Rob, I would recommend replacing your illuminated magnifying glass with an optivisor. My friend has an illuminated magnifying glass, and claims that due to the single lens, there is no way to judge

While browsing through the on-line P&LE photo collection, I came across a 1946 aerial image of the Champion Coal Prep plant that was located on the Montour RR, just west of Pittsburgh. There are

Ed Mines asked: Does anyone have a picture of a gon loaded with a large diameter pipe? And Ron Merrick replied with a very informative post about cast iron pipe. The NMRA Railroad Industry SIG

Ron, The L&N 97350-97399 cars had blue sides and ends. Roof was coated with black car cement. Running board and trucks were black. The underframe was painted freight car red, a common practice with

Ron Merrick wrote: I'll take this question since I make my living with pipe. [large snip] Ron, Thanks very much for your very informative posts. I found them very helpful in understanding the photos

There is also cast iron pipe, which in that era was cast gray iron made to ASTM and AWWA specs first issued in 1902. This was once "pit-cast" pipe, in which the molten iron was poured into vertical

Does anyone have a picture of a gon loaded with a large diameter pipe? Aren't a lot of these cast with a flared end? Ed

I picked up an assembled (not very well) Kahn's car from the 1960's middle-stage of Walthers manufacture--between the original Frank Taylor-designed kits and the last phase, as now continued by All

And The HJ Heinz collection has a nice shot of Heinz box car 440 circa 1907 in images 1401-160 -- Thanks! Brian Ehni

Ah, yes, as Charlie Morrill says, it is hard to go back, once bitten by the bug. I have now been in O scale longer than I was in HO (and probably have more stuff), and every time I look at HO, even

Hi Fred, Canada did not begin to adopt the metric system until the early 1970s, with a target date of 1980 for full compliance, well outside the steam era boundaries. Mark Heidn start.

Seamless pipe in that era was made by a process known as pilgering, which means that a hollow round billet was just rolled back and forth by angled rollers on the outside and the inside. The billet

Mont, Ron et all, My guess is that it was done in an effort to minimize waste of over/underlength pipe by not cutting of the excess or rejecting pipe shorter than 21' or 42'. In smaller sizes of pipe

Ron, Your post was most interesting and answers a lot of questions. Thank you for sharing it. Any idea why "double random" vs. sections of all the same size? Mont Switzer

Using the link Larry Kline gave to the aforementioned collection I found an overhead of a FGE reefer (city photographer collection using railroad as a search word)which has a roof similar to the

I'm looking for better data on the series L&N 97350-99, reportedly built 5-60 by ACF. (I'm of the opinion that anything that happened in that year is still fair game for this list.) My problem is

I'll take this question since I make my living with pipe. Regarding line pipe, used for overland pipelines, the sizes could range from 3" to 24" OD in this era. The first long-distance 24" line was

Tom Jones wrote: There is lots of 39' pipe out there in the ground from pipelines of that era. . . . ---------------------------------- There is a great May 1949 shot of a pipe load in a P&LE gon on

Bruce, We are talking about really big rocks here. These were loaded and unloaded with a crane equipped with a mechanical claw that could grapple with the boulder to lift it into/out of

In the July issue of MR I noticed an advertisement for gondola loads. I think they were N scale. My question has nothing to do with the manufacture or their product; but one of the loads raised a