There is a photo in the Charles Winters collection of a Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern Mather box car repainted and reweighed at Mather's Chicago Ridge shops in March, 1955, apparently at the time the car was leased to the FtDDM&S (as there is no listing for 14000 series cars in the 1/55 or earlier ORERs). There is also no listing for these cars in the 10/58 ORER, so the lease period was apparently brief. Can anyone with ORER issues between those dates confirm how many cars Mather leased to the FDtDM&S and what the exact number series was?
The series is 14001-14010 (10 cars). They first appeared in the July 1955 issue -- there was obviously a bit of a time lag in their reporting to the ORER as they didn't appear in the April 1955 issue despite the March 1955 reweigh date. These cars disappeared sometime between the January 1958 and July 1958 issues.
-- Ian Cranstone Kanata, Ontario, Canada lamontc@...
