I once impressed a railfan out in western Massachusetts watching an eastbound Conrail manifest climbing to Washington Summit -- I looked and said it must be SEFR (Selkirk-Framingham) based on the cars

I remember a layout at a train show many, many years ago that was nothing more than plywood topped tables, painted green, and a couple loops of track. They would run a specific train from a train

Copper bearing steel is known by trade names Cor-Ten (USS) and Marai (Bethlehem, named for a place in Africa where the iron ore is naturally mixed with copper). It was not the answer to corrosion that

I don't have the data with me at the moment but the N&W also started using copper bearing steel in the 1920's for gondolas & hoppers in coal service. Jeff Coleman

On the roof, you could also get a Sylvan Hutchins roof.   Rich Christie

Tony Thompson wrote: Tony, Which do you mean, a decade after WWI or after 1915? In my reply to the original inquiry I listed the seminal article published in 1923 by J. J. Tatum Superintendent Car

Elden,While I have a large number of resin cars I do have a fair share of "Stand Ins".Some of these cars with be super detailed by adding new under frames,ladders,brake gear,grab irons and the

Richard Townsend wrote: A faintly dishonest comment by Alcoa, because while aluminum has about a third the density of steel, it also has about a third the stiffness of steel. Thus to get the

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE That's very interesting, and may explain the PRR's big move to corrugated panels (instead) during the early 60's rebuild campaigns for gondolas, but not for

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE Armand; You may be past this point, but given my lack of actual consists, I had to use photos, limited special reports done on car numbers by location,

Is it a long report? BTW, that 1943 Alcoa ad makes the same point you did regarding thickness: "Aluminum is naturally resistant to corrosion. Its use permits conservative designs, because lightness

Richard Townsend wrote: Alcoa sponsored several hopper car projects in aluminum in the 1930s. The material was terribly expensive and it's no surprise that nobody built any additional cars

Gatwood, Elden wrote: As railroads also found with stronger and thinner steel in box cars, this is a structural trap. The weight savings really aren't very big, a few thousand pounds, and the

Eldon (or anyone else, really), Do you know of any discussion with respect to PRR 740279? This was a GLc hopper built or rebuilt with aluminum, in 1932, I think. I don't know if there were others

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE Tony; That is about what I expected, since the bulk of PRR correspondence on the topic of failures, at least post-war for sure, is about things they

As the new president of the New York Central System Historical Society, I am delighted to announce that the Society has established a Yahoo group for the free exchange of NYC-related information

Gatwood, Elden wrote: Looking through railroad industry journals such as Railway Age in the first ten or 15 years of the 20th century will show numerous articles and letters to the editor about

Armand Premo wrote: I agree with this idea, and have done something similar. I am meticulous in replacing in any train a "distinctive" car, such as a depressed-center car with load (or any

Not to belabor this issue,but I just checked a whole month of wheel reports to see what the correlation was with the Twenty Largest railroads.The results were not really earth shattering.However,while

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE It would be interesting to know how geographic/regional this issue was, and how it evolved over time. I recall seeing discussion on effects of