--- destron@... wrote:

I'm curious about the model mentioned in the subject line. How easy/hard
is it to find? What sort of price is 'good'? I want to use this to do an
SAL AF2. What is the prototype for the model?

On Wed, June 20, 2007 9:45 pm, cj riley wrote:

Are you referring to the Pennsy turtleback cars modified to carry Jeeps
(and
later, cars)"

I have built the kit recently, but fair value is in the eyes of the
"potential" buyer.

The PRR car was class X31F. In addition to the Sunshine kit, there is a
Bowser kit. Coincidentally, we'll be building X31s as our next project on
the PRRPro group, beginning around August 1st and the X31F is included in
that project.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL

Are you referring to the Pennsy turtleback cars modified to carry Jeeps (and
later, cars)"

I have built the kit recently, but fair value is in the eyes of the "potential"
buyer.

CJ Riley


--- destron@... wrote:

I'm curious about the model mentioned in the subject line. How easy/hard
is it to find? What sort of price is 'good'? I want to use this to do an
SAL AF2. What is the prototype for the model?

Frank Valoczy
New Westminster, BC

PS: Does anyone know if there exist decals for SAL's 25000-25499 series of
boxcars, for the silver livery with red lettering and "Silver Star"
slogan?

____________________________________________________________________________________
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Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains.
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Beckert, Shawn wrote:

Does anyone know what became of the photograph collection of A.C. Phelps, noted railroad photographer?

A few of Al's negatives were sold or traded after his death, but the great bulk of his work was purchased by Signature Press. The collection has been indexed on a CD, and the negatives can be printed or scanned as needed. A number of researchers have availed themselves of this.
That said, Signature Press is not in the photo business, and does not wish to take on large numbers of orders. Anyone with needs may communicate with me (off list).

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

List,

Does anyone know what became of the photograph collection
of A.C. Phelps, noted railroad photographer?

Thanks,

Shawn Beckert

Some comments in response to various posting on commodity origins


> That's what you would obviously expect if you look at who served the four

large produce areas of California.

Imperial Valley - SP only
San Joaquin Valley - SP, SF
Salinas Valley - SP only
Sacramento Valley - SP, WP

Do you have numbers for that Malcolm? I couldn't help but notice that
you left out the entire LA region, from the Simi Valley to Riverside and
Santa Ana and southwards to San Diego. This was the source of the
Santa Fe's citrus traffic, for example.

Tim O'


Good question Tim. I did some research on that yesterday. Here are the figures for 1999 from a state of Ca web site for the 11 counties with the largest agricultural production, with the largest perishable crops for each. It' interesting to note that only SP has access to the two counties that are the largest lettuce growing areas in the U.S. I doubt that the proportions were very different in the 50's.


1
Fresno
SP, SF
3559
Grapes
Tomatoes


2
Tulare
SP,SF
3075
Grapes
Oranges
Plums

3
Monterey
SP
2369
Lettuce
Broccoli
Strawberries

4
Kern
SP. SF
2128
Grapes
Citrus


5
Merced
SP,SF
1534
Tomatoes



6
San Joaquin
SP, SF. WP
1352
Grapes
Tomatoes
Cherries

7
San Diego
SF, ?SP
1242
A vocados



8
Stanislaus
SP, SF
1210
Tomatoes



9
R iverside
SP, SF, UP
1197
Table Grapes
Lemons


10
Ventura
SP
1059
Strawberries
Lemons
Celery
Oranges
11
Imperial
SP
1045
Lettuce
Carrots




Excludes: P oultry M ilk Cattle & Calves , Almonds C otton & P rocessed C ottonseed C hickens

> Grapes were primarily produced in Northern and Central California. This is the heart of PFE territory.

Looks to me like SF had equal access for table grapes.

> Cabbage, celery, lettuce and onions are primarily southern Califronia and Texas products an area served primarily by the SFRD.

Dead wrong on lettuce, which I believe was the largest crop.

> Bananas? The IC whips everyone with almost 30,000 loads, but those
eem to be going to the PRR, not the ERIE to move east .

IC bananas were from New Orleans to the midwest. Maybe PRR took them to Indianapolis.

Bananas for the east coast came through Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York and were distributed from there as far west as Detroit.

> Most if not all of the products where the Erie exceeded the car loads handled by the PRR originiate primarily in areas of the west served by the PFE. While the products where the PRR dominates originate in areas served by the SFRD or both the SFRD and PFE.

