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©2009 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. © 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE NEW RELEASES:
020 00 796, $13.90
The maple leaf is well known as the trademark of the Canadian National, prior to the 1960 rebranding that resulted in the "wet noodle" CN logo. But the all white maple leaf isn't as well known as the green and white versions, being that it was in use only during 1943 and 1944. I'm calling the Approximate Time Period as wide as I think I can, out to the mid-1960s which would have put this white leaf lasting through the entire era of the green leaf and then some.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Ian Cranstone's "Canadian Freight Cars" site shows the series numbered 484165 to 485514, of 1350 cars, built by National Steel Car in Hamilton, Ontario and on the roster to some extent through the ORER of January 1995. He provides an extensive list of series into which some of these cars were renumbered, and a series to which some of these boxcars were renumbered AND retrucked for service on the CN's 42 inch gauge Newfoundland lines.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
A photo of sister car 485164 in the Morning Sun Color Guide (MSCG) to the CN, Volume 2 shows the green maple leaf and straight "Serves All Canada," or the third of the maple leaf varieties, on a rather beat up looking body as of 1998. Somewhat surprisingly, the car still has its roofwalk. The MSCG indicates build dates of March to May 1944 while Ian Cranstone gives October 1943 as the first Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) in which the cars appear.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Speaking of ORERs, let's head to the January 1945 for some vital statistics. As did occur with CN listings, different build batches with the same dimensions are combined into one large series, in this case all the way from 480715 to 487764. The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet (a delta to the MTL model), outside length 41 feet 9 inches, extreme height 14 feet 9 inches, door opening 6 feet, capacity 3712 cubic feet or 90,000 pounds. There were a whopping 6713 cars in the group at that time. That total was down only slightly to 6643 cars in January 1964, roughly when I'm calling the ATP for this release.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
A bit of trivia from the Morning Sun Color Guide to the CN, Volume 2: It looks like the legend to the left of the door reads, "This car for Clean Lading Only." In 1962, the CN would adopt a letter grading scale for cars, replacing a card label attached to the car itself. Cars for clean lading were marked with a grade of "A".
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
044 00 110, $28.10
Not only did the Southern Pacific Transportation Company have a lot of flat cars to begin the decade of the 1970s, they were still adding on to that accumulation. The April 1970 ORER shows the series 565050 to 565349, of 300 cars, plus another group 565350 to 565749 which was denoted as an addition with no cars yet, but with space for 400 more pieces. The dimensions were the same across both groups. As long as we're here, let's list a few of them: inside length 53 feet 6 inches, outside length 54 feet 2 inches, extreme height 5 feet 4 inches, capacity 154,000 pounds. The 700 total cars that would be online here were more than matched by another thousand plus numbered 563900 to 565049, over 1100 more in the 560's, and so on. And these were just general flat cars, not bulkhead cars or other more specialized types.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I was a bit skeptical that cars built as late as 1968 would look exactly like MTL's flat car, and it turns out I was right. David Carnell checked the Morning Sun Color Guide to the SP, Volume 2, and reports that the prototype car series, as illustrated by sister car 565115, has a thicker side sill than the 044 body style, obscuring part of the trucks, and also sports a collapsible end mount brake wheel and 16 stake pockets versus 14 on the model. David notes that at least some cars were marked for Pool 0106, slab steel loading only. A 1981 photo of SP 565162 with a stacked dimensional lumber load appears on Lee Gatreaux's SP Freight Cars Page. The spartan lettering is augmented by consolidated stencils and the U-1 "yellow dot" in that photo.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
There were exactly two cars remaining in the series as of October 2007 under the UP registration, which makes sense since the 40 year lifespan for revenue service was just about up by then. A more reasonable ATP end might be the late nineties since there were a total of 65 cars remaining in service across several subsets.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The next question you're thinking of is probably, "What about this pipe load?" Would it have been carried across two flat cars? Well, I can't say "no" with complete certainty (that "proving the absence of something" issue again), but I think it's more likely that the flat cars would have at least drop end gondola in between them, with the flat cars used as idler cars. MTL doesn't include any detail for securing of any of its loads to the freight cars with which they are included, so the modeler is either given maximum flexibility or is on his own, depending on how you look at it.
