Although we know there was a rule that Canadian cars could not be loaded between points in the US, and it was a customs violation to do so, and a rialroad could be fined for a violation, that doesn't tell us it didn't happen.

The likelihood of being caught was very low, and the penalty for being caught might have been insignificant.

Suppose you are the trainmaster, agent or GYM at Wallula and the agent at Yakima is screaming for cars at Yakima. You have a few CN cars just unlaoded. You send them to Yakima. Maybe you tell the Yakima agent those are cars for the shipper's loads to Canada ;-)

Now consider an unlikley event in which a some inspector notices the CN car laoded to Ogden and informs customs. Sometime later a notice comes down through channels and you get a strong slap on the wrist. The next month you get promoted because of your good record for serving customers well and keeping costs down.

An unlikely scenario, but not at all implausible.







Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

This obviously presents some very real problems: folks often don't like to /
or shouldn't handle cars. The solution to this lies w/ each person and
their layout. Staging is probably part of the answer. Having decent off
layout storage and figuring out best way to remove in and out of that
off-layout storage has to be another.
Dave Nelson

Dave

A train club I belong to last month had a design "bake off" for a
new layout. I'd submitted a design with a large amount of staging,
enough for 1,000 freight cars (for a layout w/ a 500' mainline). The
winning design chosen by members has no staging whatever, and only two
very small yards, which I take to be a vote for really poor operations.
I have no hope at all for that club anymore...

Tim O'Connor

Dave Nelson wrote:

IOW, you should not plan your inventory of cars visible ON THE LAYOUT according to the distribution hypothesis, but your COMPLETE roster. And you must vary what's on the layout over time.

Here I think Dave makes a vital point. The cars you see when you visit a layout multiple times should not be the same cars every time. Of course the most eye-catching cars are the real offenders: the CofG "football" scheme, that huge transformer on an FD flat car, the Chateau Martin burgundy wine car, even the yellow MKT box car. But the unusual and small railroads are in this category too, even though to a lesser extent: the LS&I, the Rutland, West India Fruit, Buffalo Creek, Portland Terminal. They are absolutely entitled to be there, but just not every time or even every other time.
For me, the essential part of the Gilbert/Nelson hypothesis is that free-running cars from farther-away railroads are NOT less likely than nearer ones. The frequency-inverse-with-distance rule is an incorrect idea that dates back at least to Boomer Pete's book in the 1940s, and it needs a decent burial.

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

Folks,

Even though this discussion "appears" to go on fo ever, Dick Argo did a good presentation on what was freight car distribution in the C&O Parsons Yard, Columbus, Ohio, in the 1950s. A lot of lines run east-west through or just north of Columbus . . . including a PRR yard just north the C&O yard. I don't believe his study would meet the statistical standards needed by this group . . . . just notes over time taken while working as an "on call" diesel switch engine fireman or a rail-fan.

I've found some great C&O related FC images taken out in St. Louis, MO (boxes), Los Angeles, CA (scrap aluminum and steel gons), and up in Minnesota (coal gons). These freight cars sure do get around.

Al Kresse

Greg Martin wrote:

I think that there was far more self discipline and professionalism at the local level than is being given credit even in the steam and diesel transition era. I think that Dan's post proves that . . .
I don't discount what Larry Jackman has offered by I am of the opinion his generalization is the exception not the rule.

Ah, got it. Dan's post proves your viewpoint, while Larry's is just an exception. Interesting.

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

It would be nice if this topic would get integrated into the mainstream Model Railroad Hobby.....

Having been in both the manufacturing and distribution end of the Industry, there is WAY too much sales regionalism in
roadnames.... (and I'm not even going to broach the tendency for people to buy the colorful and unusual over what
they really "need" to represent the prototype on their railroads!!).

While we might overbuy our favorite prototype road, those of us that have fictional home roads probably underpopulate
our railroads with cars for it due to the task of decaling or having custom runs done.

It is interesting to think about the distribution of roadnames and car types on a particular stretch of modeled railroad....
and to figure out how that should impact how the cars are waybilled. I don't think schemes that purely randomize the
car assignment by type without regard to owner duplicate the prototype. The car accounting rules and interchange
conventions between roads forced patterns that flavored the consists of individual trains.

Maybe Ted could think about this as a sidebar to his "Essential Freight Cars" series to provide the answer to the unwashed
as to WHY a Soo Line or Pennsy car is essential, even though a person models ATSF or B&M, etc..... I think MR had a
piece that opened the subject of car interchange rules and the accounting that was supposed to drive utilization of the fleet...
but perhaps more needs to be said on the subject, both for the general modeling public and as a handy authoritative reference for
more sophisticated students of freight cars....

