From: Bruce Smith
So, here's a philosophical question... For my foreign boxcar fleet, I need roughly 5 B&O boxcars based on the national fleet. So what cars? Well the WWII fleet consisted of the M15, M26 and rebuilt M15 and M53 wagontops. The knee jerk response of many modelers might be to use the iconic wagontops. After all, you can identify them as B&O without even reading the reporting marks! But I can't resist the temptation to educate and the wagontops turn out to be a cliche. Their combined made up just over 10% (or 1 in 10) of the B&Os boxcar fleet..

.===========

Let's not get too hung up on averages. After all, the average day rarely happenned. If 10 % of the cars were wagon tops, then there were probably days when out of ten cars five would be wagons. So you're modeling that one day in 20, but it wouldn't be reasoanble for anyone to suggest that you are unprototypical.


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

Posted by: "Anthony Thompson" Al Brown wrote:

What?!? You mean that Coast Guard guided-missile car shouldn't have
arch-bar trucks??!? Say it ain't so!

Well, at least the missile, its markings, and the launcher are
accurate <g>.

===========

I've solved the era problem for missle cars. My 70's missles are on a car with K type brake cylinder and verticval brakes staff ane wheel. With the early brake system and the more up to date missles, on average it's aperfect fit for 50's in the STMFC era ;-)



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

The main page <http://sunny16.photo.tntech.edu/~richard/Freightcars/>
says "The Freightcars List is temporarily down for maintenance. Please check back later. "

Richard

Folks,

I'm looking for pictures of C&O 100000-100999 series high capy gons in
the yards, in the coal fields, or at the coal docks taken between 1921
and 1946. I have builders and tech journal prints plus Raceland AMC
May 1931 repaint photos already.

Al Kresse

John--

Again, this posting explains a lot. Being a recorded discussion
amongst railroad officals from 1954, it is very enlightening.

Steve Lucas.

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "John Hile" <john66h@...> wrote:

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "lstt100" <lstt100@> wrote:

Shippers did specify routings but were not required to do so.
Shipper specified routings were more commonplace during the 40's

and

50's

Diversions were specified by the broker. Example would be
diversion lumber moving from Pacific Northwest

Following is from the "American Association of Railroad
Superintendents, Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting and
Committee Reports, 1954" and a discussion regarding efficient

freight

car handling.

Among those in attendance at the Pacific Coast Post-Convention

Meeting

were C. H. Grant, general superintendent of transportation, SP; L.

P.

Hopkins, superintendent, SP; Grant S. Allen, superintendent, WP;

Frank

Chase, superintendent, NYC; R. N. Whitman, superintendent, GN.


Part of their discussion regarding Rule 2...

MR. HOPKINS: We try to load them in the direction they belong, but

we

have difficulty, and I imagine all other railroads have difficulty.
You put a car into an industry, he calls for a certain route, then
after he loads the car he changes his mind and sends it another

route.

Rule 2 is out as far as he is concerned.

From an operating standpoint or competitive standpoint, you can't

tell

this fellow you're not going to take that car, or you're going to
unload it, because he's going to send that car out in spite of
everything. I'm trying to make my statement as much from the facts

as

we can. There isn't any sense in these railroad people who are
sitting here coming up and saying they literally comply with Rule 2,
because we know they don't. And we have much evidence of it in some
of our Northwest neighbors. I don't want to mention this fellow
Whitman (laughter), but we send automobiles up to Washington and the
automobile cars don't come back to us. They're loaded on a

connecting

line and they don't move over our railroad. A car is ten days

getting

back to our points in California where they would be back in three

or

four days if they went by direct route.

MR. GRANT: I work out here and I think we have a condition in the
Pacific Northwest that is unlike anywhere else in the United States

in

the handling of cars. We have up in this country what are known as
brokers in the handling of lumber. In some places they are referred
to as rollers. They buy cars of lumber without any market

whatsoever

for them. They go out to a mill and buy a carload of green
two-by-fours or some particular kind of lumber, and they'll bill it

to

some point - for instance, they'll go out and order a car for
Cleveland, Ohio. They know very well that they have no intention of
ever getting that car to Cleveland, Ohio, unless there's an

unforeseen

act of God like and earthquake or something, but nevertheless they
bill the car to Cleveland, Ohio.

