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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, Runner Packs, 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. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE NEW RELEASES:
020 00 756, $14.90
Page 120 of the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Union Pacific (Volume 1) has this exact car as photographed in June 1992 in an unknown location. That MSCG exclusively slides from the Union Pacific Museum's collection, much of which is company photography, so it's interesting that a plain old maintenance of way car, and one that does look a bit weathered, would warrant attention when the usual focus is on the latest and greatest. As the caption notes, the "Be Specific Ship Union Pacific" slogan was applied between 1950 and 1952, so jumping to 1992 means forty years between repainting. And yes, I also think it's highly unusual that a company service car would have received brand new paint then also. Unless, of course, it didn't! I doubt that we'll ever discover that detail.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Since I know that I won't find this car in the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER), we'll have to stick with the photo for any other commentary. The car is shown in a three quarter view from the ground, so the roof isn't shown, but there is enough to discern that the roofwalk is still in place. The door is a six foot Youngstown type and the ends are close, a full 5/5 pattern versus a 4/5 on the MTL model. The side sills look good. In short, we have a pretty good match to the PS-1 body style. Nitpicks include the placement of tack boards and the inclusion of early version consolidated stencils as of the 1992 photo.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
020 00 776, $14.90
Half a shot is better than none, but we'll get to that.
David Carnell checks in with a check of the Morning Sun Color Guide to the D&RGW and reports that the car is pictured on Page 104. "The MTL text paraphrases the caption in the book," David adds. That photo gets us to 1975, but it's a long way from there to "the present."
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
A photo taken in April 2006 and posted to RRPictureArchives.net has as its main subject the boxcar AX-60080. It's an interesting subject to be sure; the door opening doesn't look like even six feet wide and the car appears to me to be a bit smaller than the typical steel boxcar. If I'm guessing right, that car once saw "Cookie Box" service as those cars were less tall than usual and had only a five foot door opening. But I digress: coupled to the AX-60080 is none other than the AX-69035! But only the left side of the car is in frame, about to where the door would begin. Lucky for us it's the left side of the car so we can read the reporting marks!
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
And then we do another half better than half, a bit farther down the list of photos on RRPictureArchives, with a full shot of the 69035 taken at the same time. The cars look quite worn, with rust overtaking the bottom left corner of the side and the roofline looking more "iron oxide" than "aluminum" if you know what I mean. Still, the 69035 was built in April 1941 which would make it nearly sixty-five years old at the time of the photo. Said photo was taken at Bond, Colorado-- no, I didn't know where that was either, so I checked. It's the junction of the Rio Grande's Moffat Tunnel Route with the line to Steamboat Springs and Craig. Both are of course now part of the Union Pacific.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Rio Grande Historical and Modeling Society website mentions a group of 40 foot boxcars built by Pressed Steel Car Company in April 1941, numbered 68900 to 69035 and meant for general service. The last of these were retired from revenue service before 1993. These were painted mineral red when in use for that purpose. However, just repaint aluminum, put an "AX" in front of one of those cars and there you have the basis for the MTL model.
