From the UP Frt Conductor's Book...
One train had 15 cars carrying rail westbound between Laramie and Rawlins. These cars were:
1.UP 55052 Flat
2.SP 48612 Flat
3.CNW 43651 Flat
4. SP 151256 GS GON
5. UP 56771 Flat
6. MOP 61207 Hopper
7. UP 55765 Flat
8. UP56918 Flat
9. SP 43511 Flat
10.CNW 45237 Flat
11. UP 55939 Flat
12. UP 56799 Flat
13. SP 56423 GS Gon
14.SP 90380 GS Gon
15.SP 56461 GS Gon

The MP car is a bit curious.Tie plates?

Mike Brock

On Mar 1, 10:58pm, Dave & Libby Nelson wrote:

Subject: RE: [STMFC] UP Frt Conductor Book Data...a quick look

So far I'd transcribed about 500 cars and linked them
to my ORER database (as I've done with the SRR books I have). Not

enough of

a sample to say much, but when that question on PRR turtleback's popped

up I

had the answer about 15 seconds after the software loaded.

For the techies:

select train.Train_id, Call_Dt, Road, Car_nbr
from consist, train
where consist.train_id=train.train_id
and consist.cb_series = orer!roster.cb_series
and orer!roster.class_id='X31F';

I'm the wrong kind of techie (I'm a hardware guy), but I'll try to fake
it. What about

select mfr, part_number
from HO_kit
where HO_kit.prototype=orer!roster.class_id
and orer!roster.class_id='X31F'

[or something like that] ??

Regards,

-Jeff


--
Jeff Aley, Development Engineer jaley@pcocd2.intel.com
Graphics Components Division
Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA
(916) 356-3533

If any of you happen to come up with some good prototype info on the
L&N, NC&StL, or TC please give me a shout, either here or off-line. I am
always looking for good resources to help me in my quest of modeling these
RR's prototypically....

Warren, I've got a fair number of photos of freight cars from those RRs,
some of them prints of which copies are no longer available, which I could
send in the form of JPEGs. Tell me exactly what era you're modeling (my
photo collection is largely confined to cars built before ca. 1948, though
many of the photos show later paint/lettering). Also, someone you should
be talking to is Bill Welch in Virginia, who is also very seriously
interested in modeling those RRs in the 1950s. If you're not already in
touch with him, I can give you his e-mail address.

I just got Vollrath's list of photo's (steam locos) for the L&N and
NC&StL, and in the list he mentions that he has an extensive freight car
photo list, 40+ pages. Have any of you ordered freight car photo's from
him before. TIA.

Vollrath's freight car holdings are hit-and-miss, but there are fine things
there, his darkroom work is good, and his prices are reasonable. Certainly
worth checking out.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

In a message dated 3/2/01 9:54:19 AM Pacific Standard Time,
guycwilber@aol.com writes:

<< also the revision of the present note to Rule 3;
excepting industrial or other cars not intended for interchange service from
the provision of the rule in their initial movement from manufacturer to
destination of seaboard. >>

The above should read:
... from manufacturer to destination or seaport.

All,

The date of the banning of Arch Bar trucks in interchange has probably been
beat to death, but...

Many railroads, private car owners, and the American Petroleum Institute
lobbied hard during the late 1930s for several extensions of the date to ban
arch bars. The "final" date was extended several times (on a nearly yearly
basis) with a final mandated date of July 1, 1940. This "final" date was
voted on and overwhemingly approved by the member roads of the AAR; the
result was announced in Circular No. D. V. - 975, dated March 20, 1940.

Within this final agreement was the approval of the use of cars for loading
or unloading (equipped with arch bars) within the same switching district in
which the switching occured; also the revision of the present note to Rule 3;
excepting industrial or other cars not intended for interchange service from
the provision of the rule in their initial movement from manufacturer to
destination of seaboard.

Within my data I find no conclusive mention of a further extension to July,
1941. There is no member road vote listed (via letter ballot) within the
1941 AAR Mechanical Division "Proceedings". Was this extension granted by
the AARs' Board of Directors (as was the case in several of the previous
extensions)? If July, 1941 was indeed the final date, can anyone here
provide conclusive information via AAR interchange rules book and/or other
data?

