Only the November-December 1982 PrototypeModeler is available on Trainlife at this time. http://magazine.trainlife.com/ptm_1982_11/ The article begins on page 12. Eric

Ben Hom wrote: Two very nice articles, creating a whole bunch of interesting gondolas. They were in the September-October and the November-December issues of PM in 1982. I built a couple of them

When I was in Korea around 69/70 they had small containers? that used it for just that, welding. Saw lots of them. -- Jon MillerFor me time stopped in 1941Digitrax

mea culpa my bad I reversed the effect Rich Orr

Group, Calcium ion, in combination with bicarbonate and carbonate ions. is the the species that causes water to be "hard". Water that contains high concentration of calcium ion, and bicarbonate or

Thinking about the interior photo, and the racks on the floor. The floor isn't necessarily dry, and you really don't want calcium carbide getting wet. (That's how acetylene is generated from it.) So

What about use for portable flood lights at the site of a derailment? Steve Hile

Thank you Ben for the link. I've downloaded and saved the DT&I Mill gon project pdf by Greg Martin. Nice future project.

Calcium carbide is indeed used to generate acetylene. Most common use is/was in miners’ helmets. It releases C2H2 when mixed with water, so a small reservoir would drip onto the carbide. I very

Calcium carbonate to treat water. Much of the water available along the PRR mainline was hard which cause a buildup of deposits in the boiler tubes. Track pans especially had water treatment

Fred Jansz asked:"An OLD friend heard I was into US prototype trains and decided to give me an Athearn blue box 50' gon lettered for Pere Marquette. Is this a car that represents a certain prototype

Fred Jansz wrote: No one has ever identified an actual prototype, mostly because Athearn shortened it from prototype cars like this. It is not bad kitbashing material, but out of the box,

Fred, I asked this question many moons ago on the old Freight Car List. The short answer is not without cutting it in half and removing a section or two. I think that leads to a DT&I gondola. The

An OLD friend heard I was into US prototype trains and decided to give me an Ath blue box 50' gon lettered for Pere Marquette. Is this a car that represents a certain prototype and can be turned into

Garth, Guessing? nope :) But factually answering? Sure! I doubt your horse car theory, mostly because horse cars in the US were typically full length or nearly so. I did note that it might have an

Friends, Do we get a prize for guessing correctly? Could this car have originally been a horse car used in passenger trains? That would account for the steam pipe.

Autocorrect got the second one - it is calcium carbide… the dangerous stuff! Regards Bruce Bruce F. Smith Auburn, AL "Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."

I believe that calcium carbide was used to generate acetylene gas which was used for welding/brazing and maybe lighting at one time. It is unstable so is shipped dissolved in acetone…not very safe

Elden, Folks Brian Carlson pointed out photos of this car at the Hagley site. It is a “Calcium Carbide” car…. Not that this sheds any light on the origin of the

Bruce; I have been thinking about this since the Meet (thanks for sharing them!), and I had a few thoughts: The sides have distinct flavor of X29, with post rivets of closer and wider spacing, not a