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105 00 150, $17.35
The Reading's speed lettering was introduced in September 1953 on covered hoppers, but didn't appear on "as delivered" gondolas until 1956 with the series 31200 to 31699 according to John Hall who is quoted on the RPI site. Since this series of gondolas was built in 1951 and 1952, it's clear that they wouldn't have been originally painted with the speed lettering. (Which makes another release available at some point.) I didn't find anything specific as to a repaint date, and chances are that all one thousand gondolas weren't redone at the same time, so I'll have to go with the mid-1950's as the start of the ATP.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Morning Sun Color Guide to the Reading, Page 26, shows the 33174 in company scrap service as of March 1977. MSCG author Craig Bossler notes that two groups of these cars were reconditioned and renumbered, but the 33174 wasn't one of them. There's no explanation of what the renumberings were within the caption either.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I'll jump to the ORER for January 1959 since I'd expect the speed lettering to be in evidence by then. The 998 cars in the series 33000 to 33999 was listed as "Gondola, Steel, Fixed Ends, Flat Bottom, Wood Floor" with AAR Classification "GB." They had an inside length of 52 feet 6 inches, inside height of 3 feet 6 inches, outside length of 54 feet 1 1/2 inches, and capacity of 1745 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. The MSCG notes that 621 of these cars were rostered in 1975; that allows me to skip to the Conrail listing of April 1976 and report that 512 were transferred to that successor. Of those, 24 were assigned to specific commodities including one carrying "dish head circular steel plates." Do you mean perhaps tank ends? There's a photo of a Reading gondola from another series carrying just that in the MSCG. It would certainly make an interesting, if somewhat difficult, load to try sometime.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The April 1981 Register shows just 78 cars remaining from the original group of one thousand and that's where I stopped looking. Note that I've ended the ATP before then, though, as I can't be sure that the remaining cars weren't repainted in Reading green. It's probably not a major infraction to keep running the cars in basic black into the first years of the Conrail era, though.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
105 00 160, $17.35
Our C&O Special Correspondent James Pugh checks in with citations of the book "Chesapeake and Ohio Freight Cars 1937-1965, Volume 1: Hopper and Gondola Cars" by Al Kresse, Jr, which we'll cite here. The series 31600 to 31799 was built by the General American Transportation Corporation in East Chicago, Indiana in 1952. The Dreadnaught ends were made of copper bearing steel as were the fourteen panel (thirteen rib) sides. The Armco nailable steel floor consisted of steel ribs with wood fillers-- hey, is that finally the operational definition of "nailable steel floor"?! Kresse further reported that "eventually 106 cars would be converted for coil steel loading (GBS) and six for containers (LG) and derated to between 130,000 and 120,000 pounds capacity. The container equipped cars were assigned to the Pere Marquette District.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Photos of C&O 31722 from the 200 car group accompanying the description show two fairly obvious quibbles with the MTL model. First, the brake activation isn't a wheel, but a lever type end mounted device. Second, the end it's mounted on is a drop type, not a fixed type.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
In addition to the photo in Kresse's book, there's a shot of the exact 31640 as of 1961 at Dearborn, Michigan in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the C&O by David Hickcox. In the photo, the car is shown with coil steel hoods. It looks like the lettering is spot on, including the "first generation" monogram. Yes, there were two versions of the famous "C&O for Progress" logo. Also on the model is the General American logo and the special instructions "Return when empty to DT&I RR, Detroit, Michigan." That's the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton. While this car carries coil steel, the MSCG states that round bar steel-- such as the load MTL provides-- was transported by other gondolas in this group.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The July 1953 ORER has all 200 cars in one basic group; no special devices, no re-designations, just AAR Classification "GB," and the description "Gondola, Steel, Low Fixed Sides, Drop Ends, Nailable Steel Floor. The vital statistics: inside length 52 feet 6 inches, inside height just 2 feet 11 inches (the MTL model is taller), inside width 9 feet 6 inches, outside length 54 feet 8 inches, extreme height 6 feet 9 inches, and capacity 1494 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The January 1959 Register shows the regrouping of the gons. Of the 200, 113 remain in the as built series. Another 77 were reclassed "GBR" and were equipped for coil steel loading with capacity of 130,000 pounds, not including the 31630. Another single car was for coil steel again with capacity of 125,000 pounds, four more were AAR Class "GBS" for coil steel, and three had the aforementioned containers with class "LG".
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
From the January 1964 ORER we have a list of road numbers that were equipped for round steel bar loading. No, the 31640 wasn't one of them, but the 31670 was, perhaps an easy fix. Other choices include 31603, 31609, 31613, 31677, 31722, 31749, 31756 and 31790, from a total of thirty-one cars. There were also the previously noted groups. But the total number of cars appeared to be down to just 122 across all subgroups. But the April 1970 ORER shows 171 cars across the various subseries-- did the ORER folks miss something back in 1964? The April 1975 Register has 134 cars in the main series plus 28 carrying round bar steel, six "LG" type, seven for coil steel, five for "minerals," three for welded rail, and one for pallets. That's a total of 184-- how do these numbers keep going up?
