I believe these 34-36 foot MDT cars were given "repair steel underframes" (steel center sills, bolsters and needle beams)
starting in the teens and continuing into the 1920's. They later
(post 1923) operated under ERDX reporting marks.
Larry King

Scott, do you have a photo of this car? Any idea how long it lasted and if it wss used in interchange service? Todd Horton




________________________________
From: Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@...>
To: STMFC@...
Sent: Wed, June 2, 2010 7:00:29 PM
Subject: Re: [STMFC] standard framing sizes for house car construction?

 
On Jun 2, 2010, at 1:25 PM, blindog@... wrote:

A friend wants to scratchbuild a model of LOP&G 601, a 40-foot
boxcar that smells to me like it could a former Southern Rwy box.
Not that I'm an expert on those, mind you. He sent me a copy of a
picture, but I don't know the source or if it can be shared. It
shows a wood-bodied, double-sheathed box on a steel fishbelly
underframe.

Scott, that's not an ex-Southern car; IIRC, all of the Southern XM
single door box cars built between WW I and the late 1920s were 36'
cars with truss rod underframes, and they were followed by double
door 40' composite cars with steel ends A more likely source would
have been the Atlantic Coast Line or Seaboard Air Line, since those
were railroads the LOP&G interchanged with. However, LOP&G 601 and
602 were 40'4" IL, according to 30s and 40s ORERs, with an unusually
low inside height of 8'3", and those dimensions don't match any cars
on the ACL or SAL rosters in that period.

Richard Hendrickson

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Jun 2, 2010, at 1:25 PM, blindog@... wrote:

A friend wants to scratchbuild a model of LOP&G 601, a 40-foot
boxcar that smells to me like it could a former Southern Rwy box.
Not that I'm an expert on those, mind you. He sent me a copy of a
picture, but I don't know the source or if it can be shared. It
shows a wood-bodied, double-sheathed box on a steel fishbelly
underframe.

Scott, that's not an ex-Southern car; IIRC, all of the Southern XM
single door box cars built between WW I and the late 1920s were 36'
cars with truss rod underframes, and they were followed by double
door 40' composite cars with steel ends A more likely source would
have been the Atlantic Coast Line or Seaboard Air Line, since those
were railroads the LOP&G interchanged with. However, LOP&G 601 and
602 were 40'4" IL, according to 30s and 40s ORERs, with an unusually
low inside height of 8'3", and those dimensions don't match any cars
on the ACL or SAL rosters in that period.

Richard Hendrickson

JP can you please contact me off list. I tried to respond off list to your message but it was blocked,

Jerry Glow
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/decals

OMG - I sent the older working file. It didn't even have the Mainline slogan. It should be correct now.
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/IC_l.jpg

Jerry Glow
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/decals

--- In STMFC@..., blindog@... wrote:

A friend wants to scratchbuild a model of LOP&G 601, a 40-foot boxcar that smells to me like it could a former Southern Rwy box... It shows a wood-bodied, double-sheathed box on a steel

fishbelly underframe...

Anyhow, it looks like the sides are made of 1x4 tongue & groove, but his question is were there standard lumber sizes to build the interior framing of wood boxcars?

Scott Chatfield

Hi Scott,

Your friend really needs a Car Builder's Cyc from the early part of the century for the construction details, one of the old Train Shed Cyclopedia series might do. The TSC series did parts of the 1919 Cyc, and another that had views of the USRA cars, which were double sheathed cars with fishbelly underframes.

As to lumber, the MCB, and later the ARA, had a series of standard sections for siding, sheathing, and flooring that are usually illustrated in the Cyc somewhere with detailed drawings. That's where you find out the the standard 5-1/4" siding had a center groove, a detail missed by innumerable manufacturers over the years. I just don't remember if the drawings are in any of the TSC series; they are in the Kalmbach reprint of the 1940 for sure.

Dennis

On Jun 2, 2010, at 12:50 PM, JP Barger wrote:

There is one more change accurately pointed out by Ed Hawkins after a
look
at the flyer. That is the appearance of the colored UP shield on item
47403.
It needs to be modified to remove the word Railroad from the upper
blue
field, and the white border on the shield needs to be removed, also.
These
two incorrect details (on the 1946 UP heralds) are featured later on
the
post 1951 black and white UP heralds. Again, there is plenty of time
to make
these changes.

J.P.
Of course, the other way to correct the error is to simply change the
color of the UP medallion to black and white while retaining everything
else "as is" on the model. Better yet, for modelers interested in
either the late 1940s period or the post-1953 period (which the model
#47403 would represent without periods in the reporting marks), both
versions would be appreciated.
Regards,
Ed Hawkins

A friend wants to scratchbuild a model of LOP&G 601, a 40-foot boxcar that smells to me like it could a former Southern Rwy box. Not that I'm an expert on those, mind you. He sent me a copy of a picture, but I don't know the source or if it can be shared. It shows a wood-bodied, double-sheathed box on a steel fishbelly underframe.

Anyhow, it looks like the sides are made of 1x4 tongue & groove, but his question is were there standard lumber sizes to build the interior framing of wood boxcars? Assuming this car is in the ORER, I might be able to extrapolate the wall thickness from the difference between IW and EW or EXW. However, it might not be in the ORER since shortline-owned boxcars in that day were often only used for on-line LCL service.

We've got an old OSL box on the farm out in Colorado, but I'm in Georgia and my tape measure isn't quite that long....

Scott Chatfield

Are you sure? It seems to have diagonal panel roof and a 10'6 interior height, seems aq little more recent than '37.

Staffan Ehnbom

The 40' plug door car has early Dreadnaught ends. Obviously rebuilt from a single door 10 panel '37AAR boxcar.
-Andy Carlson
Ojai CA

Richard Hendrickson wrote:

GTW 11498 was in express box car service and thus wasn't in the ORERs . . .

Ah, but it was in the ORPTE. My 1943 issue shows GTW 11490-11499 as all-steel 50'6" (IL) BX cars.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Bob,
GTW 11498 is part of a 15 car group numbered 11484-11499. According to the notes, box express cars in this series had small doors on each end for passage from one car to another, except:  cars 11490-11494 had solid ends and 11495-11499 had full end doors as pictured. Info from the March 1966 Offical Register of Passenger Train Equipment.

On Jun 2, 2010, at 11:31 AM, rwitt_2000 wrote:

Can anyone provide information about these three GTW boxcars? The
50-ft
former automobile car appears to be in express service at the time of
the photo. The steel underframe car also appears to have been built
for
auto service based upon the 1-1/2 door opening. I am not sure the plug
door one is in the STMFC era.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170492093611

GTW 576631 was in the 576000-576999 series, all of which were in auto
engine service (note the stenciling which reads "specially equipped
for automobile engine loading"). There were 50 cars in the series in
1943, but the number diminished steadily until only 3 cars were left
in 1950. The car in the photo had arch bar trucks when photographed,
and those would have had to be changed to cast steel trucks by 1941.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170492082003

GTW 11498 was in express box car service and thus wasn't in the
ORERs. It was obviously one of the end door 50' auto cars built ca.
1941 that was either originally intended for, or converted for,
passenger service, as is evident from the Commonwealth high speed
trucks.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170492085140

You're right, this was built or rebuilt well past the STMFC era.

Richard Hendrickson

Can anyone provide information about these three GTW boxcars? The 50-ft
former automobile car appears to be in express service at the time of
the photo. The steel underframe car also appears to have been built for
auto service based upon the 1-1/2 door opening. I am not sure the plug
door one is in the STMFC era.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170492093611
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170492082003
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170492085140

Regards,

Bob Witt

In 1941 the M&StL railroad made a weed killing outfit that put oil on the ground, it had covers over the rails.
I personally have seen this done on the Milwaukee railroad in Iowa. It sure was a mess but did kill the weeds and kept done the dust from the right of way.
I have drawings of the cars and correspondence the railroad processed in the making of the sprayer
Ron Christensen

