Dennis,

I have the PM book in my hand and look at the same company diagram, and
yes, it says "Murphy". But as Fritz said, "Murphy" was often used pretty
loosely...

When I was doing the research several years ago on the origin of the
Piedmont & Northern's 1100-series cars, I found reference to these
vertically-ribbed ends as "Vulcan" ends. I hope you'll forgive me but
after 4 or 5 years passed since I was doing that research, I can't
remember where it was that I saw that. But it is possible I'm in error
with regards to the nomenclature of the PM ends, and that the Vulcan
reference was about the vertically-ribbed ends on some WLE cars (which are
admittedly quite different from the ones on the PM cars).

But as I can't recall the source, that's about equivalent to a wild-ass
guess in academic terms. That said, it doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong,
nor does it mean that the diagram sheet is wrong. Either is, IMO,
possible, which is why I asked the question I did about whether car
builders had a preference for certain parts suppliers, and whether this
preference may have had influence on what the railway ultimately decided.

If it were to turn out that Western Steel Car Corp. had a preference for
getting parts from Chicago-Cleveland, then I would think it fairly
reasonable to assume that the PM 85000-series cars had the
Chicago-Cleveland ends. Given that the otherwise almost identical
86000-series cars built by Pressed Steel had Hutchins ends, I don't think
the PM had a set-in-stone preference for what manufacturer supplied the
steel ends, so long as they were steel ends. But again, I'm just guessing
here - and a point against my case is that the diagram for the
86000-series cars indicates Hutchins ends by name.

But to conclude, I wasn't making any assertions, just passing on what I'd
read/heard, and asking my own questions to go along with it.

Frank Valoczy
Vancouver, BC

soolinehistory wrote: