Ed, I should have looked at my RP-CYC 5 and 8 for the NYC 174000
series cars and the B&O cars. Looking at my Intermountain PS-1 (NYC
175021), it has the Crossbearers set up for an eight foot door. This
would involve getting a suitable 8 footer, moving the rain shield
1', and extending the bottom door track. The top track is already
set up for the bigger door. This would leave the "Pacemaker Freight
Service" logo slightly off center.

What kind of door and CUF did these cars have? I didn't find the PS-
1s in any of the RP-CYCs. (About the time I do all this, Kadee will
probably do the car.)

Any suggestions for the "Pacemaker Freight Service " logo? It looks
like the other white lettering and black backed herald can be gotten
from Micro scale. Any suggestions for the red and gray?

Thanks,
Bill McCoy




scushio"bottom de'`1--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Ed Hawkins
<hawk0621@s...> wrote:

On Friday, January 14, 2005, at 07:59 AM, Bill McCoy wrote:

I have one of the 1st run Intermountain NYC "Pacemaker" red and

gray

PS-1s with the 6' door. At Naperville last fall Ed Hawkins

covered

tthese cars in his box car presentation and all cars pictured

had 7'

doors and may have been something other than a PS-1. What is the
correct prototype car? In the persentation there was discussion

of

white vs. black data lettering for interline vs. local online
service. Which is which? The hardware appeared to be black. Are
decals and paint available to paint one of these cars from a BL
postwar or Red Caboose ACF 7" door car? I expect the

Intermountain

car will be on the sell block shortly?

I guess this also carries over to the B&O "Sentinal" and "Time
Saver" cars. All pictures show 7" door openings and that seems to
take out the 1937 AAR offered by Nixon Enterprises. There's a

great

new "Time Saver" decal set out by Microscale so that can be

modeled

if the Prototype is wrong. No "Sentinal" decals seem to be

offered.

Bill McCoy

Bill,
The NYC cars I presented at Naperville last fall were 10'-0" IH

postwar

AAR box cars having 6' door openings (not 7'). The correct

prototype

car can be cobbled from various InterMountain parts, using their

1937

AAR car body with 10-panel riveted sides, Murphy panel roof, AAR
underframe, and 3/4 Improved Dreadnaught ends. I'm really not sure

what

ends InterMountain offers that can be used for this model. The end

they

offer for the GN 12-panel car has the thin top rib that the NYC

cars

didn't have. Without getting into detailed specifics, this covers

the

basics. Martin Lofton also offers some postwar 10' IH box cars

that

might be able to be used for the NYC Pacemaker cars.

NYC had one small group of 25 PS-1s (175000-175024) built 1954

with 8'

door openings and cushioned underframes that were painted in the
Pacemaker scheme. If InterMountain makes a NYC PS-1 with 6' door
openings painted in Pacemaker red and gray colors, it is bogus.

Some of the B&O cars I discussed had 7' wide door openings.
Regards,
Ed Hawkins

List:

Here is an update to my earlier post. This was taken from the online
Baltimore Sun regarding the fire. It looks like the train warehouse was
not involved. Not that Life-Like needs more problems than they already
have!

Tom Olsen

5-alarm fire burns warehouse
By Laura Vozzella
Sun Staff
Originally published January 15, 2005

A five-alarm blaze tore through a Northwest Baltimore warehouse filled
with foam picnic coolers yesterday, destroying a turreted turn-of-the-
century building that once powered and stored city cable cars.

The blaze broke out about 12:30 p.m. in the historic Baltimore Traction
Co. building, which took up a city block at Druid Hill Avenue and
Retreat Street.

Four workers for Life-Like Products, which used the building to store
polystyrene coolers, were unloading a tractor-trailer filled with boxes
of coolers when one of them saw flames in a storage area.

"I ran back to the truck and said, 'The room's on fire,'" said Maurice
Brown, 20. He and his father, also an employee, tried to douse the
flames with extinguishers but soon fled.

"We tried," Brown said. "It was too overpowering."

Soon flames roared through the building, and billowing black smoke could
be seen from miles away.

The four employees - the only people known to have been in the building
- escaped unhurt, and no firefighters were injured, city and company
officials said.

But firefighters came close to disaster when the roof of the structure
collapsed, officials said.

