Richard, Can you tell us any more about the California Despatch wine cars (dates, routing, users, number and type of cars, anything). I remember the Red Caboose R-30-11/12 refrigerators lettered for

Anyone out there work as a volunteer or frequently visitis the Illinois Railroad Museum?? I would love to find someone who can take one or two digital shots of a detail on one of the pieces of

For those of us following the pickle car posts, there is a picture of part of the Ma Brown pickle plant in Chicago on page 85 of Classic Trains Steam Glory 2, sadly with no pickle cars visible. But

Too bad - any thing like it, if set in the steam era, would be a huge resource..... Rob

A private message I recently sent to Paul Lyons read, in part: The question seems to be when/whether they were re-roofed with Hutchins or similar all steel roofs. I have two photos of these cars,

Todd Horton wrote: Todd, there was more than one version of the Hutchins roof, and I would hesitate to assume the Accurail model is the most common one. Tony Thompson Editor,

The reason that these cars were thought to have the Hutchins Roof is because of the end caps where the roof meets the car side. Supposedly this is a spotting feature of the Hutchins Roof. I was

Thanks Bruce & Larry. My wife is the wine-maker, not me! KL

Because when you ship Juice it will pick up WILD yeast and start the wine making process. You no longer have juice. If you have ever made home made wine you would understand you must kill the wild

Kurt, As any home brewer/vintner knows, a high degree of cleanliness prior to fermentaition is an absolute requirement. The grape juice has sugars that are fermentable and any contamination by wild

Oops--forgot to sign that last post Brian Leppert Carson City, NV

Tony and list, here's a few more facts to add this topic. 1.C of G Annual Reports from the late 1930s specifically note that ventilated box cars were being equipped with "Murphy Pivoted All Steel

Paul, I think the closest match to this roof is illustrated on page 399 in the 1925 CBC. It's called a "Murphy All-Steel Flexible Roof", but lacks those little notches at the ends of the ribs, as

Paul, I don't know any tech names of anything other than the Murphy but, I've got photos that show the tops of these cars from the early 1930s and some from the 40s-50s. The roofs all have the same

Peter, for some reason I think it best that the words "dive-in" and "offal" should never be used together in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. As to the afore mentioned loads, yes they

I had a chance last month in Naperville to have a long conversation with Allen Tuten, President of the CofG Histoical Society, about their ventilated boxcar model and the roof as it relates to the

I would bet on wine. When I was a switchman on the Santa Fe in Emporia Ks we had a lot of wine tank cars go through. I never saw a car with grape juice. IMHO it would be impossible to ship Grape

None, unfortunately - at least, not directly. The dimensions and general construction of the 8K and 10K gal. ICC-103Ws were similar to those of the welded cars built by GATC in the late 1940s and

In the era with which this list is concerned, most wine shipments traveled in glass-lined ICC-203 tank cars which were dedicated exclusively to bulk wine service. There were a sizable number of these