STMFC,
I have sad news to report after hearing from Joe's wife Marjorie that Joe Collias passed away on April 30, 2015, after a brief stay in the hospital.

Visitation for family and friends will be at the Kutis Funeral Home in St. Louis. Arrangements are pending with details to be provided at www.kutisfuneralhomes.com.

Among his many talents, Joe Collias was a prolific photographer of steam locomotives & freight cars. Joe authored numerous books and articles in historical society & railroad publications, He was an exceptional modeler in HO scale & darkroom printer. Many of you will recall the joyous "feeding frenzies" at the Naperville RPM when Joe offered for sale the freight car photos he had printed.

Joe was my very good friend and will be sorely missed.
Regards,
Ed Hawkins

Red Caboose is truly "no more". Intermountain now owns the Red Caboose HO line of tooling. With the sales of the O scale line years ago, and the N scale line earlier this year, RC is now Gone. I am hopeful that their parts availability will remain from Intermountain, as the RC rectangular panel roof is really needed. I also hope that Intermountain will continue with the Red Caboose/IMWX '37 AAR box car, as it is better than the Intermountain's own '37 AAR box car. We shall see.....
-Andy Carlson
Ojai CA

Andy

Another photo shows BLT 12-57 as the date. I assume for tax purposes
these must have been considered to be "new" cars and so they received
new BLT stencils even though the original B-5 is from the 1930's.

Tim O'

Hi,

Am I the only one who can't find any list of the reporting marks that
will be offered for this car? Is it "Hooker Only"?

I'm not very good at identifying the service based upon the fittings
on the dome. Can someone help out with that for this car?

I'm actually looking/searching for models that are appropriate for
crude oil service in the late 40's to early 50's. I think that means
that they would normally be "X" cars and without any "logos" on
them (i.e. all black cars with just lettering).
It's easy to find tanks that are lettered for some oil company or
other - we all seem to relate to ("lean towards?") cars lettered
for the service stations we saw as kids (or see in pics). Those cars
are "after the products have been refined" ... at least that's what
I've been told ... It's also easy to find cars that are "trade marked"
with color schemes. Both of those are fine - they just don't fit
the service that I need to pick up some cars for (a small oil
field that still ships without a pipe line).

If I have it right the BLI models are actually "for" cars that are
in chemical service (or the supply of plants for the same).
- Jim

John (or Ben),



When were these cars rebuilt? I can’t quite make out the built date at the far right of the car. Or would that date have only told when the original B5 was built?



Regards,



Andy Miller



From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...]
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 10:06 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Boxcar With (Way) Off Center Doors





Bob,



That's a former SAL B-5 box car, heavily rebuilt. The idea was to make a very wide opening to load lumber with fork lifts. The doors were offset on each side, by the way. SAL built an experimental car and then rebuilt, I think, ten more cars. Of course in the 60s cars got much bigger so they didn't continue the program. I have more info if you need it--just holler offline.



John Golden

OFallon, IL

Bob,

Morning all;
It took a little longer than I had wished, but the new parts are now listed on the website.
Visit http://yarmouthmodelworks.com/details.php
And have a look at the sill steps for Tangent tank cars, X-29 patch panels(2 styles) and the Kadee ladder drilling template.
Cheers

--
Pierre Oliver
www.elgincarshops.com
www.yarmouthmodelworks.com

what pieces of junk!! i want my money back! how am i supposed to run these
cars on steep grades? :-)

At 09:53 PM 4/30/2015 -0700, you wrote:

This is Seaboard 20203. I’m sure there is a very good reason for this
design. I’d just like to know what the reason is.

I am not familiar with this particular car but it reminds me of the later
B&O "canstock" box cars which had the doors offset to the ends. This had
something to do with being able to load and unload steel coils for the tin
can industry and it allowed for increased capacity. On this SAL car, the
door guides aren't long enough for both doors to slide all the way down, so
it looks as if one or the other door area could be open but not both.

Andy

Bob & Group,

Hi folks,

A few weeks ago I mentioned that last November marked our 50th year in business and that we would be
celebrating with a sale of Westerfield kits once they were all listed. That has been done and the list is available
by emailing newrail@.... As I understand things almost all Westerfield kits now sell for $35 each.
The cost for the listed kits, some 90 of them given that some are available in multiples, is $28 each. Shipping
is $6 for one car, $8 for two cars and $10 for three or more cars. This price is good on the cars listed only and
only for those cars in stock at the time your order is received. The sale for the Westerfield cars will last until
30 June this year.

Happy modeling, Don Valentine
New England Rail Service, Inc.