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.

N SCALE NEW RELEASES:

020 00 786, $13.70
Reporting Marks: LV 62008.
40 Foot PS-1 Steel Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, Lehigh Valley.
Boxcar red with white lettering including roadname, slogan "Route of the Black Diamond" and reporting marks on left. Small black and white "diamond" herald on right.
Approximate Time Period: 1947 through early 1960's.
NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.

If you don't like this car, you can blame me for it. Well, at least partially. I would call it historic in two ways. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

The January 2008 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman contains an article on early PS-1 boxcars by noted freight car scholar Ted Culotta. It's the 40th installment in his "Essential Freight Cars" series for RMC. Featured in that article is the Lehigh Valley boxcar number 62000, the very first production PS-1 boxcar delivered by Pullman-Standard in June 1947. I quickly fired off a citation to this piece to Micro-Trains, and you're seeing the result this month. Culotta notes the chain of changes made to the PS-1 design over time, which perhaps for the first time lets me place the Micro-Trains model as an example of PS-1s from 1949 into the mid-1950's. While this means that there are minor differences between the model and the prototype-- which I duly noted to the folks in Talent-- I was not particularly in a quibbling mood about this. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

I am a bit surprised that Micro-Trains didn't go for the very first PS-1 delivered, road number 62000, but instead chose the (perhaps "less collectable"?) road number 62008. No matter: the start of the Approximate Time Period is the same. The closest issue of the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) I have to that date is from July 1950. It shows the series 62000 to 62499 of 499 cars described as "Box, All Steel, Wood Lined" with AAR Classification "XM" and these dimensions: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 6 feet and capacity 3899 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

I jumped right to the January 1964 ORER to see if there was a chance that I could run these cars on my model railroad, which is set in 1963 (I figure that the '63 rosters would be "close enough" in the first book of '64). There were 473 cars in the main series, plus the 62082 which had been fitted with hatches for rock salt service. But I might be in trouble on the paint scheme. Boxcars delivered in 1950 did not have the "Black Diamond" slogan and instead had a bolder stenciled roadname. I will therefore call the ATP at the early sixties but I expect I will use my modelers license nonetheless. For the record, by April 1970 the original series of 500 cars was done to just seven. But the LV had been contracting out rebuilding of some of its boxcars to the United States Railway Leasing Company, and the result was with jade green and white paint and without roofwalks, similar in appearance to that modeled by Micro-Trains back in September 1978 and April 1991 (Catalog Number 24020, Road Numbers 66201 and 66205). © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

The other piece of history referenced by this car is the "Black Diamond" noted in the slogan. This is not a direct reference to the extensive coal hauling that the LV once did, but to a passenger train. The "Black Diamond Express" debuted on May 18, 1896 and was unabashedly dubbed "The Handsomest Train in the World." The original version of the train was pulled by 4-4-2 Atlantic steam locomotives and outfitted with Pullman-built cars, including a combination baggage and cafe car with library and smoking room, day coaches, and observation parlors. Train Number 9 left Jersey City at 12:14 PM and arrived in Buffalo at 9:55 PM; Train Number 10 left Buffalo at 12:10 PM and arrived Jersey City at 9:56 PM, just under ten hours. Later versions of the train would be hauled by Otto Kuhler-streamlined Pacifics and American Locomotive Company's PA diesels. The Black Diamond ended 63 years of operation on May 11, 1959 and the Lehigh Valley was completely out of the passenger hauling business by 1961. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

031 00 072, $35.65
Reporting Marks: C&O 21463.
50 Foot PS-1 Steel Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, Chesapeake and Ohio Cameo Car #3.
Sides are different. One side: Dark blue and yellow block sides, smaller area yellow on top, dark blue on bottom to halfway between left end and door; larger area dark blue on top, yellow on bottom. Dark blue lettering on yellow portions and yellow lettering on dark blue portions; including reporting marks on left (in dark blue) and roadname on right (in yellow). Multicolor "Chessie the Cat" device inside white circle outlined in red, on left. Other side: Yellow on top from left end of side to about halfway to door, then along bottom of car and dark blue for remainder of car. Dark blue lettering including reporting marks on left. Yellow roadname (over dark blue) on right. Multicolor "Chessie the Cat" device inside white circle outlined in red, left of center along boundary between yellow and dark blue sections of side. Dark blue roof and ends.
Approximate Time Period: 1957 through 1960's.
NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.

Please refer to the April 2008 UMTRR (e-mail and website versions) for a discussion of the C&O Cameo Car series.

055 00 340, $18.80
Reporting Marks: D&H 9471.
33 Foot 2 Bay Open Hopper, Offset Sides, Flat Ends, Delaware & Hudson.
Oxide red ("freight car red") with white lettering including large roadname across side and reporting marks in lower center of side. Simulated coal load included.
Approximate Time Period: 1971 to about 1980.
NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.