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Well, they go down from January 1981 where there are 181 cars, to January 1985, where there are just twenty eight. That's where I stopped looking. This was already the time of the Chessie System, so it's possible that a repaint occurred then or even beforehand. So the ATP is about at maximum with an assumption that nothing later than that first generation monogram ever graced this gondola.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
121 00 070, $12.95
A yellow and green scale test car? Well... yes! Green couplers? Ah, maybe not so much.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
RRPictureArchives.net shows the exact BN 979001 as captured in Memphis on the first day of 1986 by Eric Fleet. I'm not sure that the lettering "BN CX 4-25-78" corresponds to a build date, but that's what Micro-Trains surmises. I'm stretching that backwards into the 1970's anyway. That 1978 could be a service date instead-- I don't know that scale test cars of this design were built that late and this could have been inherited from one of the BN's predecessors. For example, the BN 979003 which is painted and lettered similarly (but not exactly) and is also shown on RRPictureArchives has a build date of September 1929.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
One key spotting difference on this particular car is the use of a brake wheel stand holding a horizontally positioned brake wheel whereas the MTL model has the vertical brake staff from an earlier time. (And so does the real BN 979003, just to confuse things.) The prototype 970091 looks like it's been painted a whole lot of times-- but a shot of BN 979006 on Fallen Flags looks like it's made of concrete given how much paint is on it! I could find four scale test cars for the BN in all... and guess what, no two are alike with respect to lettering. So much for those reprints.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Detail fans can have a field day with this car. The grab irons can be painted the same green as the lettering (which is accurate). Placards hang from each of the sections of handrail: "Do not switch this car handle on rear of train next ahead of caboose" reads the one on the left; the center reads "Speed of Test Car 35 miles on main line 25 miles on branch line" and on the right there is "Do not repack boxes or make repairs on this car unless directed by scale inspector"-- in small print!-- followed by "Master Track Scale Calibrated" and the date 4.16.87. The last of these details is white on black as with consolidated stencils; the rest is yellow lettering on green placards. Don't forget, you'll need the same on both sides! That can keep someone busy for a while.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
121 00 080, $17.35
What appears to be a plain black scale test car coupled with what appeared to be an out of whack price tag prompted a call out to Micro-Trains by this reviewer to see whether there wasn't a misprint. There isn't, but that's not just a plain black scale test car either. The aluminum ends add complexity, and the printing on those ends adds more. Throw in the lettering on the top of the car and you've got quite a number of prints on such a small piece of rolling stock.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The real M-23 is shown in a circa 1953 photograph in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the New Haven, Page 110; and fittingly enough, the photo was taken in New Haven. MTL's citation of the builder being the Lake Erie Engineering Corporation comes from the photo's caption. The model is a good match for the body style even given the relatively new date of production-- 68 years ago is relatively new compared to some of the scale test cars we've seen. The lettering is arranged a bit differently on the prototype than the model, but it's correct down to the hyphen between "New and Haven" and it really is in the several different styles on the real M-23 as it is on MTL's depiction. Which probably also adds complexity, and price.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I am calling out an ATP from the build date all the way to the end of the New Haven given the lack of any data to the contrary. It's possible that we have a shorter window here as the car might not have been delivered with this paint, or an ATP beyond the merger of the NH into the Penn Central.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
037 00 030, $22.55
Here I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find a single image of a car from what is merely a fifty car series for the Southern Railway. But I can happily direct you to George Elwood's Fallen Flags site for a veritable case study of this group, including a single shot of adjacent car 43038 as of 1994 as well as overall AND several detail shots of the 43022 in July 1982, the 43025 in December 1989 and the 43042 in August 1987. We'd have a start on the Approximate Time Period right there. Also note at different "When empty return to" instructions I could see, one to the Seaboard Coast Line at Fitzgerald, Georgia (the 43022), and another to the Penn Central at Muncie, Indiana (the 43025), and one to the Southern "per CSO 145" which stands for Car Service Order 145, the AAR car service rule requiring the return of specially equipped freight cars to the owning line via reverse route of the loaded movement. (Thanks to Gregg Mahlkov for that item.)
