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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, Passenger Cars, 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:
031 00 075, $39.65
Please refer to the April 2008 UMTRR (e-mail and website versions) for a discussion of the C&O Cameo Car series.
053 00 520, $27.10
With a bit of repurposing, Micro-Trains Line could certainly become Northwestern Oklahoma Trains Line. The NOKL roster, topping out over thirty thousand in the January 2006 ORER, would take a long time to replicate considering the plethora of paint schemes that these cars wear. Often it's no more than a restenciling over a previous paint scheme, and that generally means anywhere from a little to a lot of weathering. To say nothing of graffiti.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I don't think that will happen, and good thing, since "NOKLMTRR" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. (Maybe "UMTRR" doesn't either.) As we noted last time, the Northwestern Oklahoma is affiliated with the First Union Rail Corporation, one unit of Wachovia that we presume is not weighed down with sub-prime mortgages. The NOKL itself is a five mile shortline headquartered in Woodard, Oklahoma that operates a small bit of ex-Katy trackage and interchanges with the BNSF.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The 728102 belongs to a series of just 20 cars, 10 of which have a Gross Rail Load of 263,000 pounds and 10 of which have a GRL of 268,000 pounds. The other dimensions are the same: inside length 60 feet 8 inches, inside height 11 feet 2 inches, outside length 68 feet, extreme height 15 feet 6 inches. The ORER unhelpfully describes these in one word: "Flat." But the AAR Classification of FBC tags these cars as having centerbeams from bulkhead to bulkhead and the two Car Type Codes of F383 and F483 point that way also. (The digit 3 and 4 indicate load limit weights.) I first picked up this series in the January 2002 Equipment Register, giving us the ATP. I still find it awkward to write "early 2000s to present" even though we are late in the decade.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
A 2006 photo of sister car 728011 on RailcarPhotos.com confirms, at least for that one car, what I might have guessed. Quick: What other centerbeam type car has MTL done in white? If you answered "Domtar Gypsum," award yourself the Brass Figlagee with Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster. (Jean Shepherd fans know what this is!) The heritage on the 728011 is obvious: "Domtar" and the multicolored stripes are clearly visible on the car. I must note that the real car has slightly smaller openings on the far left and right of the series of "holes". I believe that was a way for the builder to avoid infringement of certain other manufacturers' designs and/or patents.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
084 00 021 and 084 00 022, $23.95 each
We turn the virtual podium over to David Carnell for a guest commentary on these cars, start quote:
This information is taken from Tony Thompson’s "Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Vol. 1: Gondolas and Stock Cars." The first information on the cars is found in Chapter 7. The G-50-18 class, totally 550 cars numbered from 89854 to 90403, was built in 1946 by Bethlehem Steel. These cars are all steel construction with eight side panels, are approximately 40 feet in length and had a capacity of 50 tons (100,000 pounds). The MTL car copy incorrectly refers to these cars as being built by Pressed Steel Car Company; those cars were class G-50-20 and were composite construction, not all steel.
The MTL cars are a good match for the actual gondola without side extensions. In 1956, the G-50-18 cars were renumbered into the series 364025-364724. There were still 550 cars in service by the date of renumbering.
In the 1950s, SP began assigning GS gondolas to woodchip service. The first cars were converted in the SP Bayshore Shops in 1950. At this time eight G-50-18 gondolas received 9 foot 5 inch side extensions. These cars were assigned to service on the Northwestern Pacific and identified as "mill block" cars. In 1956 all of the GS gondolas in woodchip service were reassigned to the 350000 number series. One group of 13 G-50-18 was assigned the number series 352005-352017. The MTL cars come from this group of cars. These cars had a capacity of 4885 cu. ft. and had 12 foot 7 inch side extensions. The group of 13 cars remained relatively intact through 1970 when there number was reduced to 12 but most were off the roster by 1975 when only 1 car of the series was still in service. These cars were soon being replaced by larger cars. As an aside, the lumber industry nicknamed these cars "Jacks."
Aside from the error in the MTL text in the Micro-News, these cars are a good stand in for the actual SP woodchip cars. They appear to have the later 12 foot 7 inch extensions since there are 4 ladder rungs on the extensions. The paint scheme and road numbers appear to give these cars an ATP of 1956 to 1975.