The Delaware and Hudson certainly enough paint schemes on open hoppers to keep manufacturers and modelers busy. And that's not counting "paint outs" of cars acquired from others, for example those that came over from Conrail predecessors on "conveyance day" (April 1, 1976). Some ex-Erie Lackawanna cars got quick D&H stenciling over their reporting marks and went to the scrapper that way when the day came. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

According to the RPI site, 1954 is the date for the transition into the large roadname for D&H cars. However, at that time I think the hoppers were painted black, not oxide red. Ah, here's another data point from RPI: "1967: Offset twin hoppers rebuilt by Bethlehem, and painted in a special oxide red scheme with Gothic lettering (and no herald)." That would contradict the MTL car copy, but the series 9401 to 9650 is not in the January 1964 ORER and is in the April 1970 Register, so that seems to fit. And I do think it's "rebuild" not build-- new build 33 foot two bay hoppers were pretty much superseded by larger cars by then, but rebuilds could be of anything. However... gothic lettering is sans serif, not the style that the D&H used or the font that's on the car. (A font note here: "Traditional gothic" is a term applied by some to the style of lettering used for the masthead of the New York Times, and isn't what I mean here. Yeah, it's rather confusing.) © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

Anyway, as long as the April 1970 ORER is open to the page, here are the vital statistics: inside length 33 feet, inside width 10 feet 4 inches, outside length 36 feet 6 inches, extreme height 10 feet 8 inches, capacity 2145 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds, 248 cars out of a possible 250 in the series. If these were rebuilds of D&H cars, what seems to be a likely donor series was 6101 to 7100, which had the same inside length and width, same extreme height and same cubic footage capacity and dropped from 1477 cars in 1964 to 426 cars in April 1970. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

Ah, but here comes a complication: the reweigh date on the Micro-Trains model is March 1971, so strictly speaking we're not even in the Approximate Time Period yet. And we may not be in the matching paint scheme until then either so I will stick with 1971 as the start of the ATP. Said ATP is rather short though; by the April 1981 Equipment Register there are just four cars left in the group. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

066 00 020, $22.70
Reporting Marks: NATX 7018.
Three Dome Tank Car, Anderson-Pritchard Oil Company.
Aluminum and black tank, black details. Black lettering including company name across car and reporting marks on left.
Approximate Time Period: early 1930's (1932 build date given by MTL) to early 1950's.
NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.

Might we know the Anderson-Pritchard Oil Company better as "APCO"? Yes, we might, and there have been tank cars with that trademark released in at least HO Scale. In 1977, a book titled "A history of Apco Oil Corporation and its predecessor company Anderson-Prichard Oil Corporation" was published by APCO itself; unfortunately, that volume is long out of print. As near as I can tell, APCO filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and appears to have been liquidated. However, like many industrial companies, there is a legacy of Superfund and brownfield sites left behind. Unlike other industrial companies, there appear to be operations outside the United States that utilize the APCO name, and there are also a number of other organizations that use the APCO initials. (Apcooil.com is taken by a "jobber" of gasoline in Michigan, for example.) Some APCO gasoline stations remain in Oklahoma according to website searches. So I think I'll quit while I'm behind and get to the tank car in question. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

Ed Kaminski's book "American Car and Foundry," Page 76, includes a photo of the car Micro-Trains has modeled. The caption reads "North American Car Corp. (NATX 7018) 5865 gallon, 3-compartment, ICC 103 tank car with 40-ton trucks built in January 1932 at the Milton plant from a single-car order on Lot #1259. North American Car Corp. leased the car to Anderson-Prichard Oil Corp." The lettering reads, "Anderson-Prichard Oil Corporation - Oklahoma City, Okla. - Technical Naphthas - COL-TEX Gasoline". Thanks to Charlie Vlk for the lookup on this. Two data points of interest spring to mind from this caption. First, North American was a bit of a rival to AC&F, so it's interesting that the latter built cars for the former, and second, this one car series indicates that there won't be reprints forthcoming. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

It's nearly impossible to pin down an Approximate Time Period for a leased car. Though it may exist in the ORERs for a good long time, as we'll demonstrate here, that doesn't mean that the car was leased to the same company for those years. And we have the usual problem of paint schemes as well. Well, we'll give it a shot, but please be sure to add the grain of salt. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

The ORER for July 1935 shows NATX 7018 as part of a great big series 5000 to 7099, however the car we're interested in is called out in an end note as being three-compartment. Strangely, there are no car counts at all in this listing; good thing we already know there's just the one tank car. By the way, there is an "APCX" registration in this same issue of the Equipment Register, but no, it's for the Atlas Powder Company. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

The January 1940 ORER is basically the same, including the lack of car counts. Finally, in January 1945 we find that there are over 4300 tank cars in the NATX registration, and the 7018 is among 66 cars with three compartments in the much shorter series 7000 to 7099. The 7018 is in all of the ORERs I have through January 1964 but is not in the April 1970 book, so the ATP for the car itself is into the mid 1960's. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

We also know, though, that the Anderson-Pritchard Oil Company had its own fleet of cars with APOX reporting marks. The first entry of those I have is the January 1955 ORER; it is not in the January 1953 ORER. If we speculate that Anderson-Pritchard went to an owned fleet by 1955 (the company is shown as the owner/shipper in their entry) then we could call the ATP of the car as the early 1950's. I'll do that and cross fingers that the original 1932 paint scheme is good until then. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

077 00 120, $15.20
Reporting Marks: ICG 511308.
50 Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Superior Door, No Roofwalk, Full Ladders, Illinois Central Gulf.
Orange with mostly black lettering including large "ICG" reporting marks and roadnumber on left and "solid rail" herald on right.
Approximate Time Period: mid 1970's to early 1990's.
NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.