Charlie Vlk

It

Jim Betz says:

"Having said that - I personally do not think it makes a big difference
whether you take the national percentages and try to match them for your
layout. I -do- think it is important to have enough 'foreign road' cars
that things "feel right" ... but I think that taking it to the nth degree
with respect to the research is ... well to put it bluntly ... totally
nutso and missint the point. That approach is not for me. But that's me.
And that's my opinion."

Which is as good as anyone's. The real value...to me...in the hypothesis put forth by Dave Nelson and Tim Gilbert is that it has driven us away from over populating our layouts with home road cars...as Jim says. I will admit, however, that I get a bit of interest when I see something unusual...like the 8 at least Mopac hoppers laden with coal sitting on Santa Fe tracks in San Bernadino in around 1950 as shown in the Warbonnet, First Quarter 2008. Richard has explained this...the Kaiser plant received such coal. Still...unexpected at first glance. Hmmm. Wonder what they would do to the hypothesis...let alone the pool of cars being used by a modeler of Cahon Pass. Yahoo...Andy Sperandeo, Ted York?

Mike Brock

With respect to the 'purpose' ...

I think it has been left unsaid that it is very common to go to an NP
layout and see far too many NP cars - or to a B&O layout and see almost
nothing but B&O cars. And when you look at a picture of a freight yard
or freight train "it just isn't so". The point is that some (many?) of
us get too wrapped up in our favorite railroad and tend to have way too
many freight cars for "our" railroad on our layouts. There are hundreds
of reasons why we do this - a new model comes out and it is killer so we
buy 10 of them instead of 1, a model of a very unique car for out RR is
sitting on the shelf and we just have to have one (or more), we just
love the look of lots of our favorite RR, etc., etc., etc. And let's not
forget that many of us have a 'second favorite' or even a 3rd - that is
also going to encourage us to over-populate. The layouts I'm talking
about are the ones that it takes a great deal of imagination to stretch
the skew enough to justify the number of 'favorite road' cars ... far
more than just the 'need' to represent that one lumber train over Sherman
Hill.
Those layouts that are seriously over-represented with cars from a
small set of RRs just "feel wrong" when you op there. I've op'ed on a
couple where it was so over done that you stopped paying any attention
to the road name part of the car number when trying to locate or spot
a particular car ... because they all seemed to be from the "home road".
We've all op'ed or visited layouts like this.

Having said that - I personally do not think it makes a big difference
whether you take the national percentages and try to match them for your
layout. I -do- think it is important to have enough 'foreign road' cars
that things "feel right" ... but I think that taking it to the nth degree
with respect to the research is ... well to put it bluntly ... totally
nutso and missint the point. That approach is not for me. But that's me.
And that's my opinion.

What I do is this - I try to have a "fair number" of freight cars in
my fleet that are from 'foreign roads' ... but I have to admit that I
have too many from my favorite, 2nd favorite, and 3rd favorite ...
when compared to any national average. But I also think that you should
have some cars that are from RRs that had relatively small percentages
of the national fleet - because even the RRs with the largest percentages
didn't dominate and the actual 'rule' was that there were lots of smaller
RRs that added up to the majority of the freight car pool.
But I also have an advantage over most of you in that my layout is a
club layout and we don't have permanent freight cars on our layout. We
bring the cars we select and set them up before each op session (usually
freight car forwarding with car cards and way bills). We also have op
themes which means that this month the theme might be "Santa Fe in the 50's"
and next month it might be "SP in the 60's" and the month after that it
might be "The SP&S in any year" ... and each member selects freight cars
for that run using a rule of "50% for the home road and the rest from other
roads - if you have them" and so our runs have a different mix and even
different cars from op session to op session - based not only on the
changing themes but also on which members show up for that particular
run and what they chose to put in the case this time.

As had been said on many lists and many times - your methods may vary.

- Jim (Betz) in San Jose

Ed,

I built both of the Bowser/Selley tractors. They are pretty clunky by today's standards (I replaced some of the parts on mine), and I'm not even sure they have a real prototype. That said, you could probably mount a half-dozen of them on a flat car (with appropriate blocking and cables), and bring the car up to proper NMRA operating weight.