It isn't ten miles out of the terminal before they divert it, maybe

to

Saskatchewan, or some other place. We have on our line many times

25,

30, 40 or 50 of these rollers running around and they lay in our
terminals for sometimes a month while waiting for diversion, or

until

they get a sale. We're one of the worst offenders on violation of

car

service rules, but it's due entirely to the lumber brokers.

We have it in Washington, we have it in Oregon, we have it in
California. We used to have 40 or 50 cars laying around at Gerber

and

a lot of them in Sacramento, a lot in Bakersfield, and as far down

as

Los Angeles. But I don't worry too much about it because we're

really

not at fault.

The fellow comes in and puts in a firm car order, for a car for a
certain point. Naturally, we'll furnish a New York Central car.
Perhaps it's going to that point. But he's just as apt to turn

around

and bill that car to Hollywood, Cal., and then we have to answer for
misuse of foreign equipment.

It's something we've fought for years and we just can't combat it,

we

can't beat it. These fellows are just in the lumber market.

MR. ALLEN: You have the same thing with the hauling of other
commodities, canned goods and all that sort of thing.

MR. GRANT: It's not so bad.

MR. ALLEN: No, it's not so bad, lumber is the worst one.

MR. CHASE: We have the same situation in the East, and you have the
same situation on every railroad in the country. For instance, the
Reading right now has over six thousand cars of anthracite coal. It
is the same in all parts of the country, but it's a condition we

live

with and do the best we can.




John Hile
Blacksburg, VA

Steve Lucas wrote:

What's illustrative about this interview with Mr. Grant is how he addressed the issue of intra-US use of Canadian cars. "Nudge, nudge, wink, wink" is what I am reading in his remarks. They seem to support my assertion that Canadian cars were known to "disappear" in the US, customs reg's. or not.

Quite true, Steve, but note that there is also an awareness that the rules can be applied and someone may notice. I doubt that was true for U.S. cars violating Rule 2. Canadian cars may well have been "confiscated" (as the term was) more than was legal, but I feel confident it was nothing like the situation for U.S. cars.

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

John--

What's illustrative about this interview with Mr. Grant is how he
addressed the issue of intra-US use of Canadian cars. "Nudge, nudge,
wink, wink" is what I am reading in his remarks. They seem to
support my assertion that Canadian cars were known to "disappear" in
the US, customs reg's. or not.

In all fairness, the more we discuss this, the more we are seeing
that using other roads' cars for loading other than in the direction
of the home road must have been a very common practice in the era of
STMFC. Why else would the Pennsy have been regarded as supplying
cars to the entire US at times?

Steve Lucas.



--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "John Hile" <john66h@...> wrote:

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

we have been told by
several people on this list in the past, that Canadian cars could

only

move in the U.S. to destinations to unload, then return empty

Following is from the "American Association of Railroad
Superintendents, Proceedings of the Fifty-Eighth Annual Meeting and
Committee Reports, 1954" during a discussion regarding efficient
handling of freight cars.

Among those in attendance at the Pacific Coast Post-Convention

Meeting

were C. H. Grant, general superintendent of transportation, SP,;

L.P.

Hopkins, superintendent, SP; R.N. Whitman, superintendent, GN.

Part of their discussion is as follows:


MR. GRANT: We have, as I have stated before, very plain and frank
directives from the AAR and also from the Canadian roads. It's a
year-round order, I think, that we have to return Canadian cars, and
we really catch it when we don't return Canadian cars empty unless

we

have loading for them on Canadian line. Of course, Mr. Hopkins'
glasses get fogged up (laughter) or he gets these things mixed up on
the switch list and they load three of four now and then, but that's
just a mistake. In further amplifying that, in the case of a

shortage

of cars in the States, frequently Mr. Gass, the AAR officer who puts
out these car directives, will permit us to load Canadian cars. But
it's usually for a very short duration, when they're not short of

cars

in Canada.

MEMBER: In certain territories.

MR. GRANT: In certain territories, yes.

MR. HOPKINS: As far as Canadian cars are concerned, we follow Rule

2

very closely. There may be a slip-up now and then, but on the
over-all we either get them back empty or we get them loaded in the
direction that is covered by Rule 2.



John Hile
Blacksburg, VA

I learn something new every day. Today's no exception. Good thing
that I only invested in a set of dry transfers for the B&O M-53 car I
was thinking of modelling. I can justify ONE B&O car on my layout,
and now I know that I'm better having an M-26. Sigh...I so wanted
that M-53 car!

Steve Lucas.

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Bruce Smith" <smithbf@...> wrote:

Brian, Dave, Folks,

So, here's a philosophical question... For my foreign boxcar

fleet, I

need roughly 5 B&O boxcars based on the national fleet. So what

cars?

Well the WWII fleet consisted of the M15, M26 and rebuilt M15 and

M53

wagontops. The knee jerk response of many modelers might be to use

the

iconic wagontops. After all, you can identify them as B&O without

even

reading the reporting marks! But I can't resist the temptation to

educate

and the wagontops turn out to be a cliche. Their combined made up

just

over 10% (or 1 in 10) of the B&Os boxcar fleet... in reality I

don't need

ANY! The M15 was about 25% of the fleet and the M26 was about 50%

of the

fleet. So, the ICONIC B&O boxcar is the M26. Lets add to that

while the

B&O was known for the Duryea underframe, only about 1/3 of the M26

cars

have this u/f.

OK, so back to the 5 cars I need for B&O. Seems like the M26A and

M26D I

built for Virtual Modelers will work, plus maybe another M26 or

M26A might

be good. Likewise, a Westerfield M15 would be a good idea. That

leaves

one or two slots left, depending on how many M26s I have. So, I

broke

down and filled that spot with an M53, after all, it is an icon

<G>.

However, due to the size of my fleet that car will not appear every

ops

session, but several B&O cars will. What that means is that

operators

will get the CORRECT impression that B&O cars were relatively

common, but

that wagontops were not. Below are the fleet numbers I worked with

for

B&O boxcars

Regards
Bruce
Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL

M15D 1213 Wood-Dbl Shth-Westerfield kit
M15H 1165 Wood-Dbl Shth-Westerfield kit
M15J 2164 Wood-Dbl Shth-Westerfield kit
M15F 2355 Wood-Dbl Shth-Westerfield kit
Total M15 -6897

M26* 1971 like PRR X29
M26A* 3460 like PRR X29 – RC #7003 undec
M26B* 989 like PRR X29
M26C* 991 like PRR X29
M26D* 5443 like PRR X29, Duryea underframe – Speedwitch
M26E* 986 like PRR X29, Duryea underframe –

Speedwitch

total M26 - 13840

M15K 1227 wagon top rebuild
M53* 1886 wagon top--Pro Custom Hobbies kit, F&C kit
M53A* 997 wagon top--Pro Custom Hobbies kit
Total wagon tops - 2883

M55A 900 built 1941: 10'-0" IH, Murphy panel roof

Total B&O boxcars 25747

Once upon a time the archive for the Freight Car List was at
http://sunny16.photo.tntech.edu/~richard/Freightcars/archive/
However I just tried that and got the old "404 not found" routine.
So, does anyone know where it went to, if it even is still available?

Time stopped in November 1941
Walter M. Clark
Pullman, Washington, USA

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Kurt Laughlin" <fleeta@...> wrote:

I think they are referring to a previous USENET-based mailing list

whose

archives is out in the ether somewhere. I occaisionally run across
individual threads when doing a google search, but I haven't

stumbled onto a

reliable way to reference it as a whole.

KL

----- Original Message -----
From: Cyril and Lynn Durrenberger

You all keep saying to look at the past messages for some of this

data. I

found a number of them, but I did not locate any that had the work

that is

being sited. Could some one provide the message numbers to assist this
process.

There are a lot of ways to get the exact layout mix that suits you, limited only by the amount of number-crunching you want to do. You could just look at the exact car classes for each road and again go with the most common. That was too much work for me for the 15 or so RRs I had in mind, because I didn't want to have to track down whether a NYC Lot B-567 car was really the same as a B-702 car and the like. I did want to get a proper mix of long and short cars though.

My assumption was that for my industries and loads the car length was not relevant. What I did after looking at all XM distribution was to determine the ratio of 40-ft to 50-ft XM cars, which was exactly 4:1. So if my RRs by pure XM numbers were PRR (8 XM), NYC (6 XM), and ATSF (6 XM) I figured I needed sixteen 40-ft and four 50-ft cars. Looking at the distribution by car length showed that PRR did not have that many XM 50-ft cars and NYC and ATSF were about equal, so the breakdown was 8x 40 PRR, 4x 40 NYC, 2x 50 NYC, 4x 40 ATSF, 2x 50 ATSF.

