Ian,
I'm not an SP maven, and I don't want to get into this food fight over SP vs PRR. However, the SP did
maintain a modest fleet of their own mill and other long gondolas, probably enough to fill their own
needs. The SP did serve a number of steel mills in California: Fontana, Torrance, Downey, Pittsburg
(California, and no "h"), South San Francisco, etc. They certainly had a need for mill gons. In addition,
mill gons were frequently used for other long loads, such as treated poles.
Your idea that an SP agent would have grabbed an East Coast gon is certainly possible, but more likely he
would have chosen a home-road car whenever possible.
Anyone who models the SP, or any West Coast road that interchanged with the SP, could probably use a few
SP gons.
Kind regards,
Garth G. Groff
ian clasper wrote:
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To be fair, the back bone of the SP's fleet of Gondolas was the AAR GS
classes of cars (I did take note of Tony's talk on the subject at
Naperville). These cars were used in the same way as the eastern roads used
hopper cars (coal, stone etc plus sugar beet). Most of the cars never
wandered far off system (if at all), never mind across the continent in the
way the Pennsy's fleet did.
If a shipment specifically needed a mill gon, I am certain that there would
be a suitable Pennsy/NYC/B&O etc Gon within the reach of the SP agent, so
why maintain a fleet of cars of your own ?
So folks, we need to look a little closer at the facts before shouting.
Ian Clasper
----- Original Message -----
From: <thompson@...>
To: <STMFC@...>
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 4:25 PM
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: gondolas
Charlie Tapper said:
My comments re: SP's anemic gondola fleet were more or less to point out
that while it is nice to consider SP gons for modeling purposes, for my
purposes the fleet might well as not have existed at all. If you want to
mold a gondola, pick something we can all use.
Hello?? SP had 20% of its cars as gondolas in the early 1950, vs. PRR's
27%. And yes, PRR was far bigger in freight car numbers than any other
railroad, but SP, at around 65,000 cars, was in the top ten of that list.
Let's not hear "anemic" in this case. And BTW, Santa Fe was generally
similar. Whether for your modeling purposes SP "might as well not have
existed" or not, the same is true for Western modelers with P&WV gondolas.
Let's not go there.
Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history
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