When they arrived at the scene, about a dozen firefighters entered the
building and several others took to the roof. They soon determined that
the roof was too weak and were ordered by supervisors to come down, said
Division Chief Theodore Saunders of the city fire marshal's office.

"Conditions deteriorated rapidly and almost simultaneously," Saunders
said. "The guys inside heard the rumblings and they got out."

"We were lucky today," he added.

The cause of the fire was not immediately determined and neither was the
dollar figure for damage, officials said yesterday.

It took about three hours to bring the fire under control, with about
200 firefighters, paramedics, commanders and support staff at the scene.
About 60 firetrucks and other apparatus were called to the building,
which at 55,000 square feet was about the size of a modern supermarket.

Mayor Martin O'Malley came to the scene in the Penn-North neighborhood,
not far from Druid Hill Park and the Maryland Zoo.

"It's sad to see a nice old building be destroyed, but sometimes in the
wake of something like this, it can allow for someone to come in and
develop the area - and not just a piece of it - but the whole block,"
O'Malley said. "It's definitely an area we are looking at improving.
Some new construction has already begun nearby, it's near the park, and
we can certainly do much better than what's here now."

As smoke and flames engulfed the stately, brick-and-brownstone building,
dozens of residents from surrounding rowhouses were drawn outside - some
out of curiosity, others out of fear that they were not safe in their
homes.

"I looked out and saw smoke coming from the big building," said Davone
Ellerby, who lives across Druid Hill Avenue. "Then there was this big,
loud boom. Something blew up and flames were shooting out the top of the
building.

"I started feeling heat here [inside the house], so I told everybody,
'Let's go out back,'" said Ellerby, who was with his mother and cousin.

Beyond the danger of the fire itself, the burning polystyrene did not
pose any health hazards for neighbors, Saunders said. "It's no more
toxic than any other combustible material when it burns," he said.
Built between 1889 and 1891, the building still bore the Baltimore
Traction Co. sign from the days when it was a car barn and powerhouse
for the city's short-lived cable car system. Cables in the basement
powered cars that ran on streets from 1891 to 1896, when service was
electrified.

Life-Like Products used the building to store its coolers, some
emblazoned with Baltimore Ravens and other sports logos, that are made
at a plant in Brooklyn and marketed under the name Lifoam, said Herb
Bank, chief financial officer.

The company also has operations in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia
and Illinois, according to the Life-Like Web site.

Sun staff writers Jill Rosen, Kelly Brewington, Jacques Kelly and
Frederick N. Rasmussen contributed to this article.

Hello Ted
Are these still available? Please advise.
Thanks!
Len


--- Ted Culotta <tculotta@speedwitch.com> wrote:

What follows is an update to my message about the
Soo diagram book
(description below) that I posted last week. I was
successful in
obtaining it for a $250 bid (no surprise in that!)
My offer to provide
copies to members of the list to help defray the
costs still stands.
IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY indicated your interest and
would like a copy,
please let me know OFF LIST (tculotta at speedwitch
dot com.) The cost
is $25 plus $3.90 Priority Mail. I can accept
payment via paypal or
via mail. I will provide the payment info after you
contact me off
list.

The diagram book is almost 200 pages long and
contains cars built
between 1936 and 1981, according to the seller.

Thanks for the bandwidth.

Regards,
Ted Culotta

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250

I have an oven that I use to cure the castings that never gets above about 150 degrees, so I just leave the casting in until I remember it's there. Normally about 15 minutes is right. I wouldn't microwave it. - Al

Gentlemen;
In the February issue of RMC on page 110 in the section entitled VANISHED PROTOTYPES by Kieth Wills, is a ref to a WW2 era Navy helium car with just 3 large helium tanks.
He states that a kit was produced of it at one time by Vanden Boom (?) but not sure of the scale.
Anyways, anybody know about this second "version" of this helium car?? Ant pix, data available??
Earl Myers
Canton District PRR, 1944

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, larry kline <lndkline@v...> wrote:
There are 35 photos of PRR hoppers in the PRR Harrisburg yard. The
majority of the photos in the Charles collection are yard shots that
show one car along with part of the two adjacent cars.

Isn't it likely that the photographer would skip over cars that were
similar to the ones he already photographed?

Out of curiosity, what size negatives are in the collection? Some
types of cameras used film carried in magazines which limits the
number of exposures which can be taken each day.

I've always wondered if some photographers skipped over cars that
were really beat up in favor of ones with good lettering.

There are company photos of really beat up reefers in the SRFD book.
I can't recall seeing many cars in that condition in photos taken by
enthusiasts.

Ed

Al, I agree with you! We are trying to make this way to complicated. Getting
control of an ordnary kitchen oven so you have an accuracte 150 degree reading
is not exactly rocket science. I bake almost ALL my flat resin kit pieces
before assembly because very few are TOTALLY flat. It makes assembly a lot easier
and if you have control of the oven it is not a big deal.
Paul Lyons
Laguna Niguel, CA

Tim Gilbert wrote

My knowledge of freight car statistics of the modern era is limited to
the acquisition (for a buck) of a 1990's Conrail Annual Statistical
Report. There freight car miles are split into three lines: - one,
Loaded Car Miles of RR owned cars; two, Empty Car Miles of RR owned
cars; and three, Total Car Miles of Privately Owned Cars. I forget the
numbers, but the Empty Car Miles were almost equal to Loaded Car Miles.
This 50-50 relationship of RR owned cars indicates to me that cars when
unloaded were returned to their loading point empty. There was no back
haul, nor was there any routing of the reloaded car on a divergent route.

Tim

An obvious cause is the reduced percentage of general purpose box cars
as a percentage of all freight cars. Plain old XM's are less than 5% of
the total nowadays. Practically all other cars are private, or would be
contaminated by a different load, or are specially equipped or have no
appropriate local customers (e.g insulated box cars carrying canned
goods to New England, where there are very few shippers). I know that
Conrail (and the others) had special backhaul rates to try to reload
some of these cars, but there just isn't enough demand for it. Even
intermodal traffic from China for example, is largely one-way. Those
container ships bring high value merchandise and return with used
cars, scrap paper, scrap metal, and empty containers.

Tim

Greg,

I believe you are trying to equate freight car utilization principles of
today with those of the late steam era (1940-1960), and I don't think
you can.

My knowledge of freight car statistics of the modern era is limited to
the acquisition (for a buck) of a 1990's Conrail Annual Statistical
Report. There freight car miles are split into three lines: - one,
Loaded Car Miles of RR owned cars; two, Empty Car Miles of RR owned
cars; and three, Total Car Miles of Privately Owned Cars. I forget the
numbers, but the Empty Car Miles were almost equal to Loaded Car Miles.
This 50-50 relationship of RR owned cars indicates to me that cars when
unloaded were returned to their loading point empty. There was no back
haul, nor was there any routing of the reloaded car on a divergent route.

In contrast, the range of the percent loaded car miles in the 1940-60
period was between 61.4% - 67.0%, or the ratio of empty car miles to
loaded car miles was in the range of 0.49:1 - 0.63:1. That the ratio was
less than 1:1 indicates that freight cars were reloaded.

Who decided which RR-owned cars to load? In the modern era, it would
seem that is assumed before hand that RR owned cars would be returned to
their loading point empty - TRAINS had an article about freight car
utilization which stated that cars were acquired to serve a specific
customer for a specific term. I am not in a position to dispute that
conclusion; I can only imply from the article and the 1:1 empty to
loaded car mile ratio that cars were effectively leased to either the
shipper or the consignee with no possibility of diversion after the car
left the shipper unless there was a route detour caused by wreck,
congestion or weather.

In the 1940-1960, the decision for what cars to load was basically done
at the local agent, trainmaster level - sometimes even lower at the
freight conductor or clerk level for RR owned cars. The superintendents
may have thought they were in control, but they raised hell with the
lower levels if a shipper was spurned on account of some policy he or
his superior established. (Most privately owned cars were loaded on the
orders of the owner with the exception of RR owned or controlled reefers
- Tony Thompson tells stories about how the PFE screamed when the
eastern RR's "confiscated" their reefers.)

Most of the RR owned cars of the 1940-60 era were free rollers - some
types more than others. The itinerary of CIL #1 between June 13th,
1947 to June 6th, 1948 as published on pages 56-57 of the September
1948 issue of TRAINS is an example of a free roller - #1 traveled about
27,000 miles of which only about 1,000 miles were when empty. It was
loaded a minimum of 32 times and traveling on 39 roads. OK, #1's
itinerary was extreme - the average boxcar traveled about 22,000 miles
in 1947 of which 20% were empty and 80% loaded; the average boxcar's
annual carloading was in the 25 times range.

Reloading cars made sense economically. If no reloading was done, the
number of freight cars required to carry the annual carloadings would be
about 22-34% more than the average 1.9 million cars on line per year in
the US in the 1940-1960 period. These estimated 22-34% more cars would
have required not only investment in new cars, but investment in
increased capability to handle such an increase in car volume in the
yards as well as over the road, and, those cost big money. The
alternative in not making this investment would have been drastic not
only to the railroads, but also the economy. Reloading free rollers made
a lot of sense at the time. During WW II, there is no way the railroads
could have furnished the services they did without having free rollers.

No wonder that the First Rule of the Code of Car Service Rules-Weight
was "Home cars shall not be used for the movement of traffic beyond the
limits of the home road when the use of other suitable cars under these
rules is practical." Railroads would have taken more of a hit than they
actually did.

After the War, we can see the germs of the modern freight car
utilization begin through the decrease of the percent loaded car miles
of the sundry car types which were published in what Chris Barken calls
the GREEN BOOK as per the following table & commentary on page 154 of
Kent Healy's PERFORMANCE OF US RR'S SINCE WW II (Vantage Press, 1985):

Percent Loaded Freight Car Miles
Car Type 1948/49 1956/57 1961/62 1968 1972
Boxcars 76.0% 73.5% NA 64.5% 58.0%
Box - Gen'l Serv.NA NA 70.0% 65.0% 59.5%
Box - Spec. NA NA 58.0% 53.0% 50.5%
Gondolas NA 60.0% NA 56.0% 53.0%
Hoppers-Open NA 54.0% NA 52.5% 52.5%
Hoppers-Covered NA 47.0% NA 49.0% 49.5%
Tot Hop & Gons 57.0%
Reefers 61.5% 58.0% NA 59.0% 56.5%
Tanks Cars 50.0% 49.0% NA 48.0% 51.0%
Flats - Gen'l 64.5% 60.0% NA 55.5% 51.0%
Flats - TOFC - - NA 75.5% 68.0%
Total 64.8% 63.1% NA NA NA

I will leave it to others to analyze the data after 1960. After all, it
is not the province of the STMFC.

Tim Gilbert


tgregmrtn@aol.com wrote:

Charles,
I did receive your scan. Great photo and will be used as do the restoration. I just didn't see your comment re the orange dome. Sorry 'bout that. Where's me glasses??
Tom

Tim,

The majority of MEC series 6500-6749 stayed on home rails under new
numbers. Between 1961 and 1967 28 cars were insulated for woodpulp
service and renumbered 2119-2146. Sometime between 1969 and 1971 199
of the remaining cars were sold and leased back as 5000-5199. That
leaves 23 cars unaccounted for.

Mark Heiden

Hi Everyone,

This car is still available along with other ribside cars on my
site. These are O scale models.

Ted

At 02:13 PM 1/13/2005, you wrote:

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Benjamin Hom" <b.hom@w...> wrote:

This car is the 50 ft auto boxcar version of the prewar MILW rib

side design, MILW 13500-13999."



This car is, or was at one time, available in O Scale from Rails
Unlimited...

http://users.foxvalley.net/~railsunl/Models/milwboxcars.html

NJ Custom Brass also imported a double door version of the MILW rib
side 50' cars in O Scale, though it doesn't look anything like this
series of cars at all.

Rails Unlimited
Ted Schnepf
railsunl@foxvalley.net
847-697-5353 or 5366
126 Will Scarlet
Elgin, Ill. 60120
http://users.foxvalley.net/~railsunl/

Model Railroad Sales and Service with
a personal touch.
Books new and used. HO and O scales.
DCC supplies. O scale urethane cars.
Photos and darkroom services.
Checks, cash (0%) or credit (secure server at web site 3% added).

----------


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
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Ed Mines asked?
Were 35 cars individually photographed or are there 35 PRR cars in one
or a series of photos?

There are 35 photos of PRR hoppers in the PRR Harrisburg yard. The
majority of the photos in the Charles collection are yard shots that
show one car along with part of the two adjacent cars. Fairly often,
there is another photograph of one or both of the adjacent cars.
Altogether, there are 520 photos where a single freight car is the
primary subject of the photo.

