Rob,

I have a copy of that photo that I purchased from Frank Ellington years ago. I am not sure that this car really has truss rods. The outer part of the underframe is pretty substatial and you can just the the lower edge of the center sill in the light, below the sides, with its regullarly spaced rivets. There are two "rod-like sillouettes belove the car. One is clearly the brake rod conncected to the brake lever. I will speculate that the other is the brake pipe, train line, although I can't guess why it hangs so low. The vertical shadow (directly below the 1 in 13504) looks less like a queen post than a hanger. Plus, just before that "rod" passes into the shadows of the left hand truck, we can see what appears to be the branch pipe to the brake cylinder as another vertical shadow.

There certainly were tank car underframes with truss rods, even some advertized as "all steel." I have seen photos that show the truss rods terminating in the head blocks rather than the end sills. 13504 has no head blocks. Its tanks must be secured to the center sill with Van Dyke's X mount and strapped. Here can be determined another reason for one tank with three compartments. This car requires 3 separate mountings to the center sill and 6 straps. A 3 compartment single tank requires one center sill mounting and 4 straps.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Steve Hile

Richard Hendrickson wrote:

Definitely a UTL Class X tank car, Ron. UTL apparently had a close
relationship with Imperial Oil, whose 2,200 car tank car fleet they
purchased in 1953, and may have licensed Imperial to have cars built by
CC&F to the UTL Class X design.

Imperial Oil was 70% owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey (trade name
ESSO). UTL was the lessor for all "Baby Standard" fleets after the break
up of the Trust in 1911. According to Carr's ROCKEFELLER'S SECRET
WEAPON, UTL insisted upon being the exclusive lessor for companies it
served. As some of the "Baby Standard's" bought operations outside the
Standards Oil framework after the break up of the Trust, the Baby
Standards did own their own tank cars. But the business seems to have
been limited to areas in which the purchased organizations operated -
e.g. Socony Vacuum (later Mobil) purchased the Magnolia Petroleum Co. in
1928, and the MPCX were still in effect in the 1950's; Socony also
purchased a number of small Mid West operators in the 1930's, and their
tank cars operated independently of UTL finally forming the core of tank
cars using the SVX and SVM reporting marks.

IOX was probably kept apart from UTL in an effort to separate Canadian
from American operations until the 1950's.

Tim Gilbert

Also, it was definitely a 6K gal. car;
the dome doesn't look to me as if it was oversize and the tank wasn't
long enough for an 8K gal. Class X.

Richard Hendrickson


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On Oct 22, 2005, at 7:48 PM, Rob Kirkham wrote:

> I've found a photograph at the Glenbow Museum online photo archive at:
> <http://ww2.glenbow.org/search/archivesPhotosSearch.aspx> that shows
> IOX
> 2144 among others, filling with gasoline in Calgary, Alberta in 1943.
> Use
> the search term "NA-4281-26" to locate it.
>
> According to Ian Cranstone's Canadian Freight Cars web site, this car
> was
> one of a group of 202 cars in series 2052-2253, built June 1915 by
> CC&F.
> Through their lives, the cars in this series were variously lettered
> IOX/CSGX/TCLX.
>
> Based on helpful information provided by Richard Hendrickson on the
> Type X
> design, the car appears to be a near match for the Type X cars
> represented
> by the MDC Old Timer tank (which requires a new frame). I think the
> dome on
> this car may be a little larger than the 6000 gallon UTLX cars I've
> seen,
> but the angle of view leaves me uncertain. If it is larger, I'm not
> sure
> whether to conclude that implies it is a larger 8000 or 10000 gallon
> car, or
> something else (different manufacturer might account for it?)

And Richard Hendrickson replied

Definitely a UTL Class X tank car, Ron. UTL apparently had a close
relationship with Imperial Oil, whose 2,200 car tank car fleet they
purchased in 1953, and may have licensed Imperial to have cars built by
CC&F to the UTL Class X design. Also, it was definitely a 6K gal. car;
the dome doesn't look to me as if it was oversize and the tank wasn't
long enough for an 8K gal. Class X.