End quote. Thanks, David! I'll add that Lee Gautreaux's' website has a shot of SP 352165 in a plainer paint scheme lensed by Tim O'Connor in 1972. And official SP specification sheets captured on Richard Percy's SP Site include the short series of cars on which MTL based its offering.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
099 00 060, $18.35
Among the first ever N Scale cars I owned was a B&M hopper from the Atlas First Generation. It, too, was blue with white lettering, but that's where the similarities end. First, it's an open hopper, not a covered one, second, the lettering isn't very clear, third, it's in the McGuiness scheme but with a build and new date of May 1930 (!) and I'll mercifully stop with the fact that the July 1935 ORER shows that the road number 71717 which is on the model aligns with a box car series. Anyone want to discuss how current N Scale offerings aren't up to snuff now?
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Anyway, the blue B&M hopper with which we are concerned isn't in the McGuiness era, but past it. MTL gives the build date as January 1979, confirmed by images of sister cars 5401 and 5418 on the Fallen Flags site. The images also indicate general conformance with the prototype and that the blue paint faded quite a bit from the build year to 1994 when the photos were taken.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The ORER lookups are fairly straightforward here. All 20 of the group 5400 to 5419 were in place in the April 1981 Register, the closest one I have to the build date. The inside length was 54 feet 1 inch, inside width 10 feet, outside length 58 feet 9 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, capacity 4780 cubic feet or 200,000 pounds. There were 20 cars listed through July 1992, but in October 1996, the next ORER in the Research Accumulation, just one survives. In its car copy MTL makes note of lease returns, which were common among covered hoppers, so this is certainly a possibility.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
114 00 080, $16.75
Please see the commentary in the July 2008 UMTRR on the similar N Scale release of this car.
035 00 110, $12.90
Reporting Marks: T&P 21600.
The Texas and Pacific was yet another railroad that wanted to reach the second part of its name. Ah, though many investors were called, few railroads were able to go the distance to the coast. The Federal charter (the only line in Texas to have one) called for a line from Marshall, Texas, near the Louisiana border, to San Diego. The road got started with the acquisition of the Southern Pacific--no, not THAT Southern Pacific!-- and built from the western end of the purchased road to Dallas and from Marshall to Texarkana by 1873. The Panic of that year caused the construction company that was contracted to build the line to fail, despite the involvement of Grenville Dodge-- yes, that Grenville Dodge, also Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific. The T&P sputtered along for a while, started making progress again under the control of rail baron Jay Gould, and found itself stymied not only far from the Pacific, but not even at the end of Texas. Sierra Blanca, some ninety miles from El Paso, was the end of track for the T&P, as the Southern Pacific-- yes, that one this time-- had made it that far east from San Diego. An agreement was reached in 1881 for the T&P to operate jointly with the SP between Sierra Blanca and El Paso, but there was no joint ownership involved. So in 1882 the line went the other way and built a route to New Orleans. Meanwhile, the line went into receivership while being leased by Gould's Missouri Pacific; the Gould influence over both the MP and T&P meant continued close cooperation even after the lease ended. After the Gould interests lost control of the MP in 1917, the MP bought stock in the T&P. By 1930 the Missouri Pacific owned nearly 75 percent of the company. That went to 97 percent by 1974 and the T&P was formally merged into the MP in October, 1976. See the "Handbook of Texas Online," among other sites, for more information.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Let's get to the MTL release now, but before continuing, the usual disclaimer. The source for the MTL stock car, and that of several other manufacturers in several scales in fact, is the New York Central's rebuild of single sheathed boxcars in 1947, and therefore is not really accurate for any other road besides the NYC. I'll note that another Texas and Pacific stock car in N Scale, offered by Roco in the mid 1980s if memory serves correctly, was on their execution of the same body style, which was itself initially part of the Atlas First Generation of N Scale equipment. With all that disclaimed, and armed with the build date of 1920 given by MTL, let's check the ORERs and see what we can come up with.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
First stop is the April 1928 Register, where we find the series 21000 to 21699, with a quantity of 558 cars shown and not much else: inside length 36 feet, inside width 8 feet 2 inches, inside height 7 feet 3 inches, capacity 60,000 pounds. That's all.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
There is more information in the July 1935 Register, including a new set of dimensions: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 8 feet 8 inches, inside height 7 feet 10 inches, outside length 42 feet, extreme height 13 feet 3 inches, door opening 6 feet, capacity 2750 cubic feet or 80,000 pounds. There's only one problem: the series is not of 21000s, but from 22000 to 22499, of 499 cars, which cover the first two MTL releases but not this one. Same is true for the January 1940 Equipment Register, with two fewer cars. And the same for the January 1945 book, with one less car. In the July 1950 ORER, the group has declined to 395 cars, although a series of 100 other stock cars numbered 24000 to 24099 shows up. The T&P hung on to its stock cars a bit longer than many roads, carrying 201 as late as the April 1970 Register across the 22000 and 24000 groups, so the ATP for the first two releases (given the disclaimer) could be several decades long.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
But what happened to the T&P 21600? I can't say for sure, but I think the change from 36 foot inside length cars to 40 foot inside length between 1928 and 1935 is a clue. Perhaps there was a rebuild of the original cars, or less likely there was a wholesale scrap and replacement of the entire series. An ORER in between these years might be useful, but isn't in the UMTRR Accumulation, and might have shown a transition period between 21000 cars and 22000 cars. I will of course welcome any Incremental Information on this subject.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
065 00 170, $18.05
American Car and Foundry built these and many other cars for Shippers Car Line, which was AC&F's leasing subsidiary. There are any number of examples of Shippers Car Line tank cars of various types and configurations with the paint scheme utilized on this reprint, and they generally date to the 1920's and 1930's, though Atlas' LPG tank car from a few years back has the same paint scheme and a build date of 1947. Circa mid-1954 according to Richard Hendrickson, the company name and lines above and below the reporting marks were dropped on both new and repainted tank cars. Of course, the tank cars were not all redone at the same time, leading to the "at least" part of the ATP.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Both the previous and current release have build dates of 1948. The second run was a "not a reprint" of the first release, as the initial issuance in 1987 had yellow lettering. There is a tiny "not a reprint" between the second and this third run, and it's on the dome as MTL indicates in its car copy.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I almost blew it on the ATP. You see, there is a series 7601 to 7699 listed in the April 1928 ORER with 51 cars of a smallish 7600 gallons and 60000 pounds rated capacity. That number is already down to 48 in the July 1935 ORER and is completely gone by the January 1940 Register. Whoa, that's a short ATP! But it's the wrong one.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
After going missing in the January 1945 ORER, the road numbers in the 7600s reappear in the July 1950 Register, with a "Denotes Additions" mark and the series 7453 to 7689. Of these, 205 cars are in the main series and 25 exceptions are of AAR Classification "TL" versus "TM". The series in January 1955 consists of 183 "TM"s and 46 "TL"s and in January 1959 it's 167 "TM"s and 68 "TL"s. And finally for our lookups, we have 166 "TM"s and 68 "TL"s in January 1964. The series continues its run through at least the 1970's but the reporting marks were being reported as ACFX or SHPX, and by 1985 any tank cars left were all marked ACFX.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
It's probably safe to say that the MTL car is a stand in for the real thing. The 65er body style was identified in Rail Model Journal as a model of a General American Transportation 10,000 gallon tank car. GATC and AC&F were rivals and didn't build cars for each other, although both GATX and Union Tank Car ended up with AC&F cars through purchases of private owner fleets.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
523 00 041 and 523 00 042, $20.30 each
No leverage of the UMTRR coverage of the 1:160 release for this 1:220 issuance: the first and only road number of this car in N Scale was back in September 1978!