With that out of the way I looked at the most common cu ft - length pair for the road. As these could represent several car designs I made a matrix for that cu ft of width and height to segregate them. Usually one car class was strongly dominant (at least 10% more than the next) so that's what I chose to model. When there wasn't a clear leader I went down the line until there was a 10% space and decided to live with any of the top types.

Just my rambling, but one thing useful in all that is it is probably worth have some tolerance in your numbers - if the "leader" isn't at least 10% (or whatever) more than number 2, I think it is perfectly reasonable to substitute something from number 2 in the interest of modeling expediency.

KL

Dave Evans writes:

"With all of the discussion I have lost track - your conductor book is
UP main in WY post war?"

April 1949.

"Sorry if this is getting too far off topic. Being a relative newcomer,
should this type of info be on the Opsig group? Not that relevant to
building freight cars."

The STMFC's scope include's many aspects of frt cars other than their construction...including their operation. From the STMFC rules:

"The objectives
include the sharing of
information about North American, standard gauge railroad freight cars
including their operation,
distribution and the various techniques of building
models of them. Discussions about the cargos of freight cars are permitted
but only as they are directly associated with a freight car. Emphasis is to
be placed on the study of the prototype with
a goal of producing models of them with as great a degree of accuracy as
possible."

As far as the Opsig group is concerned, that's up to you and that group. I have nothing to do with it.

Mike Brock

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Malcolm Laughlin <mlaughlinnyc@...> wrote:

I took a couple of OR courses when I was at MIT. What I found in

the real world of railroads was

1) The distributions were so lumpy that statistical methods

usually didn't work.

Malcom,

Missed the significance of this on my first read, but to me this would
help demonstrate that large variations from the national average, on
any given train, on any given day, and in any given yard, could be huge.

This gets back to my initial concern - we may need to make sure our
trains don't look "too" average. For rolling stock switched during an
op session, let things fall where they may, and perhaps stay near the
national average for deliveries from staging, but for a run-through
consist, or a large block that transits a yard but is not spotted to a
customer(s), but instead runs back into staging, hitting the average
all the time may not look prototpical.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Dave Evans

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, Malcolm Laughlin <mlaughlinnyc@...> wrote:

I can't tell you some amusing tales about trying to apply linear

programming to car distribution because that clearly required after
1961 computer capability.

Malcom,

Thanks for the insight from the OR perspective. Did anyone ever try to
use OR to analyze historical data to see if they could spot some
unknown operational problem/trend rather than solve an immediate
problem? I would expect not since the people on the ground probably
knew what the problems were - very different from telephones where the
lack of human involvement (relative to the number of "events") led to
a lack of information.

Appreciate the programming humor. As an engineer that graduated about
the time the PC came out, I'm continually amazed at how much analysis
was accomplished during the days before computers. Lots was done in
the 60's and 70's with main-frames and mini-computers, but before that
- Wow! and often with very large data sets.

Thanks for the help,
Dave Evans

I wrote:

"Well, most of the early Texas discoveries, around 1900, were way
in south Texas."

It occurs to me that most Texas think of "south Texas" as south of a line between Houston and San Antonio, so my statement will look wrong to them. Let's say Gulf Coast near and east of Houston, and short distances inland away from Houston.

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

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Nelson" <Lake_Muskoka@...> wrote:

With this understanding, you can expand your roster of boxcars to

well more

than what's on the layout (we all do that anyway), keeping the more

prolific

road names in place (perhaps changing cars) and then cycling in and

out lots

of the smaller roads so that over a period of time, what's seen on the
layout is a fairly uniform distribution of boxcars per the national

fleet.

Dave,

Good point! I have always heard over at the LDSig that you can never
have enough staging, and this is a good reason to add some extra
storage tracks. I've been careful to design in enough covered staging
so I can store every train off-layout (during periods of dusty
construction/expansion), but hadn't thought about an extra pool of
boxcars to cycle the rare cars so that I can keep trains from looking
a little too repetitive, or deviant ;-) (from a type and herald
standpoint).