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
What we also have are some differences between model and prototype. The full height ladder on the MTL version contrasts with the short ladder on the prototype. There's a "door thing" as well with the double doors being 8 + 7 feet, not two 8 foot doors that MTL used. And when the Southern stenciled "Super Cushion Service" on these cars they weren't kidding-- you can have a picnic on the extended draft gear! It reaches out, by my estimation, something like four feet from the end of the car, and that's not counting the coupler. Paper, such as the simulated load included with this car, certainly would benefit from the protection of a cushion underframe such as this, but this is... Extreme Underframe. Speaking of paper, though, I don't believe it would ever be loaded on its side, as half of the MTL load is depicting. All of the loads I've seen are loaded with the core perpendicular to the floor.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The cars' dimensions actually reflect the Extreme Underframe going all the way back to the January 1964 ORER, but I'm going with the service date of 1981 that MTL noted for my detail lookups. The "Gives a Green Light" slogan was introduced circa 1969 and was used until 1982 according to the RPI Website-- but the photo evidence shows that dropping the slogan didn't mean repainting the cars.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
So off to the ORER entry for April 1984, which gives an inside length of 50 feet 6 inches and an outside length of 60 feet 10 inches-- hmm, that is about four feet or so worth of extended draft gear per side. The rest of the data: inside height 10 feet 6 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 15 feet, capacity 4861 cubic feet and a varying poundage from 180,000 to 188,000. And that leads me to the next data point. There were 25 cars in the main series 43000 to 43049 and 22 in several subsets including twelve more precisely described as "Box, Cushion Underframe, Staggered Doors, DF Belt Rails, 50K" with AAR Designation "XL". This subset includes both numbers MTL selected, the current 43039 and the previous 43037. The other cars are either "XL" or "XP". The July 1989 ORER showed 44 cars in lots of subgroups; both MTL numbers still in service. And both are still present among just 23 cars shown in the October 1996 Register under the Norfolk Southern listing. It looks like the end of the ATP was not until after the turn of the century with one car left in the October 2004 ORER. It's still a little weird calling out "early 2000's" since to me that remains pretty ambiguous-- aren't we still there by some ways of reckoning that? Not "by the decade", I suppose.
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094 00 200, $24.40
I need to update some from the commentary on the previous release, as I would have been very surprised if the prototype series for this model were not still roaming the rails. Our current "to present" proxy, the January 2006 ORER, confirms that, with 290 out of the possible 300 cars listed in the series numbered 799500 to 799799. To provide further evidence, please see the Fallen Flags site for 15, count 'em, images of cars from this series dating from 1999 to mid-2007. For example, there's IC 799648 lensed in Homewood, Illinois in May 2007, but this time you're on your own with respect to the conspicuity stripes. With apologies to George Lucas, I'm told that the version of the IC herald on this car has been referred to as the "Death Star" logo.
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A car built in 1996 is likely to be a little bigger than the MTL body style, and that's quite true here. Yes, it's a three bay center flow covered hopper, but the prototype is 5150 cubic feet capacity versus the MTL 094 body style which is of an ACF 4650 cubic foot car. Comparisons between photo and model will reveal other differences. The January 2006 ORER repeats the few dimensions I gave last time, including outside length of 59 feet, extreme height of 15 feet 6 inches, and gross rail weight of 286,000 pounds.