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Fortunately, we do have the Morning Sun Color Guide to the AT&SF, and on Page 78 we have ATSF 176477 from the same series, photographed in 1959 in a rather unusual location: a Santa Fe carfloat at Richmond, California, on San Francisco Bay. Notable-- besides where it is!-- is that in this image, the reporting marks do not have periods. So the Strictly Speaking Approximate Time Period is going to end no later than then, given that the MTL models have periods after each letter in ATSF. Yes, even in Z Scale, they're there. The official year for the change of reporting marks from "A.T.& S.F." to "ATSF" was 1944, although freight car scholar Richard Hendrickson, writing on the Steam Era Freight Cars YahooGroup (in answer to this very question about Santa Fe reporting marks posed to the group last month!), states that "Changes that were optional were carried out only when cars were repainted, so that cars with the older stenciling style could often be seen many years after the change took effect." Which means that it's entirely possible to take the ATP out into the 1950's or later. But add lots of weathering if we're talking a gondola that was in its original 1941 paint.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The MSCG photo doesn't allow a good look at the ends, although we do know that they are drop ends (for one thing, the brake wheel is side mounted as on the MTL car), but we can count panels: 12 on the prototype, 14 on the MTL model.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The ORER for January 1945, closest I have to the build date of 1941, the series of 600 cars numbered 176000 to 176599 is described as "Coal, Mill Type, Drop Ends, Wood Floor." What? I suppose these cars could have been used for coal-- indeed, many Santa Fe gons were employed for this at one time or another-- but even the ATSF's own classification is Ga-53. Oh, wait, hoppers got Ga classes also? Hmm, I see... Anyway, the dimensions were as follows: inside length 48 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet, inside height 3 feet 10 inches, outside length 50 feet 6 inches, extreme height 7 feet 9 inches, capacity 1673 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
In the January 1959 Equipment Register contemporaneous with the photo in the Morning Sun Color Guide, the description had changed to something a bit more expected: "Gondola, Mill Type, Solid Bottom, Drop Ends, Wood Floor" and there were 592 of the original 600 in service. That's past our Strictly Speaking ATP but what's four periods among friends? If this is no big deal for you, run these gondolas at least to April 1970. There are still 23 cars with wood floors and 41 more with nailable steel floors remaining in the roster.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I have to admit that my first question about these cars was rather flip: does the "H-beam" load consist of I-beams that have been turned on their sides? No, it doesn't. A more formal definition I found: "'Flange' refers to the horizontal parts of the 'I,' the vertical part is known as the 'web'... If the web height exceeds the flange width the section is an 'I', if the flange width exceeds the web height, the section is an 'H'. This came from an online version of a lecture on steel from McGill University, once again proving that just about anything can be found on the Internet.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
531 00 091 and 531 00 092, $20.25 each
While the Pennsylvania Railroad was the line that is most closely associated with my first years of life, it's the Jersey Central that was the nearest to my second home. After being right across the street from the Pennsy in Jersey City, the two blocks distance to the Elizabeth and Perth Amboy branch of the CNJ-- now known as the Chemical Coast Line of Conrail Shared Assets-- seemed like a light year. But I dealt with it. The Jersey Central was the only line that served Carteret and it did with extensive trackage including a line called the Terminal Railroad of New Jersey that punched right through the center of the boro. That line was gone well before the Irwins arrived; in fact the portion of the Terminal was being torn out about the same time that the Turnpike was being put in and the house we bought was being put up. A memory of sorts of that line is found in Terminal Avenue in Carteret. I'll bet not many people know of the street name's origin now. In view from selected windows of my grammar school was the CNJ's operation down to the Chrome section, principally U.S. Metals and Refining Company. There is a rusty streak of track left now paralleling an Industrial Road, U.S. Metals is long gone, nearly all of the business district of Chrome has been leveled and even the school I attended was demolished and rebuilt. So the saying "you can't go home again" is pretty literal at least for that part of town.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
It was not until the last decade of the CNJ's independent operation that the attractive paint scheme modeled here was utilized. Called the "Red Baron" or "Coast Guard" scheme, it's been reported that a vice president of the Jersey Central was a Coast Guard veteran and thus the decoration plan was developed. Other than the bright red paint replacing boxcar red or gray, the scheme is really not all that different from the ones it replaced... but ah, then there are those two diagonal stripes. The original version had a wide white stripe between the two narrow ones, on which the "Miss Liberty" herald was inset in red. But as the CNJ continued to post deficits, the scheme was simplified to the two white stripes only, which could slant in either direction.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
There are not one but two pictures of CNJ 803 in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the CNJ and LV by Craig Bossler. A photo from October 1976 showed the car in good condition and with stenciling indicating both return to the Lehigh Valley at Perth Amboy for aragonite loading (aragonite being a common carbonite mineral, found in, among other places, the autonomous region of Spain named Aragón) and smaller stenciling indicating return to Carteret! Based on the images it looks like MTL reproduced the Perth Amboy direction, which is readable in the reference photo, but not the Carteret instructions, which, to be fair about it, are in a size smaller than dimensional data. The second photo circa 1978 indicates that the car shouldn't have been loaded anywhere or necessarily going anyplace except for repairs: bad order car, stenciled two different times. By the way, the red trucks certainly look possible based on the photos, but I'll not vouch for the red couplers. Proof that the red and white cars co-existed with the PS-2s done in the earlier and more traditional black on gray scheme is available on the Fallen Flags website.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The red and white scheme was introduced more or less near the start of the 1970's, so we'll go back only to the April 1970 ORER to find the series 751 to 860 of "Covered Hopper, Steel" with a mixture of 60 cars with 140,000 pounds capacity and 39 cars with 154,000 pounds capacity. Both numbers MTL chose fall into that second subgroup. The key dimensions: inside length 29 feet 3 inches, outside length 37 feet 9 inches, extreme height 13 feet 2 inches, capacity 2003 cubic feet. With the coming of Conrail in April 1976, there were still 88 cars in the series including both the 903 and 907. Just 31 remained in April 1981 and the two numbers modeled don't appear to be among them, but for the record, only the 843 remained out of the entire series in April 1984.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
538 00 080, $17.80
Please see the commentary in the July 2008 UMTRR on the similar N Scale release of this car.