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094 00 290, $25.50
I had briefly toyed with the idea of adding to the header for each release an item called "The Takeaway," in which I would provide a one phrase summary of my commentary. That would turn out to be impractical for some of the cars, though, and I would also wonder whether anyone would read anything beyond the takeaway! However, there's clearly a Takeaway for this car: Add Weathering.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Prototype photos of CSXT restencils of these cars are rather deceptive. For example, CSXT 247859 from RailcarPhotos.com shows a car that looks like a pretty dirtied up white. CSXT 247928 also on that website is nearly white in the sunlight, well, if one overlooks all the rust that is. And the CSXT 248057 that MTL chose to model looks, well, so dirty that it could be beige.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
And, well, it actually IS supposed to be beige. Therein lies a problem. While the MTL car copy is wrong on the color-- it was meant to read "off-white" according to my contact there-- whether the Micro-Trains depiction is white or off-white, or light gray, the original paint color was, in fact, beige. Based on the cargo carried over time, the color was washed out to a whitish gray, which no doubt led the folks in Talent down the wrong path here, for which they've already been roundly criticized on the 'net. I'll choose not to pile on here; what would be the point?
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Besides, there's really a larger issue here in my opinion, and that is the issuance of clean cars with restencils that occurred far later. In general-- not just with MTL, and not just in N Scale-- the modeling of restenciled cars is a bit of a risk, as to my eye the cars simply look too darn clean. In this case, the Family Lines paint scheme dates to approximately 1974 ("Family Lines" was not ever an official corporate entity) and was succeeded by Seaboard System in 1982, then absorbed into CSX Transportation in 1986. I'd submit that we're looking at about ten years of dirt, grime, cargo spillage and rust between the Family Lines paint and the CSXT restencil, which could make a beige paint job look off-white, but it would also look, well, weathered! The modeler could choose the extent of this, of course, but I would leave the restencil block quite a bit less dirty to point out the change in reporting marks.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Let's grab the July 1992 ORER, sufficient time after the CSX creation to allow for some relettering. The railroad doesn't help us here: there is an outsized series of covered hoppers numbered 246165 to 248384, which contains a mixture of different sized cars. The main series, if we can call it that, has trough hatches, outside length of 58 feet 4 inches, and capacity of 4600 cubic feet, and is of 302 cars. But in the subseries that follow, which go on for nearly two entire pages in the Equipment Register, we have 54 foot cars with 4650 or 4700 cubic foot capacity as well. In short, we have a mess, not unlike the appearance of some of the prototype cars after long years of service. I did not find the 248057 in the subsets; it could be in the main series but if it is then the MTL body style doesn't match the prototype, as the real 248057 is somewhat longer than the 094 body style. The MTL model appears to read 4800 cubic feet, although even with my glasses and a magnifier I can't be sure.
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Jumping to the January 2000 ORER, it looks like the total number of cars in the overall assemblage has increased, which would make sense as cars from the predecessor roads get repainted or restenciled into CSXT reporting marks. I don't see the 248057 here either, but again, that doesn't mean it isn't in the main series. Ditto for the January 2007 ORER, but the overall series including its subsets totals something over one thousand cars. Among the images on RailcarPhotos.com are several CSXT restencils of Family Lines covered hoppers from 2006 and 2007 so given that I believe we are OK with an Approximate Time Period into the present.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
106 00 250, $19.35
The MTL car copy states that these cars were originally built in 1957 by Pullman-Standard, so my first question was: what BN predecessor road contributed these cars? David Carnell checked the Morning Sun Color guide to the Burlington Northern and gives us the answer, from Page 78 where there's a photo of the car MTL modeled. These cars were initially Great Northern's, series 73800 to 73814. Micro-Trains did do a GN covered gondola in January 2001 as their catalog 106210, but it's road number 73818, just outside the series. In theory, that car and this one could appear together in a train depending on the conditions of your modeler's license. David notes that the photo of the BN 577236 that appears in the MSCG was taken in July 1983 and looks good in terms of fidelity and paint with the exception of consolidated stencils on the prototype and not on the model. (Easily added if desired.)
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I'll go with the repaint date of June 1979 in both the MSCG and the MTL car copy and start with the ORER for June 1981, where we find the car in question in its own series of one! It's described as "Gondola, Wood Floor, Truck Centers 43 feet 6 inches," with AAR Classification "GBR" and AAR Car Type Code E320. That E320 translates to an Equipped Gondola between 52 and 61 feet long of type "GBR". And the "R" in "GBR" stands for "Roof." Anyway, the inside length of the car was 52 feet 6 inches, inside height 4 feet, outside length 57 feet, extreme height 9 feet 3 inches, and capacity 2202 cubic feet or 180,000 pounds. A number of Equipment Register lookups later, we find that for a single car series, the 577236 did pretty well, making it past the turn of the century in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe roster. That's actually longer than the typical 40 year lifespan allowed for cars in revenue service, going back to the original 1957 build date.
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114 00 090, $17.75
Please refer to the July 2008 UMTRR for a discussion of a previous release.
116 00 050, $19.55
There is a photo of the WM 3021 in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Western Maryland, page 90, but the image which is circa 1969 or 1970 is of a car in gray paint, not silver. Is this an MTL mistake?
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Maybe not. There is a 1962 photo of the 3021 cited in an internet post as being part of the 2005 Western Maryland Historical Society calendar. I confirmed with Micro-Trains that this was a source for the model. In that image, the car is silver. Apparently it's a one-off scheme that appeared sometime between the 1951 conversion of the car from caboose service (really!) to camp car service, and 1969 or 1970 based on the photo in the MSCG. And sometimes, folks, you're not going to be able to get any closer on an ATP.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Most of the converted troop cars-- the WM purchased twenty five of them, surplus from the Army, in 1947 and 1948-- were painted in Light Tuscan Oxide Red, similar to what MTL depicted in its February 2005 release (catalog 116 00 040, road number 3018, concurrent with a kitchen car, catalog 118 00 030, road number 3015).
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079 00 010, $15.95
It's a "welcome back" to the body style that was last issued in December 2005 (Catalog 079 00 060 for the Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia or "TAG") and a return to what is the most common roadname for this car. The Pennsy had numerous variations of this type of car in its X32 and X33 classes, with differences in side door width, presence of end doors, and roof style (flush or inset). The largest single group of these cars was the X32B, series 48300 to 49299, of 1,000 cars built in 1937 and sporting 14 foot 6 inch doors and a flush roof. This series lasted pretty much intact at least through the 1940's, but then started a decline; in 1952 there were 329 left from that group of one thousand and just 213 remained in the January 1964 ORER. There were conversions of the X32B's into other PRR classes during this time, but they stayed in the same number series so I'm including them in the count. No cars made it into the Penn Central, at least in revenue service.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
In 1954 the Pennsy moved to the "shadow keystone" herald and I would expect that some of the remaining cars would have been repainted into that scheme. With that assumption, I'm calling the Approximate Time Period end a bit conservatively at the late fifties. The PRR had also sold off some of these cars to smaller road, including the rather obscure Hoboken Shore Line-- and I am still hoping for a release in that paint scheme, more than nine years later... and one for the Delaware and Hudson as well, which picked up ten of these cars from the "P" Company. How about it, folks?
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Richard Burg, writing in the February 1996 issue of Rail Model Journal provides in-depth coverage of this type of car, including a pretty detailed history of the variations built for the PRR and for roads under Pennsy influence like the Norfolk and Western and the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton. As is typical with RMJ pieces, there are plenty of prototype photos, including samples of two different PRR "circle keystone" paint schemes, one including the word "Automobiles" and one without. One of the "withs" turns out to be the first MTL number 48302, by the way. There's also a photo and description of a conversion of an X32B into a stock car-- no kidding! (Bowser has these in HO Scale but I'd be very surprised to ever see these in wide release in N. Never say never, though.) Besides the RMJ piece, Rob's Pennsy Page has an image of the official equipment diagram for the car and a shot of the PRR 48302. One will note the "door thing" present on the model, as the doors on the MTL depiction add to 16 feet across whereas the door opening on the real car was 14 feet 6 inches. I expect that this is a compromise to allow MTL to use its existing eight foot doors.
