Responding to Tim Gilbert:

Mont,

I am unclear of what you mean as a "steady source of loads." Is this an
industry or equivalent? By "regular moves" do you mean specific cars
(e.g. ABC Boxcar #123), or the industry, or do you mean regular
shipments of goods in any suitable car available? If the answer above is

specific cars, then what kind of car - boxcar, gon, hopper, etc., and
what road name and car number?

Tim, As Bill continues to share this info I think we will continue to
see the same TYPES of cars moving from the same shipper to same
consignee transporting the same product - soy bean meal. As I plan my
operating scenario I will want to handle the same types of cars in that
service on a regular basis. I'm only modeling the portion of the moves
that were over the MONON.

There is nothing wrong about modeling "specific" cars which may have
appeared once or sporadically over time on the prototype's line. For
instance, if modeling a line like UP's Sherman Hill, any of the 720,000
different boxcars in the US could have appeared on that line. Most
people's budget including Mike Brock's cannot afford 720,000 different
boxcars. So a selective compression of the model boxcar fleet has to be
done whereby ABC boxcar #123 represents itself plus, at another time ABC

#456, or, perhaps, the neighboring road's DEF #789 if ABC and DEF do not

own enough boxcars in the national boxcar fleet to warrant a separate
model for each road.

Tim, Agreed. Specific cars would be a bonus. One could model a car
based on Bill's records and plop it on the layout at the right place
(interchange with NKP at Frankfort) and take it off after it empties out
and is reloaded toward it home road. Example, NKP interchanges ATSF
1234 to MONON at Frankfort for delivery to a point north toward Chicago.
When empty the car would be loaded for or forwarded empty to Chicago and
into staging. The car might be allowed to wander onto the layout at
some future time representing the entire series of car for that RR.

I like to build freight car models so I won't mind building one that is
not used all the time. Yes, it will have to represent other cars in
that same series that might should up anywhere else on the parts of the
MONON that I am modeling.

I certainly want to make sure my freight trains have all of the known
types of cars carrying the regular moves whether it be the daily
shipment of bean meal, RCA TV cabinets, coke, coal, etc. It is the
single car shipments that will be harder to deal with and may end up
getting cars at random for lack of more specific info.

Bill's data just solved another mystery as what was moving in MONON
freight trains to I can more accurately model them.

Mont Switzer







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