If you want something more authentic, try the LifeLike or Athearn styrene tractors, or Sunshine's resin kits. Not much weight there, but they are all pretty good models. Sadly, the Hallmark tractor series Christmas ornaments have been discontinued. Some of these were identifiable as fairly accurate models, though they took a bit of work to bring them up to standard. I wish I had bought more of the Minneapolis-Moline they did.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

ed_mines wrote:

John,

No, it's not a typo. That's what the magazine says on both the cover and the title page. It is my understanding that the NRHS fell way behind with their magazine, not untypical of society publications with volunteer editors. To their credit, the NRHS is trying hard to catch up and fill all their back obligations to members. They seem to be churning out an issue every six to eight weeks.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

Jon Miller wrote:

Have you checked Rio Grande Models web site for construction equipment?

www.riograndemodels.com

eric


**************
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budget? Read reviews on AOL Autos.

(http://autos.aol.com/cars-Volkswagen-Jetta-2009/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00030000000007 )

Dave Nelson notes:

"To be clear, just as the distribution hypothesis requires a large number of
cars, observed over a period of time -- the length of which will vary by
traffic volume -- so must the modeler expect to use a large number of cars,
varying them over time, the length of which will vary by total roster size."

I suppose we can assume that the larger the data sample, the more likelihood that the data will fit the hypothesis...IF the hypothesis is correct. But it works both ways. If a much larger data sample does not fit the hypothesis, the hypothesis needs to be modified. The problem is, we don't really have the means to expand the data to adequately test the hypothesis. It just ain't there...at least in the perhaps somewhat unique case of the UP trunk in Wyoming. My frt conductor's book only covers about 1/35 of the trains operating in the month and a half covered, a pretty small sample. Are the consists of the trains we have typical...i.e., would another 1/35 sample show similar trains with much higher than expected numbers of Milw, CB&Q, C&NW and SP box cars? I have no clue. We do know that a similar situation occurred with regard to SP box cars 4 yrs after the 1949 data.

"IOW, you should not plan your inventory of cars visible ON THE LAYOUT
according to the distribution hypothesis, but your COMPLETE roster. And you
must vary what's on the layout over time. Just like a very busy trunk line
will see a larger sample, a larger, complete roster will allow you to "hit
the numbers" sooner."

No argument with that.

Mike Brock

Anyone familiar with the farm tractors that Selley offers?

Do they require much work? Would several on a flat car be too heavy?

Is there an on line site for antique farm machinery?

Ed

I feel the need to respond to my own post here, for clarification. Full
response at end.

Yesterday I received the Fall 2007 NRHS BULLETIN.<

I hope this is a typo!

Jon Miller
AT&SF
For me time stopped in 1941
Digitrax, Chief/Zephyr systems, JMRI user
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Craig Zeni <clzeni@...> wrote:

This reminds me of the old saw about if you let a group of monkeys
play with typewriters long enough they will end up writing the
great American novel, by pure random chance.

I must comment that this has been disproven by the mere existence of
the internet.... :)

We're still working on it :-)

Dennis (hear no evil) Storzek

On Aug 15, 2008, at 5:27 AM, STMFC@yahoogroups.com wrote:

This reminds me of the old saw about if you let a group of monkeys play with typewriters long enough they will end up writing the great American novel, by pure random chance.

I must comment that this has been disproven by the mere existence of the internet.... :)

Meanwhile, I do find the studies useful. They have helped me keep my fleet populated with 'typical' cars and not populate with nothing but oddballs :)




Craig Zeni

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change ready.

Ben, you said:
"Last weekend, I gave a presentation on the B&O's USRA freight cars at
the B&ORRHS' Eastern Mini-Con at Harpers Ferry. I'll convert the
handout to PDF and post it to the group files section tomorrow
morning."

Would you please tell the group when it is available in the Files section?
I, for one, am looking forward to it!
Thanks, Clark Cone

Friends,

Yesterday I received the Fall 2007 NRHS BULLETIN. This issue included an 18+ page article on stock cars and stock handling. It is will illustrated with photos of cars from several eras, four general arrangement car drawings (two MP), and a great aerial shot of the Kansas City Stock Yards. As a sort of sidebar, there is a four-page color photo feature on loading cattle on the UP at Island Park, Idaho. Although the latter article describes operations in 1971, the loading procedure was much the same as it had been in the steam era and the photos are worthy of study for their color.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

Bruce Smith writes:

"So for us lucky PRR modelers, we get to model a great percentage of the
national fleet as it traversed Pennsy rails, but someone modeling, say the
ATSF, would see very few of those cars. So in this particular case, both
time and location are absolutely critical!"

The same apparently for Mopac [ or was it Frisco? ] and B&O...if the photos are any indication.

"Speaking of which - when are we gonna see those STC radial course tank
cars? <G>"

I expect to receive one any day now.

Mike Brock