Most of the photos that Ted Culotta and I showed at Naperville and
Cocoa Beach were cropped somewhat to emphasize the car that is the
primary subject of the photo.

Larry Kline
Pittsburgh, PA

Bill Williams asks:

Would you please tell me what era this blue w/orange dome is correct
for? specifically, is it good for 1943. I suspect it is a bit too
colorful but I'd rather know for sure before I spring for that car.

The blue Union Oil paint scheme dates from the 1950s, after the UOCX fleet
was taken over by General American and operated by them for Union Oil. And
I may have confused you with my remarks about the L-L models of the 8K gal.
AC&F Type 21s. L-L did offer these P/Led for Union Oil but not in the blue
scheme; the models are in the black with aluminum lettering that was
current during the 1940s and would be correct for your 1943 modeling.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

Tom,
Did you get the scan photo I sent you of the prototype? That shows the sides of the dome painted orange.
Charlie

Tim, that information is not nitpicking nor is it contradictory.
The GBW series (42 cars) was smaller than B&M's 500 cars, but I
believe they could be ex-B&M because of their characteristic of
being pre-1950 cars with 7 ft doors. The only other group of such
cars was MEC 6500-6749, and those also disappeared from the ORER
between 1965 and 1972.

Tim O.

Tim O'Connor wrote:

Mark Mathu wrote

I don't recall where I got the information that the GBW cars were
built by PS in 47-48, and I'm certainly not calling Ben's
information into question... were the GBW 650-691 cars actually
from the Buffalo Creek 1000-1499 cars? Or was there some earlier
Buffalo Creek PS-1s, or maybe the GBW cars weren't ex-Buffalo Creek
at all?

Not if they were built in 1947-1948.

A more likely source was B&M 74000-74499. Both B&M and New Haven
sold thousands of cars to other railroads in the early 1960's --
and the 1965 ORER shows that the entire above series disappeared
between 1959 and 1965.

Tim O.

Tim O.

Not to nitpick but, forty of B&M's #74000 series were provided with four roof hatches for grain loading & renumbered into the #67000-67039 series in 1958. In 1962, 175 of the #74000's were sold to US Leasing which leased them back to the B&M as the #1000-1174 series. The remaining survivors may have also been sold to US Leasing in 1962 and leased to sundry roads, but I have no record as to whom.

Tim Gilbert

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, larry kline <lndkline@v...> wrote:
Here are the counts by RR for the number of hoppers photographed at
the PRR Harrisburg Yards and the Reading Rutherford Yard.

PRR 35

Were 35 cars individually photographed or are there 35 PRR cars in
one or a series of photos?

I'm anxiously waiting for your new book of photos from this
collection.

I don't know about anyone else but I like a variety of hoppers.
Nothing looks more phoney to me than a string of identical hoppers
except maybe a string of identical hoppers with different road names.
(A string of billboard reefers behind an F unit ties).

But if you look in the book Stauffer book "Erie Power" there a a
couple of photos of trains of solid 2 bay Erie hoppers on their way
to the coal dumpers in New York Harbor. 90-95% of them ARA alternate
design. The remaining few others are horizontal rib hopper made
famous by the Ambroid kit and Chuck Yungkuth's article in RMC.

Ed

Ed

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@o...>
wrote:

Union's 8K gal. cars were numbered 8002-8082
and were AC&F Type 21s as modeled by Life-Like in HO scale.

Does anyone have any of these from the first run of Proto 2000 kits
(stk # 21285,21286,21287) that they would sell? Please contact me
directly off list: stefanelaine@yahoo.ca

thanks
Stefan Lerché
duncan BC Canada

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@o...>
wrote:

Tom Houle asks:

4) Are the Champ decal car numbers U. O. C. X 10295, 10297, and

10299

correct for this car?

Not for an 8K gal. car. The cars in the UOCX 10001-10370 series

were all

mid-1920s GATC 10K gal. cars. Union's 8K gal. cars were numbered

8002-8082

and were AC&F Type 21s as modeled by Life-Like in HO scale.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

Richard
Would you please tell me what era this blue w/orange dome is correct
for? specifically, is it good for 1943. I suspect it is a bit too
colorful but I'd rather know for sure before I spring for that car.
Thanks
Bill williams