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We'll grab the ORER from January 1940 as an example. The cars 48300 to 49249 and 49250 to 49299 are described as "Auto, Steel, Staggered Doors" with AAR Designation "XA" for the first set of numbers and "XAP" for the second set. The dimensions are all the same: inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet even at the sides and 10 feet 5 inches for 3 feet 6 inches either side of the centerline (as explained in an end note), outside length 51 feet 8 inches, extreme height 14 feet 7 inches, door opening 14 feet 6 inches, capacity 4629 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
While this car was overwhelmingly in use by just one road, the Pennsy, there were enough of these cars around to justify just about any N Scale model pike set in the 1940's to have one. I could imagine a lively scene on a layout where automobiles are unloaded for delivery to Friendly Fred's Car Dealer-- your choice of make and model.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
120 00 250, $15.05
When this car was first released in August 2001, MTL made the interesting statement, "This scheme was previously released as 20570." That would be the PS-1 type 40 foot box car, done in April 1986. Did that make the car a "not a new release"? Well, it certainly made the release a closer match with the 120200 body style, as the ORER dimensions were a lot closer to the USRA boxcar than the PS-1.
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Technically speaking, though, neither body style is correct, though we're pretty close with the 1202 offering. Ted Culotta describes at length the 1932 ARA 40 Foot Steel Boxcars, in his article "Essential Freight Cars: 23" in the September 2005 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman. While of a groundbreaking design, these cars were also coincident with the Great Depression and as such weren't as popular as they could have been. Three railroads were major customers, including the Seaboard Air Line which bought two thousand cars in two groups, 17000 to 17999 and 18000 to 18999. Prototype photos of the car in the "Orange Blossom Special" scheme, plus shots of Culotta's excellent and highly faithful models, illustrate that with some quibbles, the MTL car is certainly within Three Foot Rule specifications. The flat roof and ends look good, the door is a Youngstown, the brake wheel is horizontally mounted, and the wood running board is a match. The side sills are not straight, though, and that's the key delta that I see. Culotta notes that the 1932 ARA cars built at Pullman-Standard's Bessemer Alabama plant had truck centers of 31 feet 2 3/4 inches which was not the standard for 1932 ARAs (that was 30 feet 8 1/2 inches).
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The ORER for January 1959 is the closest one I have to the service and repaint date of 1956 given by MTL, so we'll head there to find the two groups of cars combined into the series 17000 to 18999, of which there are 1852 cars. The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 8 feet 6 inches, inside height 9 feet 4 inches, outside length 42 feet 4 inches, extreme height 14 feet 1 inch, door opening 6 feet and capacity 3311 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. This group was nearly cut in half to 978 cars in the January 1964 ORER. Then you run into the renumbering of the Seaboard Coast Line; that would have made these cars SCL 817000 to 818999. Though there are 83 cars in that listing under the SCL, and correspondingly zero in the original Seaboard Air Line item, I really question whether these cars were ever renumbered and I think a late 1960's end to the ATP is alright.
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I'll reprint myself from the August 2001 UMTRR and mention the train on the boxcar: In the 1950's, the Silver Meteor succeeded the Orange Blossom Special on the Seaboard Air Line. The Official Guide of the Railways for May 1954 shows the schedule for the train, which actually began way up in Boston on the New Haven, then traveled down the Pennsylvania from New York to Washington and then the RF&P to Richmond. The train left on Richmond on the Seaboard at 7:05 PM, arriving in Jacksonville at 9:10 the next morning. From there one could continue to Miami, getting there at 4:25 PM, or to the west coast of Florida, arriving Tampa at 1:20 PM and St. Petersburg at 3:20 PM. A full page ad facing the schedule boasted that Seaboard had a Registered Nurse on the Meteor and that it was holding the line on dining car meal costs: 70 cents for breakfast, a $1.25 for luncheon and $1.35 for dinner. Coaches and roomettes were the usual consists for the train, all streamliners.
