Hi All,

When the Yahoo S Scale list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale mentioned
that a running Speeder would be an interesting item to have, I thought it
might be a possible project. But, a brass Speeder was not in the lineup of
Pennsy S Models projects for the foreseeable future. We have at least the
next 3 projects either being built or scheduled well into 2006. However,
Pennsy S Models does not want to deny the S Scale Market the opportunity to
own a fine brass Speeder model. We have passed the Speeder project on to
Jeff Briggs of Briggs Models and wish him success with it. Finally, we are
concentrating on the completion of the X29 & G26 projects, so we can get
started on the projects beyond them.

From now on please contact Jeff Briggs briggsmodels@shaw.ca with all Speeder
project questions and orders. I am no longer involved in the project beyond
being the first person to place an order for 1.

Thank You,
Bill Lane

Importing a Brass S Scale PRR X29 & G26
http://www.pennsysmodels.com



The project announcement from Jeff is as follows:

Some may be familiar with my company name, as I have been working as a
product engineer and pattern maker for various resin kit companies including
Kaslo Shops http://www.kasloshops.com for the past 10 years.


Briggs Models- Product Release

The prototype for this model is a ca. 1950 Fairmont powered car and trailer.
The car will be open on the sides, with an enclosed tunnel in the center,
and a metal front and roof similar to this unit.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/billlane/S_Scale_Brass_Speeder.jpg

This model will not be produced overseas. This model will be produced and
assembled in North America, using mainly US produced parts and North
American labor.

The model will be only available factory painted, and unlettered. Your
choice of MOW yellow, MOW orange, bright red and bright green is available.
Decals are not included with the model. They are not known for their
excessive decoration anyway. I few dry transfers or decals from a lettering
set will suffice for most eras and roads.

The models will be DCC ready, to accept a Digitrax DZ123PS decoder.
Soldering will be required to install the decoder, but disassembly of the
model will not be.

Featured parts will be:

. Solid nickel-silver driver tires with cast brass centers
. Can motor
. Gearing for realistic top speed
. On powered unit/trailer combinations, the trailer will be used for
additional electrical pickup
. DCC ready
. Factory painted realistic colors with laser cut window glass and
separately applied etched Stainless Steel details
. Your choice of Hi-rail or NASG wheels

The models will be sold for $325.00 US for a boxed set of one powered motor
car, and one trailer. A maximum of 50 boxed sets will be manufactured.

There will also be a maximum of 30 un-powered trailers boxed and sold
separately. These will be priced at $80.00.

Shipping is included in continental United States and Canada.

These models will only be available directly from Briggs Models.

Deposits on the models will not be taken until enough reservations are
received to make the project a go. Once we have received the required number
of reservations and the models have been produced, you will be notified
either by telephone or email. You will have 30 days to make your payment,
either via PayPal (which we prefer), or by check or money order. If you wish
to pay by check or money order, please allow 30 business days to clear the
funds, as well as 2 weeks for shipping. At this time we do not accept Visa,
MC or AmEx.

Payments made with PayPal should be made to: briggsmodels@shaw.ca A PayPal
request for funds will not be sent. You will be telephoned when your
model(s) is ready.

Paper payment should be made out to: Briggs Models, and should be sent to:

Briggs Models
#213-899 Craigflower Road
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
V9A2X3

Please do not send any money at this time! To make your reservation, please
send an email to: briggsmodels@shaw.ca or send a letter to the above
address, with the topic Speeder Reservation". This communication will be
considered your reservation. The models will be allotted on a first come,
first served basis.

When making your reservation, please indicate:

Color- from the list above
Wheels- Hi-Rail or NASG
Quantity of each model
Method of payment

Please keep your eyes open for announcements regarding a website and further
information on release dates and model specifics.

Thank you for your interest in Briggs Models!

Jeff Briggs, Owner
Briggs Models

I am about finished bringing all of my material together for my
handout at Naperville for my presentation on "The FGE/WFE/BRE Forty
Foot Steel Refrigerator Cars: 1937-1955," but there are some years I
would like to have to give as complete a picture as possible.

I am hoping some of you on this list can be of help. I would like
copies of the ORER pages for Fruit Growers Express, Western Fruit
Express and Burlington Refrigerator Express for the following years:
1936, 1946, 1949, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1956.

I will happily pay for copying, mailing, etc and would certainly
share my handout if you will not be at Naperville.

Please contact me off-line if you can help at bwelch@uucf.org

For those of you interested in these companies, the next issue of RP
CYC has a long article that Ed Hawkins, Pat Wider, and I co-wrote and
Ted Cullota's new modeling journal will have a 19 page article. I
have three more articles in the works.