Hello, people: Several squibs have appeared in the last week or two on this
subject, which I have read with interest. To answer Bruce Smith's query, the
upcoming Intermountain later R-30 series being offered are as accurate as
Terry Wegman could make them (and Terry has the reputation of being one of
our most knowledgeable and accurate modelmakers). But, we all need to
understand that there are lots of complicating wrinkles in the variety and
details of the reefers PFE fielded.
When it came time (beginning in 1940)to retire thousands of 1920's-built
reefers because their superstructures were worn out, PFE created the
R-30/40-16 to -24 series from them over a five year period. This was
accomplished by scrapping the wood and insulation parts of the cars, and
reusing the metal parts. Underframes of three different designs were thus
saved, with wood superstructures of latest (1940-1945) designs added on top
of the frames. Standard procedure at Roseville shops.
Six types of RTR Intermountain assembled cars are shown on this month's
dealer bulletin from IRC, and also on their website. Terry Wegman made his
parts for these cars with only one choice of underframe, namely the R-30-13
version, which you will also find in the Tichy R-40-4 kit,although Tichy's
is supposed to be the 40 ton version. This underframe also appears with
several other models. One of the first mass-produced ones was the Silver
Streak/later Walthers models of the 1946-1980 period. So the models produced
in assembled form by IRC are all cars with the double centerbeam feature of
the Wegman parts. Bruce Smith's email accurately lists the classes shown on
the IRC literature.
The first inaccuracy I have found so far in the current IRC literature is
the description of item 47402,which represents the five first prototype
R-30-18 cars. These cars were a trial to see how the wood superstructures
would interact with or tolerate steel roofs applied to them, although PFE
already had had success with the steel-roof equipped R-70-2 & R-40-10
classes. Five only R-30-18's were built initially; these five were specially
identified with two horizontal red stripes running the length of the sides.
The stripes make for an interesting diversion from the mainstream
appearance of other PFE fleet cars. The cars were initially marked
R-30-12-18, indicating that they were built directly from -12 underframes.
The IRC bulletin this month shows R-30-12-16, but IRC has plenty of time in
this run to correct their artwork, making -16 over to -18. There is another
matter, however,as you may already have figured out from the information
above about Wegman's parts. While almost all of the five correct car numbers
being offered by IRC could theoretically have had either -12 or -13
underframes, the R-30-12-18 cars may only have had -12 underframes. 75652
certainly does have a -12. It is so labelled in an excellent sharp picture
on page 138 0f Thompson's excellent reference on the subject.(1st
edition)And the end of the crossbeams shown are definitely -12. So, if you
don't mind the underframe swap, you will have dimensionally accurate,
correctly labelled cars in this group of PFE cars.
For those who want to go one step farther, they can swap the underfloor to
the correct -12 class with a Red Caboose underfloor. If you can get IRC to
sell you body-decorated kits, prepainted, you can more easily fit the RC
floor to the superstructure than to change it after the car is completely
assembled.
There is one more change accurately pointed out by Ed Hawkins after a look
at the flyer. That is the appearance of the colored UP shield on item 47403.
It needs to be modified to remove the word Railroad from the upper blue
field, and the white border on the shield needs to be removed, also. These
two incorrect details (on the 1946 UP heralds) are featured later on the
post 1951 black and white UP heralds. Again, there is plenty of time to make
these changes.
Happy model railroading, PFE aficionados. JP Barger












a

Schuyler-
Thanks a bunch. You just cost me / saved me a bunch of money!!
Charlie Vlk

Sharing this information:

Indiana University Press is having a sale, 2,500 titles at up to 80% off.
Orders over $25 get free shipping. Go to:

www.iupress.indiana.edu

At checkout use code WWEZXX for sale prices and free shipping. Sale ends 30
June 10.

I have zero connection to IU Press except for being a satisfied customer.
IU Press publishes a fairly extensive line of rail-oriented books. I have
bought books through earlier instances of this sale and now have books that
I wouldn't have bought before because of the price.

SGL

Tim,

The correct answer is yes, this is the car the Tichy model is trying to represent. I think the Tichy model is very, very close. The big problem with the Tichy representation is that the fishbelly center-sills are too deep for the ACL cars. It's not a huge problem but I think it's clearly noticeable when comparing the model to the prototype.

John Golden
Bloomington, IN

Tim,
 The short answer is yes and yes. The end sills should be flat, not a channel and the u/f  shouldn't be as deep as the Tichy.  See MM May 1984
   Tom Christensen

--- In STMFC@..., jerryglow@... wrote:

I completed the artwork changing the lettering to Gothic other than road name, reporting marks and number and am now taking orders. See:
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/samples/IC_l.jpg

Jerry Glow
http://home.comcast.net/~jerryglow/decals

Jerry,

Is the two different sizes in the word CENTRAL intentional?

Dennis