Victor, Some freight cars did indeed have canvas roofs that were painted several coats of paint. The June 2, 1928 issue of Railway Age (Page 70) had an ad for "Mule Hide" roofing which read

Dennis, Could you please expand upon this topic? For example, who is it that has his wheat milled in transit: the farmer, or some intermediate elevator? Is the

Tim, Your point? Dennis

Tim O'Connor wrote Yes, of course. I would expect therefore that there would have been fewer trains per day in 1938 than in 1949, which would raise my percentages. If you have data showing that the

Just pointing out that the car has been moved on the railroad before. I assume the car was dropped at Albert Lea MN by a westbound and now was on an east bound? Clark Propst

I can find only one photo in the Color Guide that shows one of these cars WITHOUT its original Dalman trucks. #W85320 shows up on pages 106 and 107, photographed in 1978 with roller bearing Ride

Jeff: Not so. Customer ordered a car/cars from the Car Distributor. Car Distributor issued an order to the yard for placing an empty/empties at a given industry. Car/cars were spotted. After

Ah, but Dennis, suppose I shipped a box car of $100 bills to the bank, and withdrew it again as pennies? :-) Tim "infungible" O'Connor

Tim, Tony Thompson can answer better than I can. But if I understood his clinic correctly, the Agent wrote the empty car order and waybill BEFORE the car was spotted for loading. So

"I've heard of storage in transit for grain, but milling in transit?? Wouldn't the transformation of bulk grain into bags of flour involve an entirely new tariff?"   It would always be that way, once

Hi, A question for Mike Brock and/or the moderators of this group. Are discussions of model train layout "train make up" methods OK for this group? I'm talking about how our layout trains

No, it was a single tariff designed to keep the flour traffic on the line that had originated the grain move. It goes back a long way; here's a link to a nespaper article from

Larry Ostresh wrote I'm sure I don't need to point out 1949 was a very different year than 1938, in which the US economy was still deep in recession. I think someone else already pointed that out, as

According to Ed's book, the cars were purchased by the SAL but lettered for MD&S. Unfortunately there is no photo. They were Lot W-3689. Also listed as SAL purchased, MD&S lettered, are gondolas

Ross I've heard of storage in transit for grain, but milling in transit?? Wouldn't the transformation of bulk grain into bags of flour involve an entirely new tariff? Tim O'Connor

Tim O'Connor writes: "Larry, does 2,267 box cars on the UP mainline even represent the traffic of a single typical day? So here we are looking at freight trains spread over four months... or on any

Mike My point is, can anything useful be inferred from it about the overall composition of freight trains on the UP mainline? I don't think so. But as I said before, if you want to model THOSE

Mike Brock wrote I was struck by Mike's statement, which I think is true -- when I came back into the hobby in 1988 (and before I discovered Westrail, Tichy, Prototype Modeler etc) I'd go into a

Tim O'Connor writes: On the contrary, I think we know a great deal. We know what UP frt trains looked like. From my conductor's book, we know what 34 trains looked like. Not in a given day, but over

I designed a track plan proposal for a club in 1500 sq ft that included a hidden three level stage/elongated helix that would have provided 700-1000 linear ft of level staging (18-24 long trains) --