Thanks, Mike (there might actually be a couple of interest,
we found another tube in that sequence).
I don't know who has the Pressed Steel drawings - Keith has some photos,
but I tried locating the PSC (and other manuf. drawings) years back - to
no avail. As Steve mentioned, General American and such are another
good target. I've tried contacting them, and received no
reply (a not uncommon result). There are other drawings, past the
era of this list that I've been working on as well.
Some may say "Why" after what I tried to provide today.
The answer is simple - I don't care WHO has them, I want them
accessible. Though some feel the hobby has passed them by, I find
them very useful and...well...to be honest, many are works of art.
A lot of the issues with access will gradually dissipate as we are able
to get the drawings in one place, and, hopefully, in flat files, indexed
and in order. I want to recreate the order SSC had - by
sequence number, within drawer numbers.
Toward that end, we have, as I said, been adding the drawer number to the
drawing metadata. More data is not added until we get the
collections management software, where there are buckets for more.
Right now, and I should have made this clear yesterday - there is more
data being capture than what is shown in that list, but are not in the
list due to portability issues with the database (that is, they don't
port outside of the database well).
We did, thanks to you and another customer, try to locate all of the
freight car drawings from a given series (all the 53nnn) - we have about
scanned some 70 of them, located more (but who needs rivets, hand grabs,
chain, etc.?). We did that in an effort to understand the system
that was used, and our "slice" of the SSC pie (Harrisburg has
the other slice, in terms of drawings).. We hope to add to the
collection data - as Steve mentions, he's working on a SSC master list
that will make many queries like yours, much easier.
If anyone knows of the location of the PSC, BSC or other steam era
freight car drawings or photos, let me know. I want to add the
information and access "rules" to the research
page. Thanks (yes, I know about Mid-Continent's wonderful
pages, and have linked them)...
'
At 09:34 AM 1/24/2020, you wrote:
Thank you for this work,
Bob!
And sharing your reality. From my view of the world you have there,
I find what you have presented very helpful. Using this list, I
have targeted another candidate for drawings and I readily found many of
those you and Steve Hile recently extricated for me. I can see how
what you have done will help find sources quicker. I also know from
past experience that not everything is readily obvious as you dig deeper
for details so some back-and-forth with the customer will likely
always be a part of the search process.
You have an incredible resource and I believe the list you have
established will be helpful for future searches.
Now, if only Pressed Steel Car drawings were so accessible.
Regards from Grove City in western Penna. Mike
Schleigh
Bob Webber