Regards,

Guy Wilber
Sparks, Nevada

Mike Brock wrote:

One thing that should be considered...and perhaps Richard, Tony, and others
have...is that a hopper car was built to be unloaded through the rails...or
turned completely over as at Norfolk and other ports. If you had a site that
required a load of some kind of coal every week or two you likely would not
have the facility to unload it through...and under the rails...so you might
unload it with a crane...or even some poor sods with shovels.... of some
kind. This might be more adapted to a gon than a deeper hopper. Just
speculating of course.

Earth to Mike. Tony and I (and others) have been making this point for
years. Aside from the fact that coal wasn't widely used as a fuel in the
western U.S., hardly any users had elevated unloading facilities; that's
why the western RRs largely favored GS gondolas rather than hopper cars for
bulk mineral loads. In the east as well as the west, coal was often
shipped in gondolas to recipients who had no elevated trestles (that's why
N&W, Clinchfield, C&O, L&N, etc. had all those gondolas) and was unloaded
with clamshell buckets (which were very hard on the cars, of course) or,
yes, with hand shovels powered by "Norwegian steam." There were very few
places in the west where cross-hopper cars could be conveniently unloaded.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

I wrote:

I have not dertimined destination completely. LA-4 and SP-1 are

mentioned frequently, as are numbers 2,3,5, & 6. The ore string of cars is
going to Van 6. These destinations are not stations since 3 would be that
for Omaha and the referenced train is westbound.

And Jeff Aley responds with:

Espee train numbers???

Well, not LA-4...since the UP went to LA on its own...well sort of. Sounds
like SP-1 is/was. Don't know what the other numbers stood for.

I wrote:

Here's a list of coal or coke carrying cars included in trains I've

checked...about half of the 35 listed: Loads are coal unless indicated.

1. Pennsy gon G-29 359601
2. B&O gon 261628
3. MP gon 72363
4. Lackawanna gon 66057
5. NYC gon 631040 coke
6. Frisco hopper 86496 coke
7. MKT gon 41492
8. N&W gon 91097
9. N&W gon 100350 pitch
10. Frisco gon 84100
11. MP gon 66850
12. MP hopper 59413
13. L&N hopper 65073
14. Lehigh Valley hopper 24613
15. Q ballast hopper 221662
16. Q comp gon 166948
17. NYC gon 711577
18. Q ballast hopper 221725
19. KCS hopper 29107

Jeff answers with:

Twelve of the 19 cars were gons, including some from eastern
roads. I find this surprising even though I've been known to chant the
Henrickson mantra of the West: "more gons than hoppers...more gons than
hoppers".

I respond:
One thing that should be considered...and perhaps Richard, Tony, and others
have...is that a hopper car was built to be unloaded through the rails...or
turned completely over as at Norfolk and other ports. If you had a site that
required a load of some kind of coal every week or two you likely would not
have the facility to unload it through...and under the rails...so you might
unload it with a crane...or even some poor sods with shovels.... of some
kind. This might be more adapted to a gon than a deeper hopper. Just
speculating of course.

Any helium cars? You've got 7 hoppers, and we all know that
Richard claims there were more helium cars than hoppers (in the West, at
least).

I'll be checking on helium loads soon....after checking on wine loads and,
perhaps, sampling some myself...California varieties of course...or those
from Oregon if I could find them down here.

Mike Brock

Fellers,
Since I do not currently have a layout for lack of suitable space, I am doing what I can in the meantime, i.e.: trying to assemble research, and maybe build a few kits. My goal this year is to get some L&N resin caboose kits assembled.
If any of you happen to come up with some good prototype info on the L&N, NC&StL, or TC please give me a shout, either here or off-line. I am always looking for good resources to help me in my quest of modeling these RR's prototypically, and I am still very much a beginner as I have said before.
I just got Vollrath's list of photo's (steam locos) for the L&N and NC&StL, and in the list he mentions that he has an extensive freight car photo list, 40+ pages. Have any of you ordered freight car photo's from him before. TIA.

Warren Dickinson

the book contains data on 35 UP trains between Laramie and Rawlins
[ to the west ], WY, over about a month and a half...Mar ...to ...
April ... 1949.

