55430, $21.65 - 33' Two Bay Hopper, Offset Sides, Cambria and Indiana (Bicentennial).
Black with large red, white and blue stripes and blue and red reporting marks. American flag outlined in gold in center. Herald on right. Reporting Marks: C&I 1976. Approximate Time Period: mid 1970's. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.This is the most expensive hopper ever released by Micro-Trains by a long shot, but for a valid reason: When was the last time you saw a five color paint job on a coal car?
Coal car, yep, that's what it is. The Cambria and Indiana is named for the counties in which it resides-- and that's present tense because it's still around. In 1954, it operated from a connection with the New York Central at Manver, Pennsylvania to an interchange with the Pennsylvania 28 miles away at Nanty Glo-- spelled Nant-Y-Glo in the Official Guide of the Railways entry, thank you. Two branches added another 8 miles to the line. And the principal traffic was coal, lots and lots of coal.
But the valley of the Blacklick River where the C&I runs was also once famous for steel, and iron. In fact, the Cambria Iron Company was the largest producer of iron rails in America in the 1870's, and was an early innovator in the steel business as well. Its original plant in Cambria County is now a national historical landmark.
The Cambria Steel Company was purchased in 1923 by Bethlehem Steel, which had been making Bessemer steel rails since 1873. The Cambria and Indiana Railroad apparently came with the package; the 1954 Official Guide lists the C&I's offices as being in Bethlehem. Bethlehem Steel lists the line as one of six "switching and terminal railroads" that it owns. The company's site has a page "Subsidiary Railroads" which states that the "railroad companies own and operate approximately 100 switcher locomotives and 900 freight cars."
It used to be a lot more than that. The C&I itself is listed with 1,991 hoppers under its name in the February 1963 Official Railway Equipment Register. However, none of these are numbered 1776. Let's try the April 1976 book: That's better. Series 1600 to 1999 is of 367 33 foot hoppers, coal, self clearing. And what do you know, 1976 fits right into that series, so the folks in Cambria County did that one up a little special for the Nation's 200th birthday. It is a unique car, and folks, you already know what that means. By the way, the C&I also did a similar, but not identical, treatment, to hopper #1776, which was included in the C&I Special Edition set, released June 2000 (see that description here).
Long strings of C&I 100 ton hoppers-- not the 33 footers that
are the 55000 series-- used to appear literally in my backyard
when I lived up near the "Charlotte Runner" Conrail line that
was used to bring coal to a local generating station. More
recently, though, I've observed the same C&I hoppers, still
wearing the squarish herald, with hastily restenciled "BSIX"
reporting marks-- sometimes even retaining the "I" from "C&I"!
That would be Bethlehem Steel, of course, and may explain why
the six railroads are listed as owning just 900 cars.
67120, $19.25 - 45' Trailer, Burlington
Northern City View "St. Louis".
Since we cover historical data on railroads and private owners here in the UMTRR, why not a brief historical look at the place honored on the City View trailer?
The Burlington Northern is now a "fallen flag," but processes and bureaucracies being what they are, it usually takes a while from merger proposal to reality. Usually it's years. St. Louis can beat that easily; how about two fallen flags in less than 48 hours time? "Three Flags Day", actually the two days March 9 and 10, 1804, marked the change from Spanish to United States rule. While "Upper Louisiana" was technically under Spanish jurisdiction, the settlement was populated mostly by the French, who'd originally controlled the area. (Yes, from my schoolbooks, I seem to remember that we bought "all" of the Louisiana Purchase from France, so I'm not sure how this worked either.) So in deference to the French, U.S. Military Governor Major Amos Stoddard, accompanied by Captain Meriwether Lewis (who'd later get a partner named Clark) ordered that the French flag be allowed to fly over St. Louis for twenty four hours before the Stars and Stripes replaced it. So the Spanish flag came down, the French flag went up, next day the French flag went down, the US flag went up, and there's two "fallen flags". What do you mean, they're not railroads? For more on this time period in the history of the Gateway City, check out the site of "Scott's Time Portal to Old St. Louis," part of The American Local History Network.
One hundred years later, in 1904, Forest Park in St. Louis played host to the World's Fair, where newfangled developments like this thing called "electricity" were being displayed and the ice cream cone was somewhat inadvertantly sold for the first time. That same year what's been called "the Strangest Olympics" were held in St. Louis as well. It was the country's first time as host of the Games, but due to the Russo-Japanese War and other circumstances, United States entrants constituted 85% of the 625 participants, and won 238 of the 282 medals. A Civil War veteran won the Archery medal! Fortunately, other Games hosted by the United States after this first foray would prove to be somewhat more mainstream!
And then, of course, there's the Arch, or, more properly, the
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, of which the Gateway
Arch is only a part. Eero Saarinen won a national competition
for its design; the Arch was started in 1963 and completed in
1965. It is 630 feet high and sways up to 18 inches in strong
winds. I've been there; my friends in St. Louis still wonder
how I could have walked there from Forest Park in five degree
weather in the middle of January! Well, the sun was out and
it felt warm! The stainless steel arch sums up for me and
for others a remarkable history of the area and what it
symbolized for a country towards its "manifest destiny."
77040, $11.05 - 50' Steel Box Car
without roofwalk, Single Door, United States Navy.
If this new release were anything but a military car, it would probably meet with ferocious yawns from the accumulating community. However, the military theme is pretty hot these days, and the fact that this car fits right into today's railroading will be of interest. Oh, I should get right to the Approximate Time Period dicussion: I'm taking some liberties with it-- if you'll pardon the expression. While it's possible that this car was renumbered when repainted in 1997, the paint scheme itself has probably been the standard Government Issue for much longer than that. So I'm going with the lack of roofwalk as the determining factor and suggesting that you go ahead and run this car on pikes set in the 1970's and forward. If you're not that much of a stickler for captive service, that is. What do I mean? Read on!
It took me quite a bit of digging around through various Navy websites to find a reasonably definitive history of the station; along the way I discovered the procedure for obtaining a fishing pass (you've got to be connected with the base or the Navy), and information on a "Fear the Pier" 5-K run that took place on June 26 of this year. (Wonder who won?) Anyway, here's the scoop from that location (no longer accessible):
"When a pressing need developed during World War II for an ammunition depot in the greater New York area, a site in Monmouth County, New Jersey was chosen. The location provided two distinct areas. A waterfront location provided ships with a safe and operationally advantageous port to take on ammunition, while an inland storage area, safe from possible submarine bombardment, provided access to commercial rail facilities with lines coming from the west, where the majority of ammunition shipments originated. On August 2, 1943, construction began and in a short time, storage bunkers, a road and rail network, numerous buildings, and a pier complex were built. Named after Rear Admiral Ralph Earle, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance during World War I, the Station was commissioned on December 13, 1943 as the Naval Ammunition Depot Earle. Earle continued to develop after World War II, keeping pace with the changing needs of the Navy, and in 1974 was redesignated the Naval Weapons Station (NWS) Earle, which remains the Station’s name today."The Mainside area, which is located mainly in Colts Neck, is more than 10,000 acres which contains ordnance storage areas and the majority of Earle’s departments and facilities. Mainside is in many ways like a small town with its own police and fire departments, homes, office buildings, restaurants, and recreational facilities. Mainside and the Waterfront area are connected by Normandy Road, a 15-mile military road and rail line.
"The Waterfront area is located on Sandy Hook Bay in Leonardo. The trident-shaped pier complex extends 2.2 miles into Sandy Hook Bay and comprises 2.9 miles of pier/trestle area. Four Fast Combat Support ships, USS Seattle (AOE 3), USS Detroit (AOE 4), USS Supply (AOE 6), and USS Arctic (AOE 8), are homeported at the pier complex. The pier is fully capable of providing ammunition to nearly every class of ship operated by the United States Navy and Coast Guard."
Plying that Normandy Road line and the rest of the trackage of the weapons station were some rather unusual locomotives including some rare Baldwin switchers. They didn't leave the property and I doubt that this car did either. It appears to be subject to captive service, of the most dangerous kind-- explosives! However, the paint job is generic enough to allow a little leeway in the N Scale utilization of this car, just as it enables a stretch backward in the Approximate Time Period.
20446, $9.65 - 40' Single Door Box Car (Youngstown or "Narrow Rib" Door), United States Air Force.
"Stratus" blue with white lettering including Air Force logo on right. Reporting Marks: DAFX 26475. Approximate Time Period: decade of the 1950's. Previous Release: Road Number 26477, July 1998. NOTE: This item has been sold out and discontinued.This item was a fairly fast sellout in its first release. We do know from last year's research that the car is in neither the April 1952 ORER nor the January 1964; that doesn't necessarily mean it didn't exist, but that it didn't necessarily move in interchange service. The '64 book noted that the entire DAFX reporting mark was gone, replaced by a blurb that all cars in military service were being restenciled "DODX" which consolidated Department of Defense equipment. That didn't last, and the DAFX reporting marks returned by 1970. So, in summary, we'll take MTL's word for it when they say the car was built "a few years after the Department of the Air Force was established" in 1947. Come to think of it, that's a bit nebulous too...
And once again in the relentless pursuit of useless trivia-- or
maybe it comes to me, I don't know-- we turn to a recent broadcast
of a vintage episode of the game show "To Tell The Truth" on the
cable channel Game Show Network. For those of you who don't
necessarily participate in this highly cultural diversion (!) the
game works like this: Three people claim to be a specific person
but (obviously) only one is the real McCoy, and two are imposters.
A celebrity panel asks questions of the three contestants to try
to discern which one of the three is the actual person. The
episode to which I refer first aired in 1951 and had as a
challenger one of the graduating class from the Air Force Academy--
the Prior to its "spinoff" as a seperate department, the Air Force
was part of the Army; according to its official website, though,
the idea of the Air Force was proposed all the way back in 1905,
when two inventors from Dublin, Ohio offered to build for the
War Department a heavier than air flying machine. Yep, those
would be the Wright Brothers, who patented the airplane in 1906.
The Signal Corps was the first home for aviators; however, their
first real attempt at supporting combat, at the beginning of
United States involvement in World War I, was not as successful
as they might have preferred. The story goes on from there, of
course, at their website.
20456, $9.65, 40' Single Door Box Car
(Youngstown or "Narrow Rib" Door), United States Army. This reprint, like its predecessor, carries the herald of the
Transportation Corps, which was "officially" organized on
July 31, 1942. But a page on the Army's sprawling website
notes that "the historical background of the Transportation
Corps starts with World War I." The Quartermaster General had
most of the responsibility for getting material to the front lines,
and elsewhere, prior to that time.
Although our ORER accumulation provides no significant insight
into the prototypes of the Air Force and Navy cars above, it does
provide a small ration of info in the April 1952 book. The
series from 24677 to 24681, of five cars, reports for duty
there. They're of 40 foot 6 inch outside length, which is
a rivet counting bit short of the model; and are marked to
carry 80,000 pounds. MTL remarks that the cars were renumbered
in 1958 so it doesn't surprise me that they're not in my
January 1964 ORER.
So you've now got two box cars, two flats, and one tank car
decorated for the Army, and with the Transportation Corps
logo, in fact. The flat car is catalog number 45180 and the
tank car is 65370. Despite relatively quick sales on the
flats and the run on the box car's first release, you should
not have to shell out a bunch of bucks for any of these USAX
cars. At times on eBay they've not even reached their original
list prices, though a small premium is a more realistic
expectation for accumulators that need to fill these in.
39060, $13.30 - 40' Double Sheathed Wood
Boxcar with Vertical Brake Wheel, Santa Fe (AT&SF). You don't need to stretch too far to bring this reprint into
the patriotism and/or military themes that dominate the month's
lineup; the "C.T." after the road number is the tipoff. It
stands for "Columbia Trust" and means that this particular piece
of rolling stock was acquired under the auspices of the United
States Railroad Administration. Hmm, sounds governmental. It is.
Keith L. Bryant Jr., in the book "History of the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe Railway", describes what life was like on the line
while under Federal control from December 1917 to March 1920.
"Operation of the Santa Fe by the USRA produced mixed results,"
he concluded. It probably was to the ATSF's benefit that the
person who ended up overseeing day to day operations of the
USRA was one Edward Chambers, who had once been chair of the
Santa Fe's board of directors. That may have meant mixed
results instead of the disaster that befell some other lines.