Bill Welch

Andy, Larry,

Quite an imagination, there Andy. And Larry, you are correct. Gridley
is at the end of a dirt ballast, weed reinforced, branchline in the
middle of Kansas. While there was a MoP line just west of town, I do
not think that there was an interchange track (I am not even sure when
this line was taken up. Could have been prior to the 1953 date being
modeled). If the car did manage to get to Gridley, best explanation is
that it is very well misdirected and truly lost.

Westerfield, Sunshine, and IM have done a good job of providing most of
the rolling stock for populating the layout. No wine cars required, but
it would still be nice to have one for the collection.

-- Bill Keene
Irvine, CA

On Sep 23, 2005, at 6:18 AM, ljack70117@adelphia.net wrote:

On Sep 23, 2005, at 9:14 AM, Miller,Andrew S. wrote:

> Because it developed a hotbox enroute from California to NY and had
to
> be cut out of the train.
>
> regards,
>
> Andy Miller
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> I am open to any suggestion as to just why a six compartment wine
tank
> car would be spotted on the house track in Gridley. Any ideas?
>
> -- Bill Keene
> Irvine, CA

Sorry but that would not happen. No California traffic to NY would 
run through Gridley Ks.
Thank you
Larry Jackman
ljack70117@adelphia.net
The 50-50-90 Rule: Anytime you have 50-50 chance of getting something 
right, there is 90% probability you'll get it wrong.



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Larry asked about the Ulrich GS gondola being used as a stand in or
a starting point for the UCR GS gondola. The Ulrich car is a model
of a car developed by Enterprise a few years after the design for
what ultimately became the UCR cars came about. The Enterprise car
was purchased by Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and the Utah Idaho
Central. I have been told that Great Northern also had some of these
cars but I have not found a picture to verify this. At first glance
the car looks similar to the UCR cars but because of its design the
enterprise body sits higher and the car is proportioned a little
differently. If some one brought this car out in plastic it could
probably be kit bashed into a very close stand in.

The Utah Coal Route GS gondola was not unique to the Utah Railway
and the LA&SL.
The Utah Coal Route Cars were purchased jointly by Utah Railway and
the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railway in two lots. The first batch of
cars consisted of 500 cars and was built by Pressed Steel in 1914.
They were numbered 20000 to 20500. The second lot of cars were
purchased in 1917 from Western Steel and consisted of 1500 cars
numbered from 20500 to 21999. The two lots of cars were more or less
identical except for brakes other minor components. The first batch
came with a horizontal brake wheel and the second batch came with
vertical brake wheels. LA&SL also purchased a lot of 100 cars
numbered from 201000 to 201099 in the same time frame. Denver & Rio
Grande Western and Denver & Salt Lake had both purchased cars of a
similar design a few years earlier. These cars are distinguished
from the UCR cars by a different dumping mechanism which resembled
the mechanism used on D&RGW's wooden GS gondolas and a different
underframe. A spotting feature of the D&RGW cars in the 1940's and
50's is that the railroad added a 8" wooden extension around the top
of the cars. Midland Terminal and the CB&Q also purchased cars of
this same design. In the mid to late fifties or early 60's Great
Western purchased many of the remaining D&RGW and UCR gondolas
supposedly one or two are still around. Up until a few years a go
the body of one UCR car was on the ground in Martin, Utah being used
as a car stop.

In the study of early steel GS Gondola designs one cannot neglect
the designs from Ralston and Benttendorf as variations of their
designs were very common on railroads across the country.

Shay Stark

Not everyone. At the last minute I was informed that the RR.S class of SFRD reefers we were about to launch had end ladders instead of grabs. It was revised and a photo is now on our web site. - Al Westerfield

Unfortunately in this hobby, the "do it over again" process rarely passes approval
of the bean counters.

I posted the SOO $ question to the SOO group. This is tje first
response.
Clark Propst

Soo's "Billnoard" lettering scheme appeared in 1951. Soo repainted
cars
carrying the older "Dollar Sign" scheme as time permitted----I would
guesstimate
about 1/2 to 3/4 of the cars the Soo had were repainted into
Billboard lettering
by 1961.

I recall as late as 1973 (possibly later, mine memory is getting
faulty) you
could spot a 40' box or a 50' DD box still unrepainted and wearing
the Dollar
Sign herald, but they were the exceptions and unless you hung out
around Shops
Yard, Shoreham or Superior, your chances of seeing a car wearing
this scheme was
1 in 12,000 (or whatever the Soo owned in total number of freight
cars by 1973).

All the wooden, steel underframed cars (Dennis and Stu, note how I
put that!)
still in exsistance as Supply or Tool cars in MOW Service as late as
1986 still
carried the dollar sign herald.

Un-resheathed cabooses carried the dollar sign herald until
repainted or
broken up, some as late as the early 1970's.

Keith Meacham

Elden and group,

The following is just a theory... only a theory... and has not been
fully researched...

Why the large following and modeling of the PRR vs NYC? Let's go back
to the 1950s and pick up a copy of MR to learn what was new and
available. There we see full page adverts from Bowser with a model line
of enough PRR steam locomotives to fill any respectable roundhouse. And
other manufacturers followed this lead by offering freight cars and
cabooses in more or less PRR prototype to strain those model drawbars.
Penn Line is just one of them that comes to mind. Almost every other
railroad of any size did not have this ready supply of motive power for
steam era freight trains (and those trains of long boxcars with
windows). My theory is that having such a resource would likely build
an interest in the Standard Railroad of the World far larger and more
quickly than a railroad where there were fewer models available.

And there was a good and plentiful source of information in the many
books focusing on the PRR that were published during this period and
the years following.

It is just a theory... the resources were there and the modelers
followed the path... err, track... in front of them. Thus PRR gained
the larger following than NYC.

-- Bill Keene
Irvine, CA

Every month (I think), Railway Age published a table of statistics for just about every
railroad that one can think of. Included in the tables were the number of home and foreign
freight cars on line. While the tables don't break the data down further to car type, it is
interesting to see the total numbers as well as the ratio between the two. Ed and I have a
near complete collection of RA for the period of interest. Would these numbers be of
interest to the subscribers? We could publish a summary in RP CYC by year (we'll pick the
month). Besides, Ed really likes working with EXCEL!!!!

Pat Wider

In a message dated 9/24/2005 10:43:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
pwider@sbcglobal.net writes:
Every month (I think), Railway Age published a table of statistics for just
about every
railroad that one can think of. Included in the tables were the number of
home and foreign
freight cars on line. While the tables don't break the data down further to
car type, it is
interesting to see the total numbers as well as the ratio between the two.
Ed and I have a
near complete collection of RA for the period of interest. Would these
numbers be of
interest to the subscribers? We could publish a summary in RP CYC by year
(we'll pick the
month). Besides, Ed really likes working with EXCEL!!!!
Pat,

Sounds like an excellent idea.

Rich Orr

Note, too, during the initial use of the dollar sign logo, there was no black background behind the Soo logo. The white Soo logo and frame went right onto the car. On freight cars and cabooses, the black background was added later, but I'm not sure when. Perhaps in the fifties?
Tom Houle

BTW, as far as the Germans know, apparently the UP is the only RR in
the US.

Gene Green

Well, no, not anymore. Unfortunately, Trix has also decided to pick on
the PRR. Their latest loco release is (another) GG1, listing for $550
with a sound decoder. It is hard to find any features on this loco that
aren't on the BLI GG1 (that lists for half the price) and to make matters
worse, the photos of the loco Trix is showing have a grossly incorrect
DGLE 5-stripe paint scheme. Sheesh, even if BLI messed up the colors, at
least they got the stripes in the right place!! And so much for German
engineering - the body of the loco looks to ride far too high above the
running gear.

In this set of planned PRR releases is also a totally bogus set of PRR
boxcars (as far as I can tell) and an N5c cabin car.

I'm pretty sure that no aid from the PRRT&HS was sought by Trix for these
projects <G>.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL

On Sep 23, 2005, at 11:36 PM, Tim O'Connor wrote:

To add to what Ed wrote, the 1951 billboard scheme had SOO LINE
close to the door, while the 1953 version moved the SOO and LINE
further away from the door. I don't know the exact date when the
Soo switched to the later style.

Another interesting thing about the billboard "SOO LINE" is that it was painted the same height height on the car side regardless of height of the car. A very neat thing when a 1932 ARA box car was coupled to a 10'6" AAR box car.

Regards,
Ted Culotta

Speedwitch Media
645 Tanner Marsh Road, Guilford, CT 06437
info@speedwitch.com
www.speedwitch.com
(650) 787-1912

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Murray" <murrayclan03@y...>
wrote:

... Jeff English has just brought out
VOL 2 of NYC freight and passenger cars.

Just to set the record straight, the book has three authors. The other
two are Len Kilian and Jim Odell. I will, however, take full credit
for the section on box cars.

Jeff English
Troy, New York
early home of Theodore Judah and Leland Stanford, later pioneers of the
Pacific Railroad

List;
Anybody know what colors are "Paint Formula E" and Paint Formula Z" fpr the BR&P RR?
Earl Myers

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Anthony Thompson <thompson@s...> wrote:

This makes me wonder why, in the early 1950s, the

Northwest

lumber shippers repeatedly complained to the ICC (as liberally

covered

in Railway Age) that their local railroads, including SP, did not
provide enough home-road box cars, but relied excessively on

foreign

box cars. Comment?

Regarding boxcar shortages, while researching some UP records
surprisingly stashed away
at a local museum, I came across the following, transcribed in part:
--------------------------
Albina, November 16, 1956

All U.P. Agents –

PART 95 – CAR SERVICE REVISED SERVICE ORDER NO. 915 SUBSTITUTION
OF
REFRIGERATION CARS FOR BOX CARS

At a session of the Interstate Commerce Commission . . . 31, October
1956.

It appearing, That the number of freight cars available for the
movement of box car freight
in the States of Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and Nevada,
has seriously
decreased recently; that at present the supply is insufficient to
move such freight traffic of
carriers serving those states; that there are certain SFRD, PFE and
WP refrigerator cars in
that territory not suitable for transporting commodities requiring
protective service and
that such cars are suitable for transporting other freight; in the
opinion of the Commission
an emergency exists requiring immediate action in [above named
states].
--------------------------
In summation, it was ordered that railroads could provide 2
refrigerator cars in place of a
40-foot boxcar, or 3 refrigerators in place of a 50-foot boxcar for
carload freight
originating AND terminiating within those same states. I assume this
must have been an
unusual occurence? Any speculation as to what commodities would be
transported
between those 6 states?

Marc Entze
Pullman, WA
mentze@wsu.edu

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "bierglaeser" <bierglaeser@y...> wrote:

Märklin/Trix is a toy manufacturer...

I think that sums it up well. They are a company that is more
concerned with maintaining their market of rabid enthusiasts who will
buy anything as long as it says Maerklin on the box. Prototype
fidelity doesn't play much of a part in this. That is why Roco did so
well for so many years in Europe.

It is unfortunate that they alienated many valuable contributers to
this list who were prepared to share for the sake of a better product!
IMO they also underestimated the intelligence of the average North
American modeller, who surely would have supported a superior product,
as evidenced by the continuing efforts of Mr. Lofton and Mr.
Westerfield et al.

Oh well, given the current sad state of the German economy I think
they will soon find their market niche drying up as well. So, the rest
of us will scour the shelves for more resin kits and pick up the Trix
product when it is dumped in a last ditch effort to salvage sales.
cheers
Stefan

Howdy!

Just got a scan of an old photo taken in 66.

It is of a 3 dome tankcar CGTX 6903 Blt 3-15.

Any info out there on this car or type?

Thanks
Andrew
CPR Conductor

Richard Hendrickson wrote

A few of us held our noses, bought Trix box cars, and replaced the
roofs because they're the only otherwise accurate models of UP ACR
steel box cars ever offered in HO scale.

Not quite. Don't forget the Sunshine B-50-32/33 cars. Also, Tom Madden
cast some B-50-24 A.C.R. sides years ago. (Very nice replacement sides
for the IMWX.)

But anyway, don't get caught up with Trix. I'm sure you can think of
many examples of models that didn't sell well, yet the manufacturer
blamed it on the choice of road name when perhaps that wasn't the
root of the problem...

Tim O'Connor

Perhaps SP just got caught in a postwar squeeze, where it had once
been able to rely on a supply of eastern cars for reloading to send
back east, after the war many types of cars (especially eastern cars)
were being scrapped faster than they were being replaced and maybe
SP had no anticipated this rate of change, so it took a while for
their own purchases (several thousand box cars a year for a number
of years) to catch up with the shortage?

Also as I have mentioned before, the GN annual reports in the 1950's
complained that the number of cars on-line was chronically less than
the number of cars they owned! Once GN cars went off-line evidently,
other railroads didn't bother to return them quickly... or snagged
them for other use. During the grain rush every year, GN and the
other grangers would hoard older home-road box cars (parking them
empty for weeks) to assure their shippers of a car supply. I'm sure
this made shortages even worse elsewhere!

Tim O'Connor

To add to what Ed wrote, the 1951 billboard scheme had SOO LINE
close to the door, while the 1953 version moved the SOO and LINE
further away from the door. I don't know the exact date when the
Soo switched to the later style.