Thanks,
Dave Evans

See my other post, but I thought most WWII era refineries were north of the gulf - the off-shore oil had not been developed yet.

Well, most of the early Texas discoveries, around 1900, were way in south Texas. You're right that off-shore drilling wasn't much practiced there at the time (developed in California before 1900), but there were HUGE onshore Texas oil fields. You build refineries near the oil when you can.

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

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Bruce Smith" <smithbf@...> wrote:

Tank cars on the PRR during WWII are not a "deviation", they simply are
not part of the national fleet model for boxcars. They have their own
model. The data on the fleet has been provided in the archives, but if
you can't find it I'll try to remember to send it to you off-list.

As for

tank cars being over-represented, that's only if you consider the

national

fleet to be evenly distributed. That would be true for boxcars and

mostly

true for flats and reefers, but not at all true for tank cars.

Bruce - sorry I mis-wrote - deviation was the wrong word - just
pointing out that I will have a layout with an unusually large tank
car fleet relative to other car types.

I have been analyizing the '43 ORER and creating an excel file with
worksheets for each car type, and then totals for each reporting mark
by general characteristics for each car type (e.g. 36/40/50 foot box
cars, steel vs wood sheathed, etc.) For tanks I'm characterizing by
gallons - under 8k, 8k (plain and insulated), 10k (plain and
insulated), and oddities (over 10k or multi-domes), gons by length,
and hoppers by tons and bottom type. Still a work in progress. Haven't
tackled flats, stock and reefers yet.

But I do not have good info on details such as tank car manufacturer
type (e.g. 11, 21, 27, etc). If that exists let me know and I'll
search for it - there is a wealth of data in this site - it could use
a full word index system for quicker and more accurate searches.

As I
alluded to in an earlier message a large portion of the national

fleet of

tank cars was concentrated in a series of linear routes between the gulf
coast oil fields and the north eastern refineries, and once the big inch
pipeline was finished, between the end of the pipeline and the

refineries.

Bruce,

See my other post, but I thought most WWII era refineries were north
of the gulf - the off-shore oil had not been developed yet.

Dave Evans

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Brock" <brockm@...> wrote:

Incidentally, I note that two of the 35 trains in my frt conductor's

book

contain a few Sinclair tank cars. One with 59 [ 63% ] and one with 52 [
42% ]. Based on max train lengths of 35 cars, that means I will need

22 SDRX

tank cars. I have [ gasp ] 5.
Something tells me...

Mike Brock

Mike,

With all of the discussion I have lost track - your conductor book is
UP main in WY post war?

Modeling WWII I'm trying to keep track of which would be the likely
reporting marks on tank trains that ran over the PRR in the east.

Plus, I was under the impression that during this era that a lot of
the refining was north of the gulf - closer to Oklahoma, northern TX,
Kansas, and even eastern Colorado? Gulf coast refining flourished
later after drilling started in the gulf??

Bruce, don't forget that one of the key WWII refineries was Sun oil's
high-octane av-gas refinery in Marcus Hook, PA (between Wilmington DE
and Philly) - I think the crude came over tunnel hill, then down
through Columbia to the DC-Philly main, and then ran north through
Wilmington. Sun's hi-octane fuel was thought to be a major technical
breakthrough in suporting high altitude, super-charged aircraft. I
think I've seen at least one picture of such a train near Wilmington
in an old High Line. What I do not know is if the finished product was
loaded onto ships at Marcus Hook (on the Delaware), or moved by rail
up to the NYC port area.

Sorry if this is getting too far off topic. Being a relative newcomer,
should this type of info be on the Opsig group? Not that relevant to
building freight cars.

Dave Evans

I have the following books for sale:

All books are in excellent condition. Contact me OFFLINE at brockm@brevard.net with any questions including photos of the books. Price does not include shipping.

1. The Making, Shaping, and Treatment of Steel, United States Steel, 7th Edition: $130

2. C&O Power, Staufer: $80

3. The Western Maryland Steam Album, Price: $120

4. Norfolk & Western Railway, Pocahontas Coal Carrier, Prince: $130

5. Steam & Thunder in the Timber, Michael Koch, signed: $150

Mike Brock

Would the owner/manager of this list please assist me in receiving a
digesr of this group's e-mails rather than receiving each one in its
entirety. Thanks. Jim here.