Hello Rod,

Now that you have posted photos of your milk car I can answer your
questions a bit more definitively.

1. The conduit found on the roof and ends is strictly for head-end
lighting, as a couple have suggested. It was found on some of the
Abbott's Alderney Dairies cars that ran into Philly, on the Reading
if memory serves, and also on some Freeport Dairy cars that ran
into Chicago. These were among the earliest such cars constructed,
however, all being built in the mid-1920's.

2. The steam line along the side sill was, as I noted earlier,
another early feature limited to certain dairies and roads. Those
known to have utilized suah a line were the Seminole Milk Co. of
Jacksonville, Fla., the Cloverdale Creamery, of New Orleans. LA
and the Wetern Dairy Co. and Hammond Dairy, both of which shipped
into Chicago.

3. As noted previously, I doubt you could find the jacketed steam
lines still in place on any of these cars after the mid-1930's, if
not before. I believe the same could be correctly stated for the
electricl conduit. Thus you might consider removing them for you
1950's era modeling if the collector value of the model does not
matter to you.

4. If you choose to make such modifications there is another you
might consider as well. This is the removal of the roof lifting
lugs above the edge of the roof. I have done this on my HO models
as well as it was found within a year or two after the prototypes
utilizing this feature were constructed that the tanks and other
equipment within the car body were so trouble free that there was
no need to remove the roofs. Thus the original brackets were
replaced with only a plate that did not extend above the roof
attached with the same bolts that held the original brackets. I
don't believe any cars constructed after 1928 utilized the
brackets at all and they disappeared with the first rebuilding in
almost ever case.

Hopefully this further clarification is helpful,

Don Valentine


--- In STMFC@..., "railsnw1" <railsnw@...> wrote:

Rod,

Mystery pipe appears to be a conduit for electricity since it

appears

that those are plugs at the end of the car.

Richard Wilkens

--- In STMFC@..., Rod Miller <rod@> wrote:

Hi Folks,

Four photos of the GPEX car that
I asked about have been uploaded to the files
section.

While taking the photos and being in a little
less of a hurry, I noticed that what I concluded
yesterday were ice hatches [because the car has the
appearance from the side of a
refrigerator car] were the usual house car corner
roofwalks. Donald Valentine commented that milk
had a very high "thermal inertia" and didn't need
to be iced. His comment reminds me of a posting
perhaps here about an experiment where a load of
milk was shipped from Chicago to Florida in the
summer. The milk temperature was up one degree IIRC
after several days in an insulated but not iced car.
If the person who originally posted that information
sees this post, hopefully they will update/correct
what I wrote.

Rod

STMFC@... wrote:

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the STMFC
group.

File : /O Scale GPEX Express Milk Car/GPEX1.jpg
Uploaded by : howmanycats <rod@>
Description : GPEX express milk car, side view. Private road

name.

You can access this file at the URL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFC/files/O%20Scale%20GPEX%

20Express%20Milk%20Car/GPEX1.jpg

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/web/index.htm

lfiles

Regards,

howmanycats <rod@>