Very interesting to see so many off-line hoppers at that time. It
makes me wonder if UP's receipt of a large order of 70 ton hoppers
(the H-70-1 class) in 1949 had the effect of sending most of those
hoppers back to their owners.... Certainly pictures of coal trains
in the 1950's show many H-70-1's and not much else.

Timothy O'Connor <timoconnor@mediaone.net>
Marlborough, Massachusetts

Have you been doing this with the DA (delrin) grabs, or with
styrene grabs?

Styrene. I can't imagine trying it with Delrin (c) grabs.

Timothy O'Connor <timoconnor@mediaone.net>
Marlborough, Massachusetts

Richard Stallworth asked:

"Is there a problem in getting models from Sunshine Models? I've
heard it mentioned on other lists that it takes a very loonnggg time
to receive models or catalogs from this company."

Ben Hom replied:

"I'm in agreement with John - I've never had any problems with getting
kits from Martin. Your best bet is to order from him direct."

Without trying to beat this topic to death (and that's happened before on
the FCL) I would like to add one comment. While Sunshine and F&C (not
Westerfield- Al's very speedy!) may sometimes take up to 3 months to fill
orders, thus angering some consumers, think of the alternative - a world
with many more homogenous freight car models. So, rather than getting
angry, pull one of those other unbuilt kits off the shelf and build it, or
if you're out of kits, make patterns for some resin parts that the rest of
us can use.

Suggested parts:
-- Underframe (Duryea) and doors for B&M's 1923 ARA box cars
-- Underframe for B&O's Duryea 1923 box cars
-- Ends for MDT (and sibling) steel reefers
-- Fixed "Pressed Steel" ends for a GTW 52'6" War Emergency gon
-- Drop "Pressed Steel" ends for a RI 52'6" War Emergency gon
-- Sides for an ART R-40-10 clone
-- Ends (rectangular panel) to make the B&O 40' box cars of the 40's (not
sure if it's that simple - did they have Duryea underframes?)
-- Duryea underframe and straps for the end side panels (plus grabs to
replace the ladders) to make a CNJ 52'6" War Emergency gon
-- Parts to make USRA 50-ton gon rebuilds (I haven't spent too much time
thinking about these - they may be simple kitbashes)
-- Tank car underframes and parts
-- sides for GN plywood box cars (orange/green)
-- sides for N&W steel box cars built in late 30's and 40's

Perhaps we can start another thread with users' kitbash parts wish lists.
This list does have the ability to tabulate polls, so once we have a list we
can poll it and send the results to Al, Martin, Steve and Sylvan.

Ted Culotta

Jeff Aley writes, about Mike Brock's UP consist data:

Twelve of the 19 cars were gons, including some from eastern
roads. I find this surprising even though I've been known to chant the
Henrickson mantra of the West: "more gons than hoppers...more gons than
hoppers".

Any helium cars? You've got 7 hoppers, and we all know that
Richard claims there were more helium cars than hoppers (in the West, at
least).

I never claimed this was true "in the west," certainly not on Sherman Hill
(which, as we've previously established, is only marginally in the real
west), only in the Los Angeles area. And if you're going to mis-quote me,
at least spell my name right.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

On Mar 1, 3:48pm, Tim O'Connor wrote:

Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: random questions
You can greatly improve the appearance by cutting off the
plastic rod, and coring the brackets for .008 wire. This is kinda
tedious but not as hard as it may sound. They're also much stronger
than the originals when you do this.

Tim,

Have you been doing this with the DA (delrin) grabs, or with
styrene grabs? I couldn't keep a good enough grip on the DA grabs to
accomplish this (after losing 4 or 5, I gave up!). Any tricks you can
offer would be most welcome.

Regards,

-Jeff

P.S. I'm using an Optivisor and use high-quality needle point tweezers
that I "borrowed" from work.