Richard Hendrickson
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not only 2144, but also the car to the far right is also a UTLX class X design car. And 2543 appears to be an X-3 design, built after 1917. There were plans and a photo in the 1922 CBC, repeated in TSC number 12 that show IOX 3150, a 10,000 gallon car. I am specualting that COBX 2543 is an 8000 gallon car that could be modeled with Sunshine's X-3 kit for the long, skinny 8000 gallon car (I forget what he calls it

I hope this is also helpful.

Regards,
Steve Hile

Thanks Dennis

Actually, its modelling inteurbans that is the reason why I asked

My principle modelling interest is Pacific Electrics Southern District,
although, my concern doesn't isn't here. - I will be using respectable
modelling track standards, at least for the trackage that carries car load
freight. Pacific Electric just happen to be the subject (I might not even
hang wire)

However that layout for that is years off, and in the mean time I'm
seriously contemplating doing a small portable layout based on freelance
Midwestern interurban, albeit a freight orientated one. This is definitely
be "interurbanish", as its the whole point in building the layout to
demonstrate the subject (not many interurban layouts over here!) This is
will probably mean sharper that 18 inch radius curves for freight trackage.

I know Kadee's in "standard" draft gear boxes can cope with radius of 12
inches (40' cars and less). I realise that using a scale draft gear box is
probably not going to allow something that tight, but I was curious as to
how far they would go. Something I need to consider if I adopt Proto:HO
couples as standard.

Cheer

David Ball



_____

From: STMFC@yahoogroups.com [mailto:STMFC@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Dennis Storzek
Sent: Saturday, 22 October 2005 8:26 a.m.
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Accumate Proto:HO couplers


Even a small 0-4-0 will have considerably more distance
between the wheels and the coupler, and so this coupler will end up much
farther from the track centerline on a sharp curve than the coupler on a
freight car. Eighteen inch radius in HO scale is appx. 135' radius on the
prototype, 15" radius is appx. 110'. When prototype curves are this tight
they are no longer expressed in degrees, but in the actual radius in feet.
Railroads build with radii in this range, such as rapid transit operations,
typically use wide swinging radial couplers. The interurban railroads that
had this sort of curvature used radial couplers on their locomotives so the
coupler would follow the coupler on the cars. When these lines were
dieselized, they typically needed to use small locomotives such as 44
tonners, which have short wheelbase trucks and minimum coupler overhang. I
suspect the same applies to the PROTO:HO couplers.


Dennis Storzek



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_____

Rupert Gamlen wrote:

Thanks for these responses. If the curling and sealing problems manifested
themselves within 2 years causing the BRE to revert to tongue & groove, and
with plywood having been used in this manner from 1935 onwards, one wonders
why plywood was used for these cars in the first place. Perhaps the
designers thought they had solved the problems. Alternatively, they
perceived the advantages to outweigh the potential problem.

Plywood was widely used in World War II and supposedly had been much improved. The "Douglas Fir Plywood Association" promoted it widely for many uses, from homebuilding to freight car exteriors (and interiors, where it was satisfactory). Perhaps the plywood of the late 1940s was no better than 1935, but evidently people thought it was.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

Re. the "War Babies" article in the RP CYC on wartime reefers for FGE, BRE and WFE

" I am wondering why plywood wasn't retained for wood-sided cars. Longevity, or ease of repair?"

Thanks for these responses. If the curling and sealing problems manifested themselves within 2 years causing the BRE to revert to tongue & groove, and with plywood having been used in this manner from 1935 onwards, one wonders why plywood was used for these cars in the first place. Perhaps the designers thought they had solved the problems. Alternatively, they perceived the advantages to outweigh the potential problem.


Rupert Gamlen
Auckland NZ

I noted that BRE reverted to tongue & groove for its next group of cars in 1944, and that plywood sided cars of all three companies requiring attention were re-sheathed with tongue & groove in the 1950's. Given the perceived advantages of the plywood in terms of cost, weight, ease of fabrication, etc. I am wondering why plywood wasn't retained for wood-sided cars. Longevity, or ease of repair?

As Ben Hom has already answered, the problem was in adequate sealing of the edges of the plywood sheets. Soo Line had the same problem with box cars having single sheathing of plywood. Rubber and metal seal strips were not good enough. The plywood curled and cracked, and was judged (by PFE anyway) to be inadequately weather resistant if any of the protection system (joint sealing strips, and paint generally) failed. PFE concluded it was not worth repairing them in kind, thus returned to T&G. As the Fruit Growers and PFE engineering people enjoyed a close and cooperative relationship, I'm sure the mutual experiences of each contributed to similar decisions.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history

On Oct 22, 2005, at 7:48 PM, Rob Kirkham wrote:

I've found a photograph at the Glenbow Museum online photo archive at:
<http://ww2.glenbow.org/search/archivesPhotosSearch.aspx> that shows IOX
2144 among others, filling with gasoline in Calgary, Alberta in 1943. Use
the search term "NA-4281-26" to locate it.

According to Ian Cranstone's Canadian Freight Cars web site, this car was
one of a group of 202 cars in series 2052-2253, built June 1915 by CC&F.
Through their lives, the cars in this series were variously lettered
IOX/CSGX/TCLX.

Based on helpful information provided by Richard Hendrickson on the Type X
design, the car appears to be a near match for the Type X cars represented
by the MDC Old Timer tank (which requires a new frame). I think the dome on
this car may be a little larger than the 6000 gallon UTLX cars I've seen,
but the angle of view leaves me uncertain. If it is larger, I'm not sure
whether to conclude that implies it is a larger 8000 or 10000 gallon car, or
something else (different manufacturer might account for it?)

Definitely a UTL Class X tank car, Ron. UTL apparently had a close relationship with Imperial Oil, whose 2,200 car tank car fleet they purchased in 1953, and may have licensed Imperial to have cars built by CC&F to the UTL Class X design. Also, it was definitely a 6K gal. car; the dome doesn't look to me as if it was oversize and the tank wasn't long enough for an 8K gal. Class X.

Richard Hendrickson

I've found a photograph at the Glenbow Museum online photo archive at: <http://ww2.glenbow.org/search/archivesPhotosSearch.aspx> that shows IOX 2144 among others, filling with gasoline in Calgary, Alberta in 1943. Use the search term "NA-4281-26" to locate it.

According to Ian Cranstone's Canadian Freight Cars web site, this car was one of a group of 202 cars in series 2052-2253, built June 1915 by CC&F. Through their lives, the cars in this series were variously lettered IOX/CSGX/TCLX.

Based on helpful information provided by Richard Hendrickson on the Type X design, the car appears to be a near match for the Type X cars represented by the MDC Old Timer tank (which requires a new frame). I think the dome on this car may be a little larger than the 6000 gallon UTLX cars I've seen, but the angle of view leaves me uncertain. If it is larger, I'm not sure whether to conclude that implies it is a larger 8000 or 10000 gallon car, or something else (different manufacturer might account for it?)

I'd be interested in any other photo references for this car series.

Rob Kirkham

Since my last e-mail on this subject, I've noticed (again) a very good shot of a similar three tank car, UTLX 13504 in Edward Kaminski's Tank Cars: American Car & Foundry Co. 1865 to 1955, p.150. This is closer to a 3/4 view, and shows part of the B end end sill. The big bolt heads I'd haveexpected for the truss rod ends are not, however, in view. Curious. Makes me wonder more about how the truss rods worked.

Also, this is the second car I've noted this evening showing what seems to my uneducated eyes to be a UTLX / Imperial Oil link in the purchase of freight equipment.

Rob Kirkham

Rupert Gamelin wrote:
"I noted that BRE reverted to tongue & groove for its next group of
cars in 1944, and that plywood sided cars of all three companies
requiring attention were re-sheathed with tongue & groove in the
1950's. Given the perceived advantages of the plywood in terms of
cost, weight, ease of fabrication, etc. I am wondering why plywood
wasn't retained for wood-sided cars. Longevity, or ease of repair?"

PFE used plywood in several classes of rebuilds, but chose to either
resheath the cars with tongue & groove siding. Plywood fared poorly
in service, tending to curl and opening the joints between sheets.
See p 145-148 of Thompson/Church/Jones' Pacific Fruit Express for more
details on PFE's experience with their R-30/40-24 plywod side
rebuilds. Other classes rebuilt with plywood sides are discussed in
Chapters 6 and 7.