Look at the above tale and tell me where SF was dominant.




Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

I'm curious about the model mentioned in the subject line. How easy/hard
is it to find? What sort of price is 'good'? I want to use this to do an
SAL AF2. What is the prototype for the model?

Frank Valoczy
New Westminster, BC

PS: Does anyone know if there exist decals for SAL's 25000-25499 series of
boxcars, for the silver livery with red lettering and "Silver Star"
slogan?

I admire your cynicism, Malcolm, but I really doubt this was

dominant. Yes, schmoozing was a factor, but performance mattered to
PFE:
-----------------

It's not cynicism. It' was a well known fact that railroad freight salesmen used their entertainment budgets to buy traffic. Salesment for the south Shore were reputed to have the largest expense account in the industry.

> those cargoes were perishable, remember. Of course, I realize YOUR
anecdotes are much more reliable than those of senior people at PFE.

I didn't offer any anneccdotes on reliability

That may have been their impression, but I know that in the case of
the NYC it was false. In the 50's and 60's we may not have been as
good as the Erie, but not for lack of trying. Don't know about PRR,
but wouldn't be surprised.

I don't know that PFE people were very interested in whether

NYC was trying or not--they just talked about performance.


If the service was as bad as you like to think, perishables wouldn't have been a major part of NYC's eastbound traffic out of Chicago and St. Louis.

You've also said that NYC didn't care about providing service for that traffic. That may have been the opinion of of managers at PFE, but that doesn't make it true. It's common in railfan circles to claim that a railroad doesn't care about something because of some perceived problem. But that's often untrue. the opinion of one group of people outside that company doesn't make it true.

NYC's service to the early morning produce market in 1949 was a 3:00 pm cutoff on the IHB 60 hours previously. By 1960 it was down to 48 hours. Hardly not trying. Also the NYC built its icing facility at Wayneport in that era.

I knwo that in the 60's we did quite well on service from Chicago to Boston and New York. The Erie was soemwhat better but not so much as to justify the implication that Erie service was good and NYC was bad. Maybe the PFE people were thinking about service to intermediate points which was much more problematiic.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

In the light of attempts to draw conclusions from freight claims numbers, I thought it might be useful to post this note about how the system worked.

> The terminating road usually gets the blame for perishables (hence the name). They tend to spoil fastest towards the end of their runs and since most had been in transit for a week by the time PRR got them from the west coast, what else would you expect?

It didn't actually work that way. Damage claims were apportioned among the railroads in the route, IIRC in proportion to mileage, unless it was demonstrable that one railroad caused the damage, which was unusual except in the case of market loss claims. The claim had to be filed by the owner of the damaged goods, usually the consignee, and was processed by the railroad rendering the freight bill, acting as agent for all of the participating railroads. Naturally the largest railroad has the largest claims bill, but a big part of that is those claims allocated to it by other railroads. The only way that you can tell whether one did better than another on perishables is if you can get a ratio of claims payments for perishables to the revenue from perishables.

Percent of revenue was the usaul yardstick in the 60's.



Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

When I was the supervisor of schedule information in the NYC marketing

department in 1965, I had the freight schedules of nearly 100 Class 1
railroads in my desk.

Where these shared by custom or agreement or did you have to "finagle" them?

KL
---------------------------

The sharing of freight schedules was an industry custom. Each railroad sent copies of its scheduels to most of the other rilroads each time there was a significant change. NYC's was a loose leaf book, as was PRR's. We made amonthly mailing of updated schedule pages. In addition to our own agencies, the mailing list included the other railroads.

All railroads had to be ready to advise any customer on the service scedule to any station on any railroad. We also used schedules to determine the number of cars that would be required for pool assignments, Ford engine blocks for example, based on the customers' projections of carloads to major destinations and the expected routing.

Schedule sharing was necessary for the system to work.

I had the ideal job for a 28 year old railfan interested in freight service.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

When I was the supervisor of schedule information in the NYC marketing

department in 1965, I had the freight schedules of nearly 100 Class 1
railroads in my desk.

Where these shared by custom or agreement or did you have to "finagle" them?

KL
---------------------------

The sharing of freight schedules was an industry custom. Each railroad sent copies of its scheduels to most of the other rilroads each time there was a significant change. NYC's was a loose leaf book, as was PRR's. We made amonthly mailing of updated schedule pages. In addition to our own agencies, the mailing list included the other railroads.

All railroads had to be ready to advise any customer on the service scedule to any station on any railroad. We also used schedules to determine the number of cars that would be required for pool assignments, Ford engine blocks for example, based on the customers' projections of carloads to major destinations and the expected routing.

Schedule sharing was necessary for the system to work.

I had the ideal job for a 28 year old railfan interested in freight service.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

P.S. By the way, Ted is now selling Pocahontas Models N&W box cars.
I think he may now own the product line.

Now that you mention it, I think he was selling them at Prototype
Rails last January.

Tom Madden

On Jun 20, 2007, at 1:32 PM, parkvarieties wrote:

Approximately what year did the Union Pacific begin repainting their
steel box cars with all-yellow lettering? Thanks.
Frank Brua

June, 1947.

Richard Hendrickson

Garth:



Working in Southern California the WP did not come into play with me. I
would guess that on traffic that originated on the WP they were allowed by
PFE to take their long haul. In southern Cal we did not interface at all
with the WP people. Where as the PFE offices were in the Pacific Electric
building along with all of the Southern Pacific offices.



Paul



_____

From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of
Garth G. Groff
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 11:04 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Santa Fe & PFE's-Erie Citrus Traffic



Paul,

How did the WP management fit into this planning? They were a member PFE
until 1967.

Kind regards,

Garth G. Groff

Paul wrote:

Russ:



I would guess that you don't understand the relationship between the PFE

and

its two owners the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific. As a former
Southern Pacific Traffic officer we used the PFE agents to solicit the
perishable traffic, the PFE agents we very familiar with all agreements
between the two railroads and eliminated any shorthaul soliciting. There
was no undermining of established routes by the PFE agents. They were
invited to our staff meetings as we were to theirs. This freed up some of
our time to go after other lucrative traffic. I hope this helps you
understand the relationship between the PFE and its two owners better, we
were one big team in the perishable business.



Paul C. Koehler

Indeed! Talking with Ted at Collinsville I learned there are multiple
WIDTHS as well as other features of these Wabash box cars -- Not
a homogeneous set of cars at all. And I believe Ted intends to do
several different cars. (I don't think even Ted could do all of them.)

Tim

P.S. By the way, Ted is now selling Pocahontas Models N&W box cars.
I think he may now own the product line.

Approximately what year did the Union Pacific begin repainting their
steel box cars with all-yellow lettering? Thanks.
Frank Brua

On Jun 20, 2007, at 11:38 AM, wabash2813 wrote:

What's the status on "them-there" HO versions what someone was supposed
to come out with? (I'm not referrring to F&C). Are they available yet?

Coming very soon from Speedwitch. I've seen a photo of a finished
pilot model and it is very impressive.

Richard Hendrickson

Garth Groff asked:

How did the WP management fit into this planning? They were a member PFE until 1967.

I would be interested to hear Paul's answer too.
The PFE people I interviewed were always careful to include WP in any traffic discussion, as the PFE forces were responsible for providing a fair and balanced car supply to all three railroads, UP, SP and WP. But the plain fact was that UP and SP were the "parent railroads" and determined many aspects of policy and performance. WP was a contractual participant, not an owner. I don't know that the PFE agents in WP territory had the same latitude as they did on SP and UP.

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

What's the status on "them-there" HO versions what someone was supposed
to come out with? (I'm not referrring to F&C). Are they available yet?

Thanks in advance
Victor Baird
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Paul,

That is interesting but of course I only saw what came
off the SP/UP and had no idea of what their inner workings
were.

That concept contrasts greatly with the roads I'm more
familiar with. The NP did not have a refrigerator car
owning subsidiary, they got by with their own fleet and
the loosely associated NRC fleet which in later years was
filled out with MDT's.

While the GN had WFE I think they stuck to the servicing
and repair of cars and I doubt were much involved in traffic.

As to the CB&Q, again BRE did the servicing and repair, but
I just can't imagine the GST's office giving them any control
at all. The NX,MNX, & PCX's did not even belong to BRE but they
did repair and service them in common with the cars they did
own.

CB&Q did have it's own Agricultural Department but they provided
possible shippers with all kinds of information. They did not
target perishable traffic.

Russ

Paul,

How did the WP management fit into this planning? They were a member PFE until 1967.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

Paul wrote: