the time. (Two other series had more than seven thousand cars each.) The dimensional data reveals, to me, anyway, that the prototype hopper was a bit larger than the MTL model represents. Specifically, the inside length was 35 feet, inside width 9 feet 7 inches, outside length 36 feet, extreme height 12 feet, and capacity 2143 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds.
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By the January 1959 ORER the car count in the series had ballooned to 2987. That fell back to 2935 in January 1964. A harbinger of things to come was the 1964 delivery from Pullman-Standard of larger ribside triple hoppers, listed but not yet on the property in the January '64 Register. By the Seventies the presence of those bigger 100 ton cars was being felt, with April 1970's Register noting the series we're interested in down a bit to 2673 cars, of which 2517 had been upgraded to 110,000 pounds capacity. The total was down to 2202 in July 1974 and 1773 in April 1976. Just 370 cars remained five years later in the April 1981 ORER and a mere 54 cars were shown in the Seaboard System listing of April 1984.
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But were they still painted as offered by MTL? The paint scheme should be "as delivered" since the slogan "The Old Reliable" was in place prior to the 1957 absorption of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis by the L&N, at which point the slogan was changed to the NC&StL's "The Dixie Line". According to a listing on GreatDecals.com, in 1960 the L&N went to a scheme with large initials including "curlicue ampersand" and the "The Dixie Line" slogan in italic block letters. At that point I would expect the "Old Reliable" painted hoppers would have co-existed; hoppers were workaday cars and on a road that hauled as much coal as the L&N did the aim was to keep them in service. I'm not sure they would have made it all the way to the 1980's as delivered, but as I've said before, it's hard to prove the absence of something.
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500 00 441 and 500 00 442, $23.65 each
This is one of my all time favorite boxcar paint schemes. It took me quite a while to accumulate both road numbers that MTL did in N Scale. Fortunately for Z Scalers, both of the same road numbers are available (but not for long I suspect!) in a convenient "virtual two pack." It certainly seems that two road numbers per release are a trend for MTL with all four Z Scale items coming in pairs this month, and all four 1:220 items last month as well.
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The Morning Sun Color Guide to the GN reports that the use of Glacier Green and the appearance of the "free standing Rocky" mascot (technically an antelope, not a "goat") debuted with this series of cars after the paint scheme was adopted in late 1960. That GN herald accompanying Rocky is the 42 inch version, if you're curious. The cars were, as MTL notes, rebuilt from 1940 wood sheathed boxcars. So we don't have a match to the MTL body style which is a PS-1. The sills are straight on the prototype and the sides are "extended" per the MSCG although I can't quite tell in which direction (or maybe it's both directions). The 27751 is shown in the Color Guide in what is an undated photo; however there is a service date of February 1967 and both consolidated stencils and an ACI label are shown which would probably put the image circa the mid 1970's. Helpful for our ATP! That these cars traveled all over North America is evidenced by a photo of GN 27705 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico as of March 1975 in the book "Classic Freight Cars Volume 7."
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The ORER for January 1964 shows the series 27000 to 27799 with 797 cars, described as your basic "Box, Steel" with AAR Classification XM and the following vital statistics: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 1 inch (making them a bit shorter than the "typical" 10-6 car of the time), outside length 41 feet 9 inches, extreme height 14 feet 10 inches, door opening 6 feet, and capacity 3763 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. The April 1970 ORER shows 757 of these cars transferred into the Burlington Northern, still with GN reporting marks. A fairly rapid decline shows in subsequent Registers: 641 in July 1974, 546 in April 1976, and just 35 in April 1981. While I'd expect that the roofwalks would have been pulled before the cars were retired, both photos I cite above clearly show that the roofwalks are still in place.
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500 00 541 and 500 00 542, $18.05 each
The January 1964 ORER shows the series 30000 to 30649 consisting of 648 cars with description "Box, All Steel, Roller Bearings." I guess in '64 roller bearing trucks were unusual enough to be called out in a Register entry. The inside length was 40 feet 5 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, and door opening 9 feet-- yes, even in Z Scale, that would be a "door thing" versus the MTL model's six foot door. The capacity was 3966 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. The April 1974 Register showed exactly 600 cars in the series, and the April 1981 ORER 480 cars. But by April 1984 the count was down to 97 cars and I would imagine they would no longer have roofwalks by that point so that's where I stopped looking.
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The Fallen Flags website offers a couple of examples of the series. First, there is a view of MILW 30012 as caught in March 1979, with that nine foot door- a Superior version, by the way-- and the warning "Keep Off Roof No Running Board" as I would have expected. There's a 1968 Jim Sands photo of the MILW 30296 in Iowa, with a Youngstown door prominently advertising DF-2 loaders and carrying a message left of the door that begins with "Attention" but, alas, is otherwise unreadable. And finally there is MILW 30314 as of 1981 shorn of its roofwalk, with its ladders cut down, consolidated stencils added and capacity data blanked out, and MILW 30628 also from 1981 with no roofwalk but with full ladders. So there are several different variations from which to choose using the MTL car as a starting point. I wouldn't be surprised to see one or all of these versions presented with images of the modifications on the Z Scale discussion venues before too long.
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502 00 211 and 502 00 212, $23.25 each
The Morning Sun Color Guide to the Western Maryland devotes an entire page of coverage to these cars. Both the 9 and the 14 appear together in a July 1967 photo at Hagerstown, Maryland and the 13 appears in an undated large photo. Reference to service for Heinz is made in the MSCG as well: "Numerous photos at the H. J. Heinz plant in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania indicate that they might have been kept busy hauling apples from the orchards in Franklin and Adams counties." There are some minor quibbles versus the MTL model that I can see, most notably there being a slightly different side sill arrangement on the real WMRX cars (fixable if one desires). But considering the cars heritage the model comes surprisingly close to the real thing.
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Ah, the heritage, that's an interesting story. MTL picks up its car copy from the caption in the MSCG: these cars were built in 1931 by Merchants Despatch Transit and were leased to the WM in 1956. Somewhere in there I would think there has to be a major rebuild. First, I don't think there were any insulated boxcars of this type built in the thirties by MDT (or possibly anyone else), second, I would be very surprised if the cars had this type of plug doors as built. My speculation is that the cars started as more traditional refrigerator cars and were refitted before lease to the WM.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
While 1 to 15 is as low as one can go in road numbers, the group is the last set of cars listed in the Merchants Despatch Transit Corporation entry in the ORER for January 1959. I was a bit surprised to see the number series shown as 1 to 49, but there are only fifteen cars in the group. They were listed as "WMRX, Refrigerator" and the use of sliding doors was called out in an endnote. The inside length with bulkheads collapsed was 40 feet 3 inches, inside width was 8 feet 5 inches and inside height 9 feet 3 inches. These metrics will be, as usual, less than in an uninsulated car of the same size because of, well, the insulation. The outside length was 41 feet 5 inches, extreme height 14 feet 9 inches, door opening 8 feet wide by 8 feet 5 inches tall, and capacity 3149 cubic feet or 70,000 pounds.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The MDT has these cars listed in the January 1964 ORER but not in the April 1970 Register, and unfortunately I have no ORERs in between those dates. But the Western Maryland entry in that April 1970 Register calls out two series of nominal 50 foot insulated boxcars, 36001 to 36020 and 36021 to 36035 "with 56 wooden pallets supplied by H.J. Heinz Company." So it's possible that we're looking at the replacement for the MDT cars.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
981 01 111 and 981 01 112, $165.95 each.
The many locomotives that the Penn Central consolidated from merger partners Pennsylvania and New York Central included 150 GP-35s numbered 2250 to 2399. Of these, all 100 from the Pennsy included dynamic brakes like the MTL model. Only one of the NYC's GP-35s had dynamic brakes, so it's a 100 of 101 chance that the road numbers MTL picked represent ex-Pennsy units. Right?
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Absolutely, with photo evidence, on the 2289. The unit is shown on Jerry Jordak's excellent Penn Central website in the PC black as of August 1977 in Selkirk Yard near Albany, New York. The real kicker is a later undated photo of the 2289 with the PC lettering painted out, a spartan "CR" added at the back of the long hood and the nose by new owner Conrail, but with the red and yellow small Pennsylvania keystone in poor shape but visible once again!
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Rob's Pennsy Page has a scan of an original PRR equipment diagram of the Geeps. Classed EF-25 by the "P" Company, these locomotives were 56 feet 2 inches long, 15 feet 4 inches tall at the horn, weighed 261,860 pounds, carried 2600 gallons of fuel oil, and could reach a top speed of 71 miles per hour with a 62 to 13 gear ratio. Robert Waller's Conrail Cyclopedia has June 1964 as the build date for the 2289 and April 1965 for the 2310, which was first numbered PRR 3270, then PRR 3210 and PC 3210. Both units went to work for Conrail keeping the Penn Central numbers and joined other GP35's from the Reading and Erie Lackawanna. Waller goes one farther and attempts to call out the date that the PC units were restenciled! He gives July 1976 for the 2289 as the first restencil, and September 1994 for the first repaint to Conrail blue; and June 1979 for the first restencil of the 2310.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
New Release:
860 00 011, $36.45
Though the build date of this car is 1910 as per MTL, the "button herald" was in use starting approximately 1920 according to San Juan Decals which offers the button herald as well as other C&S schemes including the large "C & S" that preceded it on these "coal cars" (which I expect we'll see in the not too distant future from Micro-Trains).
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The C&S as of the August 1924 ORER rostered four series of "Coal" cars-- what we usually refer to as gondolas. By far the largest series was from 4003 to 4407, with 275 cars. The group numbered from 4412 to 4496 consisted of 39 cars. The series from which MTL took the 4507 was from 4498 to 4547 which was of 49 cars. Finally there was a small set of 14 cars with drop ends numbered from 4600 to 4614. All of these cars were around the same dimensions and carried 50,000 pounds of lading although the cubic foot capacity varied. All together this amounted to 377 cars or more than one-third of the 1007 narrow gauge cars the C&S operated at the time.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The 4507's vital statistics were as follows: inside length 29 feet 6 3/4 inches, inside width 7 feet 1 3/4 inches, inside height 3 foot 4 inches, outside length 30 feet, outside width 8 feet 4 1/2 inches, overall outside height 9 feet, capacity 704 cubic feet.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
In the April 1928 ORER the number of cars in the 4507's group remained at 49, but the large series was off 96 cars to 179 in just four years. By February 1931 that was down again to 94 cars. However, the 4507's group stayed at 49 cars. MTL mentions that many C&S coal cars were converted to flat cars, but that may have been the other series, at least not initially.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Using the 1937 service date printed on the car would result in an awfully short Less Approximate Time Period, as the C&S narrow gauge was torn up starting in 1938 and equipment was being sold off, such as the refrigerator cars also released by MTL in HOn3.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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