Even so, the "rent" paid by the USRA was significantly less than
the line projected it could have taken in as a private carrier
during the boom times of the First World War. In addition, the
line still had to pay taxes, and it was compelled to repair any
company's frieght cars at its shops, which resulted in costs
for maintenance more then doubling from 1916 to 1919. The
labor movement won some important gains during USRA control,
and they kept them after the railroads were returned to the
private sector. The Transportation Act of 1920 was a new
governmental approach to railroad regulation which at least
intended to incorporated the "lessons learned" from the USRA
experience. Which, on balance, wasn't a good experience.
This Columbia Trust boxcar belonged to the series 37001 to
39700, of a whopping 2,670 as listed in the April 1928 ORER.
The "C.T." is called out as part of the number series in that
issue, by the way. The February 1931 book shows 2,656 cars.
The large series is split up by the February 1952 ORER, with
just 305 cars left in the 37000's and none remaining in the
38000's. But I think that the removal of the "C.T." and the
Andrews trucks (new for this iteration) would probably predate
the removal from the roster, so I'm calling the APT closed
at the early 1940's.
65012, $33.00 - A two-pack of 65010,
39' Tank Car, Single Dome, Santa Fe (AT&SF). "They must be playing games," reported the head of the Irwin
Library's main branch-- my dad, that is-- upon looking up these
reprints in his ORERs. "In the 1931 book, there is a series
from 100800 to 100899, and the cars are listed as 32 feet 7 inches
long. But in the April 1952 book, the cars got bigger! They
are 39 foot 5 inches long with an inside length of 35 foot
7 inches. But there are still 100 cars in the series."
OK, so now what do we do for an Approximate Time Period? Well,
I do know that there can be some interesting interpretations of
the built date on a car-- for example, an issue of Rail Model
Journal has a photo of a steel ATSF box car that was rebuilt
from a wood side car-- and carried a built date of 1912! So
we could be looking at a rebuild, a stretch, a new frame, or
a bunch of other ideas. Hopefully, we'll be looking at some
Incremental Information from you Santa Fe experts out there
as well! Well, wherever the ATP starts, it definitely runs
through February 1964, where we find 99 of 100 still listed,
into April 1970, with 87 remaining, and even to April 1981,
with 74 rolling along. In that issue of the ORER the ATSF
boasted 1,090 tank cars-- more than most of the private
owners! The October 1986 listing shows no trace of the
100800 series, though.
15101, $14.50 - 30' Wood Box Car, Denver
and Rio Grande Western. This reprint honors both of the lines through the Rockies that
were part of the Rio Grande. However, both the Moffat Route and
the Royal Gorge Route were principally standard gauge lines, and
this is a narrow gauge car! So let's take a brief look at the
narrow gauge empire of the Rio Grande. There was a line from
Salida on the Royal Gorge Route, winding west to Gunnison and
Montrose, and then northward to rejoin the standard gauge main
line at Grand Junction. Off of this line was a branch to Ridgway
and connection to the legendary Rio Grande Southern to Durango.
From there the Rio Grande picked up again to head to Chama, Antonito
and into New Mexico, and all the way back to the standard gauge
in Eastern Colorado. And, oh, let's not forget the Durango to
Silverton line which still operates today. Talk about a scenic
line! In addition, the Royal Gorge line did start as narrow
gauge as well but was at the 56.5" width between the rails well
before the Approximate Time Period for this car.
Speaking of which, the ORER for April 1928 shows 719 thirty foot
box cars in the series 3000 to 3749. The CDS Railway Equipment
Diagrams book notes that the "Royal Gorge" herald was used
from 1924 to 1936 and the "Moffat Tunnel" herald from 1936
to 1941, at which time the "speed lettering" debuted. So I'm
being conservative with the Approximate Time Period. Narrow
gauge experts, please feel free to expand it.
13515, Marklin Coupler, $13.85; Please see the N Scale car description,
with the exception that the Z scale version has a roofwalk, while the
N Scale version doesn't. So that changes the Approximate Time Period,
in my estimation (read: guess), to a time when there were roofwalks.
Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE):
A reprint this month:
Z SCALE NEW RELEASES:
13515-2, Micro-Trains Coupler, $15.50;
50' Single Door Box Car, United States Navy.
Gray with black
lettering. Road Number: 61-05146. Approximate Time Period: 1950's to 1970's.
NOTE: This item (both versions) has been sold out and discontinued.
Z SCALE REPRINTS:
No releases this month.