So, you have a really attractive scheme of orange, black and white, with an eye-catching herald suggesting the steel rail that you operate on combined with a great big "can't miss" roadname, and then somebody in corporate tells you that you have to cut costs over at the paint shop, so then what can you do. You can chop the roadname down to just reporting marks and lose the white background for the herald, that's what. Sigh. Well, at least it's not "reporting marks only"... © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

Such as the example of sister car ICG 511312 as lensed in 1982 and posted on the Fallen Flags site. Not even a steel rail herald on that one. However, we do get a good look at the prototype series. Biggest immediately notable difference: riveted sides on the real car versus welded sides on the 077 body style. The ends, bottom sill and grabs and ladders look about right, though, as does the use of a Superior Door. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

As of the April 1976 ORER, the series 511300 to 511599 was in place on the ICG, but there were just six cars in it. The inside length was 50 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 54 feet 9 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet, and capacity 4947 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. The April 1976 ORER is actually a bit before the "strictly speaking" Approximate Time Period, as the U-1 "yellow dot" stencil on the Micro-Trains model was applied starting circa March 1978. So let's check the April 1981 ORER: how about only three cars in the series? Call the ATP right there, right? © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

No, actually! The April 1984 ORER shows that the ICG finally got around to populating this series; there are 154 cars there and 18 more in six subseries. Technically, though, these incremental cars would have been numbered into this group after the U-1 stencil was required and as such wouldn't have it. Your choice as to whether to escort the Prototype Police to the door if they catch this on your pike, though. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

In February 1988 the ICG reverted to the Illinois Central name and the ICG became somewhat of a "fallen flag". The July 1989 ORER showed 87 total cars in the group, all but one of which were gone by October 1996's Equipment Register. Based on the IC series listing, it does not appear that the line intended to simply flip reporting marks and may have intended to retire the cars with ICG markings. If you stay out of "strictly speaking" territory that does provide a pretty decent length ATP to work with. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

105 00 516, $18.15
Reporting Marks: FEC 3842.
50 Foot Steel 15 Panel Gondola, Florida East Coast (Company Service).
Beige with mostly white lettering including large reporting marks in center. Simulated sand load included.
Approximate Time Period: 2001 to present.
NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.

There is a fairly active "FECRailway" YahooGroup following the Florida East Coast Railway and that was my first stop in checking up on this company service car. A file I received some time ago from a member of this group shows two groups of fifty foot gondolas purchased by the line. Thrall provided fifty cars numbered 12600 to 12649 in 1971 and another fifty numbered 12650 to 12699 in 1973. These were gradually converted to company service cars in the 3800 series according to a post on the FECRailway group. "Assignments of the 3800 series include trucks, track panels, scrap metal, cross ties (new/old), signal dept (parts), bridge gang material, oily sand, and general usage of ballast and debris," according to another post by Terry of that group. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

Although in company service, the FEC does list these cars in the ORER-- fortunately for this byte slinger. The service date of 2001 that Micro-Trains provides appears to be good; the car is not in the January 2000 Register but is in the January 2002 ORER. It has its own line in the listing, as do other cars in this sequence, with inside length of 52 feet 6 inches, inside height of 4 feet 6 inches, outside length of 56 feet 11 inches, extreme height of 8 feet 3 inches, capacity of 2244 cubic feet and gross rail weight (car plus lading) of 263,000 pounds. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

There is a prototype photo of the 3842 from 2006 on the "Fallen Flags" website. I'm not sure what it was doing in West Virginia, but that's the given location of the photo and it means that at least in theory the gondola can be operated by other than FEC modelers. It's minimally lettered just as MTL has captured it. I would say that the lettering on the real car is a little less regular than what MTL executed, but that's a bit of a nitpick even for me. There is a scrawled "JAX FLA" at the bottom right of the side showing in the photo. Like most gondolas, this one is pretty beat and scratched up and has some evidence of "aftermarket lettering". The actual Micro-Trains body style is of a Pullman-Standard car, so I would expect some detail differences, but the prototype is a steel 15 panel fixed end car and I'd rate it as a good match. Like most gondolas, this one is pretty beat and scratched up and has some evidence of "aftermarket lettering" as well, also known as graffiti. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.

You might already know that after many decades as an independent railroad, the FEC was purchased by Fortress Investment Group LLC in a transaction that was approved by the Surface Transportation Board in 2007. Fortress also owns the shortline operator RailAmerica. Fortress announced in March 2008 that it sought to merge the FEC into RailAmerica, noting that "The transaction is within a corporate family and will not result in any adverse changes in service levels, significant operational changes, or a change in the competitive balance with carriers outside the corporate family." It's too early to call the FEC a "fallen flag" and perhaps it won't be at all. I'm hoping that we continue to see the "hurricane" herald on Florida East Coast diesels for some time to come. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.