982 01 090 and 982 01 100, $175.95 each
Here's the very interesting choice of a concurrent release of locomotives for both the main line and a subsidiary-- an interurban subsidiary at that, which we'll focus on this time (sorry, mainstream WP fans). The Sacramento Northern was mostly the combination of two lines. The Northern Electric began as the Chico Electric Railway in 1905 in that city and spread southward to reach the capital of California. It went broke by 1914 and was bought by a newly organized company, the Sacramento Northern Railroad, in 1918. The Western Pacific gained control in 1922 and absorbed it and several other lines into the Sacramento Northern Railway in 1925.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Meanwhile, the Oakland, Antioch and Eastern, previously just the Oakland and Antioch, spanned the distance from the Key System's Oakland Ferry to Sacramento via Walnut Creek and Concord. The route included a punishing 4.5 percent ruling grade in the Oakland Hills and a ferry across Suisun Bay which was meant to be but never was replaced with a drawbridge. The OA&E had its struggles as well and was reorganized as the San Francisco-Sacramento Railroad in 1920. It was also purchased by the Western Pacific and was merged into the Sacramento Northern Railway in 1929. Passenger service on the SN was cut back significantly after the Depression, despite access directly into San Francisco over the Oakland Bay Bridge starting in 1939. The end of that era was in 1947, where it began in Chico when streetcar service was discontinued.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Being an interurban line, freight service presented challenges of its own, including that steep grade in and out of Oakland and, believe it or not, a grade crossing with a freeway. Parent WP gradually supplanted the SN's route with its own trackage and rights over other railroads, and replaced the electric freight motors with diesels, usually from its own surplus. By the time the SN went along with the WP into the Union Pacific in 1983, there was not much left. A segment of the original mainline is operated-- under wire!-- by the Western Railway Museum on State Highway 12 in Suisun.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The WP 725 is one of two GP-9s preserved at Portola, California at the Feather River Rail Museum. It's still in Union Pacific paint. The FRRM reports that the 725 was the last locomotive in Western Pacific colors to see service on its home rails. It was repainted to Union Pacific 300 in 1985, sold via Precision National to the Iowa Interstate in 1986, also saw service on the Kansas Southwestern, and was brought home in November 1995 when the Iowa Interstate retired it. The FRRM hopes to restore the 725 to service at some point.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
From Garth Groff's excellent "Sacramento Northern Online" site we get the story of the 712. First, it's not a GP-9 but a GP-7! The SN didn't own anything newer than the 711 and 712 which were both GP-7s. Both of these Geeps were obtained by the SN as a trade for its two F3-A units 301A and 301D, which had been originally built for the New York, Ontario and Western. The 712 was donated to the Western Railroad Museum around 1985 and went to the FRRM in 2006. It's still in the Perlman Green and orange paint that MTL modeled.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
And speaking of green... there were in fact several different shades of green used by the Western Pacific and based on my reading of the "WPList" YahooGroup there continues to be discussion more than 30 years after the color was first introduced. It's known that there was MacLeod Green and Perlman Green, both DuPont "Imron" brand colors, and also a Sterling polyurethane paint for which there may not have been a color shade name. These paints were successively lighter greens. But as a general (perhaps very general) statement, they're all referred to as "Perlman green". Add the effects of weathering, lighting, color film, and distinguishing green from, well, green, becomes a non-trivial task. It appears that the "greener green" is what these two Geeps got, again based on the readings on the WP List. What does that mean exactly with respect to the MTL models? Probably not much, if anything.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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