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502 00 261 and 502 00 262, $22.15 each
Soup's on!
The exact car PRR 19492 is pictured on Page 88 of the Morning Sun Color Guide to the Pennsylvania (Volume One), as it appeared in its original paint as of January 1975. The car, part of the PRR Class X54A, was in service for Campbell's Soup. I'll admit a bit of positive prejudice for this offering, being that I'm a Pennsy fan and that Campbell's is headquartered in my native New Jersey; plus I have one of these cars in N Scale "delivering" Campbell's Soup to the Au Sable Dairies Grocery Warehouse in Black Brook on my Wilmington and New York Railroad.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The MTL model's paint is just about dead on, down to the "PC" (not standing in this case for "Penn Central"!) on the door and the use of the shadow keystone. There are two quibbles versus the prototype: first, the real car had riveted, not welded, sides, and second, the sills on the prototype are completely straight, rather unusual on a car of this type, and a fixable detail if one is so inclined. The X54 and X54A were the last forty foot boxcars built by the PRR, and given the insulation they are technically refrigerator cars with AAR Class "RBL".
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The January 1964 ORER shows the series 19400 to 19499, though RBLs still described as "Box, Steel", with these dimensions: inside length 40 feet, inside width 9 feet 3 inches, inside height 9 feet 7 inches, outside length 41 feet 11 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet 2 inches wide by 8 feet 10 inches high, capacity 95,000 pounds or 3545 cubic feet. In April 1970 under the Penn Central registration, there were 98 cars, but in the July 1974 book there were just 34. In that 1974 registration it's noted that the cars were equipped for application of heaters, and only three cars were called out for assigned service. Twenty nine of the cars made it into Conrail and the April 1976 Equipment Register, however, they were all gone by April 1981's ORER.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
As usual, "Rob's Pennsy Page" has the official equipment diagram of this class. The Fallen Flags site has a few shots of the X54 class of insulated boxcars which were close, road numbers 19000 to 19399.
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If the current size of a standard can of Campbell's is the same as it was in the 1960's, and allowing for cases and pallets, that would mean each car could hold about fifteen thousand cans of Chicken Noodle. Or Tomato, or perhaps some Cream of Mushroom. Multiply that by the 99 cars in the series at the time and you've got around a million and a half cans of soup!
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525 00 091 and 525 00 092, $18.40 each
I almost never get to use the ORER from June 1905 (Westerfield CD-ROM) that's in the UMTRR Research Accumulation, but since MTL gives 1903 as the build date for these cars, that's where I started. The arrangement of the Northern Pacific's listing in the Equipment Register is different, with fewer columns, meaning less information, and a very linear look to the page. No matter, the series 69000 to 69999 does in fact show up, with the "Kind of Car" listed as "Flat, Air Brake"-- and isn't it a bit scary that the air brake is called out?!?-- with inside length of 41 feet, inside width of "8.6" which I will take to mean 8 feet, 6 inches and capacity of 80,000 pounds. There were 997 cars in the series at the time.
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The October 1919 ORER, another one I don't use often, has the equipment tables that we're more used to, although not really any more information within. The "Flat, Air Brake" has been changed to "Flat, Steel Underframe" with the MCB Designation of "FL". The dimensions are the same and the number of cars is down to 970. In the July 1935 ORER there are 897 cars still in service. By January 1940 the designation has gone from "FL" to the more familiar "FM" and the car count is 834 plus one exception "equipped with four tanks for vinegar service"; and wouldn't that be cool to model. It's not until the January 1955 ORER that the series is nearly gone, with just 11 cars remaining in what was once a group of one thousand, plus that one exception carrying vinegar. That's a pretty long service period, in fact in excess of the standard for interchange service.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
All in all, I think we get the idea that these cars would make for a good Runner Pack someday. I don't think paint scheme will be a worry since the NP did use this scheme for quite a while. I suspect that at some point the reporting marks ("NP") were added, which might restrict your ATP somewhat. Meanwhile, the loads accompanying this release are fairly different from each other, with the 69759 carrying more processed lumber and the 69721 carrying logs with something like side stakes molded right into the simulated load. Some paint touchup would be advised there.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
550 00 010, $28.60, Smoothside 6-6-4 Sleeper Car, Union Pacific.
The City of Los Angeles. The City of San Francisco. The City of Portland. The City of Denver. These were the "Streamliner" trains of the Union Pacific, famous, glamorous and luxurious, and part of the legendary passenger service once provided by North American Railroads. The City of Portland was the first of these streamliners, but it was perhaps the City of Los Angeles that became the UP's most famous train. It was even a prominent feature of several episodes of "I Love Lucy," the most popular American television show on the air at the time. While there were any number of different equipment sets employed on these trains during their span of operation, lightweight passenger cars were among the most used on the City trains.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Micro-Trains opens another new chapter in its releases with its first passenger cars. This is not only a new type of equipment for MTL, but a new approach to sales as well. These cars will be made available with decals for individual road numbers or car names as appropriate, which enables Z Scalers to get as many cars as they need and do the finishing touch, rather than waiting for reprints of specific names or numbers. I must caution at the outset that I am not an expert on passenger trains, but I'll do the best I can to help with the names and numbers as other road names are reviewed.
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First, let's detail a bit more about the prototype cars. This information is straight from MTL, namely, because I don't want to get it wrong! The 6-6-4 Sleeper (6 section, 6 roomette, 4 bedroom) was built by Pullman-Standard for the Union Pacific between 1942 and 1946. The Dome Car was built in 1955, also by Pullman-Standard. The model is specifically of the chair car (lounge) version, but there was also a lounge/diner version of this car. The 44 seat coach is also a P-S product, built in 1950 with road numbers 5400 to 5499. And the 71 foot baggage car with the somewhat unusual offset roadname was built by American Car and Foundry in 1957 with road numbers 5664 to 5678 and 5711 to 5745. Other railroads owned and operated these or similar cars, which will enable MTL to release a number of roadnames without a large amount of teeth clenching from stricter modelers.
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Obviously, given the different build dates, the estimation of an Approximate Time Period would be particularly nightmarish. It's certainly safe to go from 1957 forward to roughly the start of Amtrak in 1971 for all four cars since the baggage cars were the last to arrive. Complicating matters a bit on the sleepers, some were repainted in the Union Pacific's two-tone gray scheme (surely a follow on release?) in the middle 1940's and then painted back to yellow and gray in the years 1952 to 1955.
