Garth – I was somewhere (NMRA? RPM?) where Scott Chatfield talked about tank cars, and he covered some Tetraethyl lead cars (among others) To your questions: - They were small (IIRC the

Garth, The main point about the list was to show the variety of non-owner controlled cars that carried feed stocks to refineries. I have no insight to the outbound loads at that time as the list is

Bud, Tony, Bruce, and others, when I started to model US prototypes more than 20 years ago I definitely wanted to run 100+ car trains with only one (larger) steam engine because this was reality for

Going by my own knowledge of the subject, there were two primary producers of tetraethyl lead. One was Ethyl Corporation and the other was DuPont. Both used their own dedicated tank cars. I don't

Bud I’m not sure if one is available for S, but I use the truck tool reamer to clean out the journal cones on my HO trucks. I have even used it on brass trucks with great success as the cutter is

The NMRA car weight is not a standard it is a recommended practice. Here’s the PDF for RP-20.1 Car Weight. https://www.nmra.org/sites/default/files/standards/sandrp/pdf/rp-20.1.pdf Many modelers

Thanks guys for all the responses on car weighting! Consistency seems to be the way to go. In S I have quite a few heavier brass cars without needlepoint axles and most other cars have either

John, Interesting list and interchange information. One point: automotive lead (tetraethylead) is extremely heavy. From my observation on the WP in the 1970s, which moved a lot of Ethyl tank cars, is

Ken, While I agree that the the CONX car would not have been in California distributing finished product to local dealers, it coiled have been there transporting stock components to either

Tony, with the improvements in the free-rolling of trucks due to better wheels and more accurately fitted axle lengths (yes, I know REBOXX is out of business, but there's hope for another

Bruce Metcalf wrote: There were studies in the model magazines back in the 1950s that concluded (possibly correctly) that the biggest factor in car weight performance was CONSISTENT car weight.

I think it's important to understand the conditions under which the NMRA established those weight standards. It was an era before RP-25 wheel contours, before needle-point axles, and when car sides

Ken Adams wrote: In your and my modeling period, Ken, UTLX was pretty substantially in bed with the "baby Standards" such as Standard of California, and to my knowledge had nothing to do with

Andy Jackson wrote: Depends on the outside and inside diameter of the coils, and on the width of the strip. But the "standard" coils in use at the time these cars were built were loaded two at

Having worked in California oil production in the 70s and early 80s, and having some familiarity with other parties besides the companies I worked for, the other respondents have it correct - Conoco

Bob the only railroad owned poultry cars I am aware of are evidenced from a photo, CP 259102 and a drawing, Michigan Central 60001 (a Continental Live Poultry car). The Southern Historical Society has

I follow the NMRA recommendations. Mostly for consistency. Most new freight cars I purchase are delivered close to NMRA standards and come with quality trucks and wheelsets. I use IM wheelsets almost

Brian Carlson, Yes, I knew Dave well, an excellent modeler and Mr Frugal when it came to using inexpensive materials to construct his layouts! Nice to hear that weights did indeed help with

Bud, I modeled in S scale for several years using AM, SHS, PRS, AF conversions and other cars with stock trucks and KD 5 couplers. I hand laid all my track and turnouts with codes 100, 83, 70 and some

Weight to the NMRA at a minimum myself. On our club layout we had an O-scale modeler that didn’t add any weight. The o scale atlas and intermountain cars would just fall off the track. Everything