I have a Sunshine Port Huron and Detroit 7'8" Mather boxcar kit.  The kit came with MRS decals rather than PH&D.  Does anyone have a set of PH&D, C&EI or C&IM decals that they are will to sell of trade for the MRS decals?  Thanks

Chuck Cover
Santa Fe, NM

Circa 1960 photos from the Hagley Digital Archives.

http://digital.hagley.org/PRR_22173?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=1436ce8ab65b17dd9f25&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=32&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=19

http://digital.hagley.org/PRR_22169?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=87ae45d5522ad37765e0&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=43&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=10

It appears neither car is on the expected clean-out track, that is, a track with an elevated rail to allow debris to slide out of the car.

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA

https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/12296332025/in/photostream/

Interesting series of photos of a car on fire.

Mike Turner

MP-Z35

Circa 1955 photo from the Hagley Digital Archives:

http://digital.hagley.org/PRR_20735?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=a78db4790871f32d894d&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=48&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=23

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA

Raw sugar (brown) from southern Louisiana sugar mills was shipped in tired 40' boxcars to refineries in New Orleans to be reprocessed into white sugar.   Loaded in both ends, the doors were often left open or missing.  Switchmen tended to avoid being close to the cars as they attracted bees.  Many were stuck in liquefied sugar in the doorways.  I saw this in the early '70s.     

On Nov 24, 2018, at 8:43 PM, main@RealSTMFC.groups.io wrote:

2a. Re: Two Questions About Paint Primers
From: Benjamin Hom <b.hom@att.net>
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2018 11:37:57 EST

RJ Dial wrote:
"I don't mate the trucks up until the end (other than when I install the coupler boxes to make sure of height alignment)."
Seems like a backwards approach. I work out weight, coupler, and truck mounting early in assembly as there's less impact on the model at that point than later trying to re-engineer a model that's almost finished. I then take off the trucks and (as needed) the couplers and reinstall them later.

Precisely what I do...I build the basic body with no details then work out the 'mechanical' parts of the trucks and couplers. I try very hard to not seal the couplers in draft gear but to make them removable or to use the Kadee draft gear outright. For painting I will use 'shop trucks' or some other way of supporting the model. I do like the model supports I've seen in this thread too. But getting the trucks and couplers worked out before detailing is essential in my methodologies.


Craig Zeni
Cary NC

The budget minded Mather Company dod in fact use bent metal rods to form their SILL STEPS. The only stirrups I know of in transportation are on horse saddles.

The Klasing handbrake was geared and that is the mechanism you are seeing. There have been a few articles about the Mather cars in the modeling press thru the years.

Bill Welch

Seth,

Yes, these are definitely the PS1s that were later marked DODX. When this happened, I don't know. My 1958 ORER still has these cars listed under USNX. A very interesting photo. Thank you.

Yours Aye,


Garth Groff  🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Not a builders photo, but a photo at the builder. 

https://flic.kr/p/jJBqLk

A number of cars line up on the delivery track at Pullman’s Michigan City Indiana plant taken from a train on Monon’s Michigan City Branch. Note the photo is reversed. From the John W Barriger III National Railroad Library. 

Seth Lakin 
Michigan City IN

Hello, 
    Am collecting information on a possible modeling project of a Mather Patent 40' single sheathed boxcar in S scale. A friend sent me pics which show the bulky looking vertical brake wheel housing. Does this contain a ratcheting mechanism for the shaft? I'm sure nothing like this exists in 1:64th and would have to be represented by shaped styrene. I also noticed the round rather than flat stirrups steps.
     Bud Rindfleisch

Hi Lester and Dan.

 Pretty sure there is a photo of the original car in one of Teds books,  The Steam Era Reference series for boxcars and auto cars.  I can look later tonight.

Scott McDonald

Interesting topic, with a lot of arms and legs!

In 1912 the Milwaukee built in its shops a number of NEW wood low-slung end-bunker ice express reefers for its new Pacific Extension, and they were specifically marked “For Fish Service Only”, and they were assigned to the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound. Some had bunkers only at one end.

These may well have been the very first (or nearly-so) express reefers of the classic type with passenger trucks, steam lines, etc. That the fish did not contaminate them too much is demonstrated in the Asahel Curtis photos showing the new electrics not too many years hence pulling a long string of them full of silk! They lasted into the ‘30s and some into the ‘40s (or so) in milk and other express service. Notably, one was a regular on the mixed train between Sioux City, IA, Mitchell, and Aberdeen, SD for which some photos exist. Photos are otherwise *rare*. The relatively high pitch of the roof and the high level hatch stands are obvious when -unintentionaly- they were included in builders photos of the Milwaukee’s 1934 HIAWATHA coaches. I have noted one -just one- photo of one of cars out on the main line toward the end of steam, trailing a F6a 4-6-4 pulling the all-stops Twin Cities-Chicago day train.

Plans are relatively easy to obtain inasmuch as AC Kalmbach must have fallen in love with them. He made certain car plans were included in almost all of his wonderful (then and ….now) Car and Locomotive Cyclopedias of the ‘40s.

Quite a few photos of the much later Milwaukee’s Olympian and Olympian Hiawatha show a wood NP express reefer at the very head end -always NP, and never Milwaukee.- presumably fish. This must have been a regular shipment, and I speculate that it may well have originated in Hoquiam. The Milwaukee used to also go to Hoquiam, but if memory serves, it was at least on trackage rights, perhaps the NP?

The Milwaukee also shipped to Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia tanked LIVE fish (harvested carp for Kosher use) in baggage cars with attendants from Lansing, Iowa, and Madison, WI in both its own cars, and others (notably B&O and NYC). It also shipped live carp (iced down as REA shipments to a very low metabolic state) on racks from Lansing to Denver, CO. I have heard similar live shipments originated on the CNW.

The comment about CN’s experiments with their 8 hatch cars for fresh fish shipment brings up the possibility, or at least a thread of one, that they might have been thinking of shipping the products of the prolific Manitoba lakes Walleye fishery to the US midwest cities where these fish were then and still now a delicacy.

It would seem that none of this would have involved frozen fish in any manner.


Denny.


Denny S. Anspach, MD
Sacramento, CA 95864

Gary,

Here is a short story on the Naval Ammunition Depot - Bangor along with a photo of some of the boxcars.

Rich Wilkens

http://www.historylink.org/File/20541

Used to be a bunch of those at the Bangor Submarine Base near Bremerton, WA. Some had been modified with rollup doors. Originally the Bangor base was Naval Ammunition Depot - Bangor and it had many protected spurs that were two cars long and had concrete and dirt walls on three sides so that in case of an explosion the blast would go up.

Rich Wilkens

The appears to be from this series according to the Canada Southern web site. The blocking appears sufficient, but I don't know what the rules were. It was not necessarily a safety hazard - Bob Witt

652-B

DSI - 1936

NYC 57100-57599

40'6" ALL STEEL AUTO BOX

3908

40

12'6"

500

1936-1961

REBUILT FROM LOTS 328-B, 352-B, 357-B, 358-B & 361-B