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The Morning Sun Color Guide to the Union Pacific has some photographs of UP yellow and gray passenger equipment but I did not note any matches to the exact prototypes modeled. A look at the UtahRails.net site might explain why: there are many different series listed, some of which were just one car, and even what's there isn't an exhaustive list. What is very handy though is a rundown of the names used on the forty "American Series" sleepers that are the basis for the MTL model, ranging alphabetically from "American Ace" to "American Woodland" and including renumbering and disposition information. Also noted are assignments to the Southern Pacific and Chicago and North Western that jointly operated service with the UP, and cars leased to Pullman which then operated them on UP trains.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Finally, Joe D'Amato of MTL shared some images of the newly tooled trucks on which these passenger cars ride. The mounting pin will be offset toward the end of the car as opposed to the center of the truck. In addition, there will be truck mounted couplers, needed for these cars to negotiate the sharp curves present on any number of layouts. But it's already been noted on TrainBoard that conversion to body mounted couplers should be a relatively simple task as there will be mounting pads for MTL couplers.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
982 01 140 and 982 01 150, $185.95 each
A page on the Central Vermont Railway Historical Society's site notes that while the line hosted power from other subsidiaries of the Canadian National, and of course the CN itself, the mainstay of the roster was the road's GP-9 diesels. As of 1990, "Three distinct variations of this model along with a variety of color schemes make for a lot of variety. Add to these a several similar looking GP-18's and chop nosed GP-9's." The CV was formed out of a consolidation of numerous lines in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut-- in fact, a predecessor was called the Consolidated Railway for a time, well before Conrail. The CV came under the control of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1896. In the 1920s after financial troubles, the Grand Trunk itself was placed in a Canadian version of receivership by the Canadian government and then nationalized into the Canadian National in 1923. The Central Vermont operated as part of this system until February 3, 1995, when the CV main line between New London, Connecticut and East Alburg, Vermont was sold to RailTex (now RailAmerica) and renamed the New England Central.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
While the Grand Trunk was a system that stretched from Chicago to the Canadian Maritimes, and had an ill-fated subsidiary Grand Trunk Pacific that reached to the Pacific Coast and eventually led to the bankruptcy of the entire system, the part of the system in which we're interested what operated in the United States. The Grand Trunk Western operated from "west of the east bank of the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers," which is another way of saying Michigan and Illinois if you're not reading the Official Railway Equipment Register! With the privatization of parent Canadian National, the Grand Trunk Corporation is the United States holding company for the GTW, the Illinois Central, and other CN properties in the Lower 48. However, there was also the "Grand Trunk" without the "Western," or "east of the west bank of the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers" in your ORER. That was principally the line from Norton in the northeast corner of Vermont and connection with the CN's Sherbrooke line, down to Portland, Maine. The "GT" of this Grand Trunk is hard to distinguish from the "GT" of the Grand Trunk Western-- in fact, it's the same herald. If you're willing to call two connected letters a "herald." Harrumph. This GT was spun off as the St. Lawrence and Atlantic in 1989, recapturing the name the line had before it was formally pulled into the Grand Trunk system. It's now part of Genesee and Wyoming Industries.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The interaction among all the CN subsidiary railroads, and let's throw in CN's Duluth, Winnipeg and Pacific as well, is so confusing that I'm not even going to try to explain it here. I refer you to Jim Boyd's article "CV=Color Variety" in the August 2005 edition of Railroad Model Craftsman for a sketch of the various diesel orders, deliveries and swaps among the CN's United States operations. What we do get of most importance is the start of the Approximate Time Period for the blue paint scheme. The classic looking CN-style green and yellow was the as delivered livery for the Geeps, supplanted somewhat by the black and red with "wet noodle" in 1961. Ten years later in 1971, the Grand Trunk Corporation was made a bit more autonomous and asserted that by changing the black paint to blue, with either "GT" or "CV" as appropriate. For its part, though, the CV brass preferred the old green and yellow! In 1977, after another power swap, the CV painted an ex-DW&P RS-11 into its last major scheme, the green with yellow stripes and large "CV".
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
One photo I found on RRPictureArchives.net shows the 4557 as of June 1989, with a fairly obvious paintout and re-heralding (new word) into the "CV" from the "GT". This shot also illustrates the end mounting of the bell and a different position for the horn versus the MTL model. The dynamic brakes are present so we're good there. But hold the phone-- is that really blue paint? Jim Boyd says in his article that only the units 4548 and 4925 were painted in what the CV called "boo-boo blue," a result of the Grand Trunk Western's Battle Creek shop ignoring its corporate cousins' directive to use the new green and yellow. In addition, I note both blue and black GT Geeps on the 'net in photos stretching into the 1980's.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Be that as it may, I'm calling the ATP at the mid-1990's here, though it could be earlier based on the retirement of the GP-9's from, well, whatever CN property they were on at the time. The St. Lawrence and Atlantic rostered GP-9's from the CV, and no, I'm not sure which ones exactly. Based on a couple of looks at rosters, it appears that the New England Central didn't have GP-9s.
© 2009 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
855 00 032, $32.90
Please refer to the December 2008 UMTRR for a discussion of the previous release.
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