--
Jeff Aley, Development Engineer jaley@pcocd2.intel.com
Graphics Components Division
Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA
(916) 356-3533

At the RPI club, we need a bunch of pulpwood cars. We have a number of MDC
gons lettered for C&O (the prototype of the kit) and a few kitbashed to N&W
and Rutland (different ends). We just discovered that Chooch makes a cast
resin pulpwood load for 40 foot gons, with wood stuck upright in the ends to
act as a bulkhead. So we figured these would be a quick way to get a bunch
even as we make some cars with individually cut twigs.
First of all, the Chooch loads are a touch too big to fit in the MDC
gon. They fit in the Ertl with a little room to spare, which looks a little
odd, but at least they are in there. They also represent 8 foot logs, not
four foot stacked side by side.
They are very heavy for a car - a little work with a Dremel to hollow
them out might work without too much trouble.
We've hit them with a dark brown wash and that really helped, as it
created dark areas between the logs, making them look separate. And we are
trying to add a single layer of just enough on the top to give a feeling of
natural variation, and yet not have them look so different from the rest of
the ends that they are a distraction. Will let you know how they turn out,
but it looks promising.
- John

The DA grabs are indeed 22" (or 24") ... too long for most uses.
The best replacements are Kadee's of course, but you have to buy
a whole boxcar to get them. ;o( Otherwise Red Caboose and
Intermountain and Branchline and Proto2000 all make bracket
grabs. You can greatly improve the appearance by cutting off the
plastic rod, and coring the brackets for .008 wire. This is kinda
tedious but not as hard as it may sound. They're also much stronger
than the originals when you do this.

I like the detail on the Tichy boards, but we got a whole bunch which were
seriously twisted. I'm not sure this is common to them in general, or we
just lucked out. - John

On Mar 1, 8:25pm, bhom3@home.com wrote:

Subject: [STMFC] Re: random questions

Grab Irons: I prefer Westerfield's wire grabs - they're brass, which
I feel is easier to work with, especially when you have to file them
flush with the inside of an open car. Your choices for bracket type
grabs are much more limited, with the Details Associates part being
pretty much the only game in town.

Aren't the DA bracket grabs too long for most applications? I tried
shortening them (cut off the grab; leave the bracket; replace grab with
wire), but my modeling skills are apparently insufficient.
Result: I use Red Caboose bracket grabs. (I should try replacing the grab
part of *those* with wire; perhaps it's easier since they're styrene).

Regards,

-Jeff

--
Jeff Aley, Development Engineer jaley@pcocd2.intel.com
Graphics Components Division
Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA
(916) 356-3533

Richard Stallworth asked:

"Is there a problem in getting models from Sunshine Models? I've
heard it mentioned on other lists that it takes a very loonnggg time
to receive models or catalogs from this company."

I'm in agreement with John - I've never had any problems with getting
kits from Martin. Your best bet is to order from him direct.


"Is there a particular detail parts company that is better at
building steam-era super detail parts? More variety?"

When it comes to detail parts, there isn't a "one-stop" vendor that
has everything, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given the variety
of the prototype. Here are some tips on some of the more common
parts (opinions expressed are my own and may not represent those of
the other members of the list):

Grab Irons: I prefer Westerfield's wire grabs - they're brass, which
I feel is easier to work with, especially when you have to file them
flush with the inside of an open car. Your choices for bracket type
grabs are much more limited, with the Details Associates part being
pretty much the only game in town.

Stirrup Steps: A-Line steps whever prototypically appropriate - the
wire steps hold up better under layout conditions than the Details
Associates derlin steps; however, Details Associates makes a greater
variety of types.

Brake Details: Tichy makes very nice K and AB brake sets which blow
away the previous standard, the old Cal-Scale sets.

Brake Wheels: For later brake wheels, Kadee offers the same ones on
their PS-1's spearately, though without housings. Details Associates
offers a variety of brake wheels with housings. Precision Scale
makes a very nice Ajax brakewheel (no housing).

Running Boards: Tichy offers the nice injection molded wooden
running board from their USRA SS Boxcar kit if you don't want to
build one from wood or styrene, although the lateral running boards
are for the USRA car's more narrow width and run parallel to the
ends. For metal running boards, etched metal is the way to go, with
Plano Model Products making a good variety of designs. Just remember
to use a flexible adhesive such as R/C 50 or Weldbond or (in the
immortal words of Tim O'Connor) SPROING!!

Various manufacturers also offer kit components separately -
(underframes from Red Caboose, Intermountain, and Central Valley, for
example), and Al Westerfield offers many of his kit castings as
separate parts. He will also run specific parts from his kits as
needed (I've got some eight panel USRA Steel Boxcar sides for a PRR
Class ARA boxcar kitbash that I still need to finish) - contact him
for specific terms and prices.

Hope this gives you a running start!


Ben Hom