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515 00 161 and 515 00 162, $18.90 each
"Welcome Back to Glacier Park!" says Rocky, the Great Northern's mascot, in an advertisement in the May 1946 issue of National Geographic, an image available on Lindsay Korst's phenomenal "GN Goat" site. Glacier Park was ordered closed during World War II, resulting in the advertisement with the headline "I've Been Lonesome Too!" atop a tearful antelope-- so add "Crying Goat" to the list of Great Northern mascots! On June 15, 1946 the national park was reopened, as were the hotels and chalets. "Blow my horns if I haven't something to grin about," Rocky emotes. "Come out this summer for a real Western vacation." And take the train, of course. Preferably, Great Northern's Transcontinental Empire Builder.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
While it's a forward facing goat in the advertisement, it's the side facing outline goat on this pair of boxcars. It was around 1936 that Rocky changed on the herald, according to the book "The History of the Burlington Northern" by Bill Yenne.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I was very surprised to see a 1946 photo of the very GN 24872 in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Great Northern. The caption accompanying the photo notes that the cars were built by Mount Vernon in 1919, and also that the "See America..." slogan was in place from 1922 to 1935. So the use of the side facing Rocky with that older slogan is unusual, and perhaps anachronistic-- though it's hard to call what a prototype railroad did with its own paint schemes anachronistic! It's also evident from the photo that the cars had steel ends to go with the steel underframe, whereas the MTL car has wood ends.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The July 1935 ORER shows the series 28000 to 28499 of 498 cars with description "Box, Steel Underframe" and the following dimensions: inside length 40 feet even, inside width 8 feet 7 inches, inside height just 7 feet 9 inches, outside length 41 feet 4 inches, height to top of running board 13 feet and extreme height 15 feet-- don't forget that vertical brake staff!-- with a 5 foot 5 1/2 inch wide by 7 foot 6 inch high door opening and capacity of 2685 cubic feet or 80,000 pounds. All in all, this was a smallish boxcar. Given the build date, you'd think that I could locate the cars in an earlier ORER but there were just 72 pieces shown in the April 1928 Register.
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Around the time that Rocky was lonesome for the third year straight in Glacier Park, that is, January 1945, the ORER showed 488 cars still in service out of the possible 500. And 475 remained in place in July 1950, forty two years after their original construction date. So much for the forty year rule! In the January 1953 Register there was a combination of groups of steel underframe boxcars into the larger series 23494 to 24993, with 1222 cars. That had dropped all the way down to 18 cars in the January 1964, so that's where I stopped looking. The MSCG to the GN shows wood sheathed boxcars-- even truss rod underframe ones!-- pressed into company service, so it's possible to extend the life of these cars a bit more with a small application of Modeler's License.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
527 00 041 and 527 00 042, $17.25 each
The latest N Scale run of this car was released in December 2005, in the road number 88267 which is one of the two chosen for this release. Back then I cited Lee Gautreaux's SP Freight Car Page. Lee states that the SSW series 88000 to 88399 were 60 foot 7 inch bulkhead flat cars, class F100-18 built in 1979 by Thrall. Lee includes four images of cars from the series with photo dates ranging from 1983 to 2003, including one of his own of SSW 88134 lensed in Lafayette, Louisiana. The one quibble I have with the model versus the prototype is the truck spacing. The real cars have the trucks noticeably farther from the ends than the Micro-Trains cars. Well, it's noticeable to me, anyway. There is also a photo of a sister car on Page 120 of the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Southern Pacific, Volume 2.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Let's grab the ORER for April 1981: The description of the cars is "Flat, Bulkhead, Freightmaster EOC (End of Car) Cushioning" and besides the 60 foot 7 inch interior length, there is an inside height of 10 feet 6 inches, which I will take to mean the height of the bulkheads; outside length of 70 feet 2 inches, extreme height of 14 feet 2 inches, and capacity of 181,000 pounds. There were still 389 cars rolling of the original 400 in October 1991 and 358 in October 2004 under the Union Pacific roster, though some were apparently demoted out of the "EOC Cushioning" description to just plain old "Flat". In the January 2006 Register there are 356 total cars remaining of the original 400. That seems like a "to present" ATP to me.
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530 00 221 and 530 00 222, $20.50 each
[The following is a reprint from the review of the N Scale version of this car, released January 2008.]