Ben Hom

Oh great.... I justified that last resin kit by telling the wife
how lucky she was that I was spending the money on trains instead of beer!
Phil Buchwald

Re. the "War Babies" article in the RP CYC on wartime reefers for FGE, BRE and WFE

I noted that BRE reverted to tongue & groove for its next group of cars in 1944, and that plywood sided cars of all three companies requiring attention were re-sheathed with tongue & groove in the 1950's. Given the perceived advantages of the plywood in terms of cost, weight, ease of fabrication, etc. I am wondering why plywood wasn't retained for wood-sided cars. Longevity, or ease of repair?

Any suggestions?

Rupert Gamlen
Auckland NZ

This is only slightly off topic since this store has a lot of old
freight car kits. See photo section for a picture.

John Ryan

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@c...> wrote:

Anybody care to speculate on the milk car colors? I wasn't aware

that they used outlined

lettering.
Walt Lankenau

Yes I think that is the red scheme with white outlined letters.
I've never seen a good photo of that scheme until this one.

I, too, was never aware of any outlining of the letters, and
furthermore the letters do not appear to be raised on separate
sheetmetal cutouts, which we know to have been used most of the
lives of these cars.

Jeff English
Troy, New York
exclusive source of ink for US currency for the better part of the
20th century

I have some items listed on Ebay including freight cars and related equipment
http://stores.ebay.com/Espee-F-5

Will be adding more stuff next week, make sure to check back...


Rob Sarberenyi
espeef5@pacbell.net

Anybody care to speculate on the milk car colors? I wasn't aware that they used outlined
lettering.
Walt Lankenau

Yes I think that is the red scheme with white outlined letters.
I've never seen a good photo of that scheme until this one.

An EXCEL spreadsheet of Bill Darnaby's NKP Movements has been uploaded into the Group's Files. This spreadsheet should be downloaded , and re-sorted to determine whatever is desired. Right now, the sort is ordered Car Type, Region of Ownership, Destination & Consignee, but I am sure that those who want to model their favorite RR's equipment would want to re-sort the "Mark" (short for reporting mark) column.

Bill Darnaby provided data for 298 cars: - 80 of them Tanks, and 218 of them Boxcars.

The owners of the tanks cars are 53 GATX (includes SWTX); 2 Interstate Tank Car Co.; 8 NATX (including AESX); 12 SHPX and 5 UTLX. Who owned the car depended largely on who the consignee was.

Of the 282 Boxcars, 90 of them were owned by the Home Road (NKP and W&LE or 0.5 in the spreadsheet). The high number of home road boxcars employed was due to the easy supply of empties after cars had been shopped in Frankfort IN.

Five were Canadian Owned (0.8 in the Spreadsheet). That leaves 123 US-Owned Foreign Boxcars listed. The Table below breaks down the ownership of these 123 boxcars into the ICC Regions. The first numeric column reflects the total boxcars owned by RR's in the specified ICC Region reported in the spreadsheet. The second numeric column reflects how many boxcars would have been reported if there was a proportional distribution of the 123 boxcars using the percentage of boxcars each region owned of the National Boxcar Fleet on 12/31/1949.

Region As Reported Proportion of
in Spreadsheet 1949 Roster Variance
1.0) New England 4 3 1 2.0) Great Lakes 15 21 (6)
3.0) Central East 16 21 (5)
4.0) Pocahontas 6 5 1
5.0) Southern 20 19 1
6.0) Northwest 18 21 (3)
7.0) Central West 30 23 7
8.0) Southwest 14 11 3
Total 123 124 (1)

The minus 1 variance is due to rounding. The Great Lakes Region's total was reduced by the 11,255 Boxcars owned by the NKP.

While not perfect, this data does not refute my contention that the US-Owned Foreign Boxcars on any line were roughly in the same proportion as the percentage of the national boxcar fleet a railroad owned. This would be a start if such data as Bill Darnaby compiled was not available.

Tim Gilbert

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the STMFC
group.

File : /1949nkpmovements.xls
Uploaded by : timgilbert17851 <tgilbert@sunlink.net>
Description : Excel Spreadsheet of Swift's Frankfort IN Shipments - Bill Darnaby's Data

You can access this file at the URL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFC/files/1949nkpmovements.xls

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/files

Regards,

timgilbert17851 <tgilbert@sunlink.net>

Pat Wider wrote:

Note that "red" car cement was also applied to some freight cars during the period of
interest. All of this is apparent in the AC&F freight car bills of materials.

This is what PFE used on reefer roofs and ends: red car cement.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroad history