I have finished a Branchline Trains wood Union Refrigerator Transit Lines ventilated Refrigerator URTX 87292.  On the car I installed a AB brake system replacing the K system in the kit along with other upgrades.  If you are interested, photos and writeup of building and finishing URTX 87292 are now on my blog I have to share photos and writeup of modeling projects on my Minneapolis & Northland Railroad Company (M&N).  If you would like to take a look please do at the following link:

http://mnrailroadcab100.blogspot.com/

Lester Breuer

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• 303ABABD-C918-4658-A9BF-D6A45AA9C0A8.jpeg

On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 06:17 PM, Eric Hansmann wrote:

http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-photo/erielack-05-26-19/X6994.jpg

Well that photo certainly makes clear the amount of pitch of the loading dock. Look at the piles of boxes on the dock, and how out of plumb they are sitting.

Now that we can see the whole arrangement, I wonder if that isn't the oil house for the whole facility. Back in those days the philosophy was drainage rather than spill containment, and that pitch would certainly have any spills draining out onto the ground rather than pooling on the floor. Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton has preserved a DL&W oil house that they use as a book store; it's one of the few original buildings on the site. I recall it has a loading dock, but I don't recall the pitch of the floor, nor can I find a photo of it.

Dennis Storzek 

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dennis Storzek
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2019 1:35 PM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] (Not A Freight Car) Slanted Loading Dock

On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 06:17 PM, Eric Hansmann wrote:

http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-photo/erielack-05-26-19/X6994.jpg

Well that photo certainly makes clear the amount of pitch of the loading dock. Look at the piles of boxes on the dock, and how out of plumb they are sitting.

Now that we can see the whole arrangement, I wonder if that isn't the oil house for the whole facility. Back in those days the philosophy was drainage rather than spill containment, and that pitch would certainly have any spills draining out onto the ground rather than pooling on the floor. Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton has preserved a DL&W oil house that they use as a book store; it's one of the few original buildings on the site. I recall it has a loading dock, but I don't recall the pitch of the floor, nor can I find a photo of it.

Dennis Storzek 

----- Original Message -----

From: Ed Hawkins

To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io

Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2019 1:00 PM

Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] SRIX Refrigerator Cars

On May 30, 2019, at 9:46 AM, Steve and Barb Hile <shile@...> wrote:

Apparently Safety Car Heating and Lighting operated a small fleet of Safety Refrigeration reefers with SRIX marks in the 1930's.  Has anyone seen a photo of such?  We ran into some Pullman drawings from lot 5457 yesterday at IRM.

Steve,

Pullman Lot 5457 was for 50 cars, SRIX 101-150. A side-view builder photo of SRIX 101, built 10-29, was published on p. 191 of the 1931 Car Builders’ Cyclopedia. Drawings also appear on pages 190-192. 

Side & end views of SRIX 138, built 1-30, were published on p. 112-113 of the book Great Yellow Fleet - photos credited to the Smithsonian Institution. 

Regards,

Ed Hawkins

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Dennis Storzek
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2019 3:20 PM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] (Not A Freight Car) Slanted Loading Dock

On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 10:15 AM, Donald B. Valentine wrote:

From a second look I think you are right about only two truss rods on the DL&W boxcar,

I disagree, I think iy is a four truss rod car, and we can only see the near side rods. The inner rods are quite close to the center sills, as evidenced by the placement of their terminating nuts on the striker casting, and therefore are quite far from the outer rods. If uou look carefully under the car you can see the brake cylinder on the near side of the center sills, and the queenpost on the inner truss rod is quite close behind the brake rod that that runs to the lever on the near end of the brake cylinder. We can only see halfway under the car.

I also don't think the car has a steel centersill. If the car had been improved with steel sills, they would have included the draft sills, indeed one common improvement before the advent of steel center sills was steel replacement draft sills, as the draft sills tended to be the weakest part of the underframe. The construction visible at the end of the car still clearly has wood sills; the ends show, bolted below that cast striker, with the drawbar carry iron bolted to the bottom of the sills.

That end is a proprietary item, shown in the 1922 CBC. Given that there is no initials above the number, I bet the CBC illustration of of a DL&W car.


Dennis Storzek

When built, these special cars were seen as replacements for the old-style automobile cars, which were much more cumbersome to load and unload. CN had 25 75 foot cars built in late 1956 (CN 570400-570424), and 50 more followed in early 1959 (CN 570425-570474), along with 75 56 foot cars (CN 570700-570774). In the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, these cars were used extensively by CN to deliver newly built cars, and were clearly marked “not to be interchanged off of CN lines in Canada". When the industry opted for auto racks instead, CN then acquired a large fleet of bilevel and trilevel racks between 1962 and 1965, which rendered these unique bilevel automobile cars surplus — it would appear that they did not mix well with the newer autoracks, but likely worked in blocks in service to specific points only. For example, an aerial photo of Winnipeg’s East Yard taken in 1968 shows several of the 56 foot cars at an unloading ramp.

As part of the 1960s CN renumbering, the 75 foot cars were renumbered to CN 730000-730073 and the shorter cars to CN 720000-720069, with some subsequently renumbered 720100-720139 in 1974-75.

During the 1960s, CN experimented with a number of other uses for these cars: one was converted to a bilevel stock car in 1965 (CN 179000, later CN 820000), and some of the 56 foot cars found themselves in a dedicated Oshawa, Ontario to Newfoundland narrow gauge service in 1971 (as CN 15501-15509). The following year, these dedicated cars were repainted in the famous cutaway auto logo and assigned to Auto-With-You service (CN 9500-9507), in which passengers could have their automobiles travel with them on the same train. There was an earlier version called Car-Go-Rail, in which the car would move by fast freight to be delivered after the passenger train’s arrival.  A number of these 56 foot cars (including the stock car conversion) were later converted in 1975 for auto rack service in Newfoundland narrow gauge service (CN 18020-18034), and were heavily modified with the complete removal of sides and roof above the upper deck, and large holes cut in the sides of the lower deck. A few surviving 56 foot cars were converted to OCS service in 1987, at least one with large roll up doors cut into their sides (CN 72026 was the former CN 9503, still lettered with the cutaway auto scheme), and some may remain on the roster today.

When Auto Train began operation, the longer 74 foot cars were first leased, and subsequently sold to Auto Train – I suspect the date of sale was in 1973, as CN continued to list them in the ORER up until that point. Only 5 of these longer cars were retained by CN.

CN modellers in HO scale have been spoiled over the years: Walthers released the 1956 version some years ago, Bachmann did the 1959 version many years ago as part of their Auto Train set (albeit cruder and with hand brake recesses on both sides of the car) – and did release a CN version, but with the Auto-With-You cutaway paint that was only applied to the shorter cars (Stafford Swain upgraded one of these cars which was featured in a RMC Protofile feature back in the early 1980s); and Sylvan did the shorter 56 foot car in resin. Unfortunately, none of these models is currently available.

Ian Cranstone

Osgoode, Ontario, Canada