Again from Moody’s  Steam Railroads 1946, principal commodities:

1. Wheat:                                       53,132 carloadings originating on NP and 2,735 carloadings received from connections
2. Apples, fresh:                              8,126 and 646 received
3. Potatoes, other than sweet:  10,825 and 1,783 received
4. Cattle and calves:                     17,616 and 2,357 received
5. Soft coal:                                    24,721 and 50,568 received
6. Logs:                                           66,618 4,902 received
7. Lumber, shingles and laths:    43,851 and 29,721 received
8. Petrol, oils refined etc.:             8,350 and 12,815 received
9. Automobiles (passenger):            115 and 496 received
10. Canned food products:             8,327 and 6,292 received
11. Sugar (beet or cane):                1,871 and 728 received
12. Iron & Steel 5^th class:               4,174 and8,370 received
13. Cement, natural or Port.         3,553 and 2,804 received and
14. Veneer and built-up wood:     3,901 and 90 received.

  There are distortions due to WWII, esp. the automobile category.  I clearly need to have more foreign soft coal hoppers. 

Gary Laakso

Northwest of Mike Brock  

When I served in the SP Law Dept, I had access to the Moody’s Manuals in the Finance Department and this is the data from one of the Manuals.  There is a table on tonnage but this is from the carloadings section:

Originating carloads first followed by carloads received from connections:

1. Wheat:                                    47,416 carloads originated and 2,396 received from connections
2. Flour Wheat:                          12,946 originated and 1,301 received
3.  Apples, fresh:                       14,588 and 540 received
4. Potatoes other than sweet: 24,346 and 1,883 received
5. Cattle and calves:                    8,852 and 1,649 received
6. Soft coal:                                10,717 and 43,042 received
7. Iron ore:                               305,488 and 13,380 received
8. Lumber, Shingles and laths: 37,878 and 25,062 received
9. Petrol, oils , refined etc.:      27,878 and 14,680 received
10. Automobiles (passenger):       1,508 and 8,834 received
11. Sugar (cane and beet):            1,838 and 1,028 received
12. Fuel, road & pet res. Oils:       4,929 and 5,403 received
13. Beverages:                                 1,157 and 2,706 received
14. Canned food products:            1,868 and 3,089 received
15. Cement, nat. or Portland:        9,971 and 3,940 received
16. Gravel and Sand:                       5,101 and 72 received*
17. Barley and rye:                       12,228 and 308 received. 

       *It was 15,397 carloads in 1939, so likely dam construction underway at that time

   Gary Laakso

   Northwest of Mike Brock

1 of the photos in my kit’s instructions was a slide of a 41’ flat I shot in Lynchburg VA in the mid-80s.  It still wore brown paint with small Roman lettering (pre-1958/59).  The only difference was a 900000-series MOW number stenciled over the revenue number.  It was dwarfed by a Pettibone rubber-tired crane sitting on its deck.  This was the basis for suggesting to paint the car “boxcar red”.  Not until last year did I find a slide (attached) showing a 41’ car wearing brown paint and an experimental Roman font (see paragraph below).  Despite the dirt, the brown clearly shows thru.  Combined with the lettering, I’d say this car was painted and stenciled around 1958-59.

I have diesel stenciling diagrams with August 1957 revisions stating the color change from green to black but retaining the small lettering (which was changed when the Tuxedo scheme appeared a few years later).  The freight car block font we’re used to seeing didn’t start appearing on freight cars until 1959 with delivery of 4000-series covered hoppers.  Silverside gons, built 1960, carried the same style font, just different colors (Vermillion, green, white and black have been documented).  Experimental block lettering appeared on cars in 1958-59, easily distinguishable from the final font that appeared in 1959 as noted above.

Jim King

www.smokymountainmodelworks.com