When Swift went to the all-red scheme in the 1950s, the entire car body was red - sides, ends, roof. Richard Hendrickson

Jeff Coleman wrote: Of course there is SOME coal dust. I'm sure many of the empties I saw were freshly picked up and thus still freshly abraded from unloading. Sitting around in humid or rainy

Tony That is interesting as I worked on hundreds of N&W hoppers in the 70's & 80's and all of the interiors had a rust bloom and some coal dust. Jeff Coleman

Bob Karig wrote: Surely this wasn't true by 1923, the era of the NKP cars IIRC. By then there were tens of thousands of all-steel hoppers in service, some with two decades of service. Tony

Steve Hile writes: "There is a problem if, like Mike, you want to be able to duplicate the extreme anomaly of 40 SP boxcars in a single UP train (or whatever.) The choice to be made is where to

The slope sheets on the O&W car were constructed of boards (probably about 10" wide) mounted longitudinally. The twin type hopper doors were each constucted of two boards mounted laterally. The

Is there a pattern (chronological or ???) to whether a Swift wooden car with red sides would have red ends or "box car red" ends? Scott Pitzer

Gentlemen,Permit me to dip my oar into the discussion.......You can only photograph what is on a wheel report.Photographs are extremely valuable in the absence of a wheel report on a given day or of a

I think that the "theories" about car distribution really aren't intended to be applied to individual trains or, perhaps, even a given yard scene. Where they are most useful, in my opinion, is in

I'll begin by apologizing for my smart-ass "superior smirk" remark, which was ill-considered and unwarranted. Now, as to Schuyler's observations about special routing instructions, there is a lot of

Wood. David Thompson

Dean Payne wrote: Dean, the interiors of steel hoppers in regular use DO NOT show rusty or even coal-dusted slope sheets: they tend to be fairly polished bare metal, except at the top and around

What material were the slope sheets on composite hoppers made of? Wood, or steel? I'm not talking of the "modern" War Emergency hoppers, but specifically the NKP 30000-series (built 1923) and the O&W

Jeff Aley asked: to show distributed Well...I don't think tim Gilbert is saying that. The time element has to be considered. IOW, at any major point we don't have a clue what the population of frt

Bob Witt wrote: Of course. Who could argue? But if a photographer takes, say, a thousand images and no bias is obvious; or if we have the work of numerous photographers in an area, none of

I'm just glad to have the book and I look forward to all future releases in this interesting series. Jim Brewer www.pocahontasmodels.com

rwitt_2000 wrote: Agreed! Tim Gilbert

seems have been to show distributed were (excluding RR's in the were West. Of and I offer the suggestion that photographers usually take photos of what interest them. Their mission is not to record a

The number on the car, 1204, falls in the correct series, however, the entire series wasn't completely filled at the later date so unless someone shows me a picture or accounting log book from Mather

Hi Tom I have used Chameleon before, and it does work well. Just a tip, sometimes the removal isnt consistant across the body, and requires a scrubbing with a toothbrush..dont do it on the wifes