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 granaries. 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.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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 Dave Smith writing on the DandH YahooGroup for the MSCG citation.
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982 01 061 and 982 01 062, $185.95 each.
These Geeps were among 52 delivered with road numbers 700 to 751 in 1956 and 1957, painted in the black and silver "zebra stripe" paint scheme. (Another idea for a release...) David Carnell, who helped with this release commentary (for which many thanks), tells us that around 1961, these diesels were repainted into the yellow and blue pinstripe scheme with the large cooper black font yellow billboard Santa Fe. The locos were renumbered into the 2900 series in 1969 and 1970 which would start the ATP. Around 1973, the locos started to receive the yellow bonnet paint scheme which would mark the end of the ATP. Hey, that's a pretty short ATP!
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In 1978, all of the GP9s were sent to Cleburne for rebuilding into GP9u's, getting chopped noses, angular Topeka cabs, and deactivated and plated over dynamic brakes. In the process they were renumbered into the 2244-2299 series. David notes that some of the GP9u's were in service long enough to get the "Kodachrome" paint, and some have lasted into the BNSF era.
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The All Time Santa Fe Diesel Roster allows us to zero in quite precisely on both of these units. The 2926 was originally the 736 and the 2929 was the 739. Both were equipped with steam generators for passenger service. Both were renumbered but not repainted in late 1969 or early 1970. The repainting to the blue with yellow warbonnet scheme took place sometime after August 1972. The 2926 was rebuilt to a GP9u with a low short hood in August 1979 and renumbered 2281; the 2929 became GP9u number 2247 in March 1980.
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I didn't see images of the exact units Micro-Trains chose online, but we do have photos of sister units 2910 from 1977 and 2941 from 1974, both on Fallen Flags; and also the 2913 from 1976 on RRPictureArchives.net. By the way, some know this particular scheme as "Blue Yellow Trim" and its successor is "Blue Yellow Warbonnet." An example of 2929 in that later Blue Yellow Warbonnet scheme as of 1975 can be found at LocoPhotos.com, a new website citation to these bytes.
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New Release:
Ah, another narrow gauge line that I'd never heard of before this release. Which means another chance to learn more!
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According to my usual reference guide for such things, the book "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" by George W. Hilton, the Denver, Boulder and Western was the successor to the Colorado and Northwestern Railway. (As duly noted in the MTL car copy as well.) That line was itself a rebuild of the Union Pacific subsidiary Greeley, Salt Lake and Pacific, which was built mostly in 1883 and mostly destroyed in a flood in May 1894. Note how the railroad names get progressively less ambitious?
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The DB&W was arguably the most successful of the three incarnations of this line, which reached Boulder and Estes Park as well as some mines in the area. The mining ventures were never particularly successful, passenger traffic was seasonal, and then there was the snow-- lots of snow. It was in fact the building of a dam for a hydroelectric project that provided the most revenue for the line circa 1909. The need for tungsten and the supply in places served by the railroad helped drive the line for a bit longer, but that gave out even before World War I ended. By 1917 the line was ready to quit, however, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission refused the abandonment petition. When tungsten production ended completely around 1919, the Commission relented; but a flood ended the line's operations in July of that year, just as a flood finished off the original operator of the route.
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My ORER Accumulation is a total miss on this one, given that I have no issues available here at UMTRR HQ between June 1905 and October 1919, bookending the entire history of the Denver, Boulder and Western. The Colorado and Northwestern doesn't appear in the June 1905 Register either, which surprises me, but that means I can't grab any data from that railroad either. I can tell you that there's a couple of photos of 2-8-0 steamer Number 30 that worked for the DB&W on the Narrow Gauge Circle's Rio Grande Southern section. And the American Memory Site links to photos taken of and along the DB&W that are part of the Denver Public Library's collection. In October 1944 (!) a history of the line appeared in the Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin. Meanwhile, part of the line's right of way became known as the "Switzerland Trail of America" and is designated a Historic District.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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