--- In STMFC@..., "ed_mines" <ed_mines@...> wrote:

Anyone see a photo or drawing of one of these rare cars? What do

they

look like?

The dimensions in the equipment registers are near identical to

the

classic single sheathed Pratt truss SAL box cars.

Did any railroads have Pratt trussed stock cars besides PM or the

old

Ulrich model?


Ed

Ed,

Seaboard rebuilt 50 cars from the B-3 series in 1940 into stock
cars. The new class was S-1. The original cars were pratt truss, SS
cars with 7-8 ends and Hutchins (or Murphy XLA--the jury's still out
on this) ends with Andrews trucks. When the railroad rebuilt the
cars, it apperas they simply removed the sheathing and replaced it
with slatted boards. These were single deck cars. The ends,
underframe, trusses, and other features remained the same, so the
cars *should* look like B-3s. There's photo evidence that Seaboard
rebuild one B-5 into a stock car, and left the car lettered as a B-
5. SAL tended to do some odd things.

BTW, you can forget modeling one unless you want to scratch one up.

Yes, I have several photos and will be happy to forward them to you
off-line.

John

John Golden
O'Fallon, IL

Tim Gilbert writes:

I agree with you in terms of a "fixed" consist in a specific freight
train a la the "California Zephyr." Mike Brock seems to have been trying
to "California Zephyrize" his freight trains which infers running the
same consist every time he operates his railroad.

Well, of course, I MAY have said that every day is May 14, 1954, but as most know it was in jest...I mean, it was...wasn't it? Actually, since I can't run but about 8 frt trains during an op session and UP ran about 25 during the same time period over the Hill, even if every day WAS May 14 it would take me three op sessions to cover the actual number of trains on that day. And, of course, if I operated over a different 12 hours it would take me 6 op sessions. When you consider that I really mean that every day is some time during the period May 1 to mid July [ the backdrops are photos taken during mid May AND the grass and weeds are green ] you find that the number of op sessions becomes about 225.

"Freight train
consists in specific trains, however, in the real world were different
every day."

True. And, since I can model about a period of 2 1/2 months [ the grass and weed growth becomes a bit less green when the summer heat arrives during July in southeastern Wyoming ] with my backdrops and scenery, I will have to have frt trains with different consists. Different consists should not be confused with different functions, however. So, depending upon my choice [ I like SP Forwarder ], trains performing specific functions will have similar, if not the same consists.

"The freight car data which Dave Nelson & I have parsed from wheel
reports and other car reports will not solve Mike Brock's "California
Zephyr" problems."

I actually would prefer the term "City of San Francisco"...although I did ride the Zephyr once.

"All they represent is a pool of cars which were
reported by a railroad over a course of time."

Yes...and I appreciate and understand that.

"The boxcar pools of each report are the subject of this thread. Both
Dave & I have found that there is a correlation between the distribution
of ownership of boxcars of those in each of the wheel reports and the
percentage that the boxcar owner owned of the national boxcar fleet.
Sometimes that correlation is good - and sometimes not so good."

OK. I assume that you agree that a 200% error...the 136 SP box cars in the '49 book is 90 more than predicted...is not a good correlation.

"Thus, the rule of thumb which infers in the absence of any other data to
the contrary, the distribution of ownership among all the boxcars on a
model railroad should roughly parallel the percentage that the owner
owned of the national boxcar fleet."

It seems like you are saying...OK, here's my rule. Use it unless you can prove it fails. I mean...one could generate many such rules. But, heck, we have to start somewhere. So...on the Wyoming Div of the UP in '49 the rule fails for SP, C&NW and CB&Q. I don't know about the box cars of other RRs. I have no clue nor make any prediction about populations of other RRs and their relationship with adjoining lines...like C&NW and NYC.

"Sometimes, one or a group of roads owned much more boxcars in a report
than their percentage of the national boxcar fleet. Mike Brock found
that the number of SP Pacific Line boxcars were such a case in the
Spring 1949 UP Conductor Fraley's Wheel Report between Laramie & Rawlins
WY. No such aberration showed up in Fraley's Fall 1947 Wheel Report
where the number of SP - Pacific Lines boxcars exceeded their percentage
of the national boxcar fleet only slightly. I attempted to answer this
in my comparative analysis of the two wheel reports in the STMFC message
#51085 of 2/3/2006.

The answer of why could be focused around the question "How did the SP
supply empty cars for lumber loading?" In the Fall of 1947, there was a
shortage of boxcars caused by a severe boxcar shortage caused, in part,
by the effect of the Grain Rush "back east" as well as a booming
economy. In the Spring of 1949, there was no Grain Rush plus the Economy
was in Recession. This downturn allowed the SP (& UP) to stockpile its
own boxcars for lumber loading, and send home many empty foreign
boxcars from Southern California home across Sherman Hill instead of
diverting them to Northern California or the Pacific Northwest for
lumber loading."

A good theory...but only a theory.

"Which was "more normal" - Fraley's Fall 1947 or his Spring 1949 Report?"

We don't know...but, remember, I have another Fraley to get to...if Yahoo will put a stop to the viruses.

Mike Brock....I figure that two more of these discussions will allow me to retype my messages without referencing past info. <G>.

Larry Jackman wrote:

What I see you guys trying to do is the same trying to make a computer pick numbers at random. It can not be done.

If you can tell if it's truly random when it's picked, then you can arrange for it to pick. If you maintain otherwise, Larry, how do you know what's random? Or is it just your opinion?

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

From someone who cares nothing about the box car count in a given train on a given day.
What I see you guys trying to do is the same trying to make a computer pick numbers at random. It can not be done.
Thank you
Larry Jackman
ljack70117@...

I have, and have furnished to Mr. Westerfield, a set of general arrangement drawings for Seaboard Air Line stock cars.

Denis F. Blake

Dave Nelson wrote:

For real trains yes, but for model railroads something else comes into play.
See, when reduced by whatever factor is necessary to get down to model RR
length trains of 10-20 cars, every foreign road name, save those 4 or 5
largest roads, will have an expected sighting of less than 1. Yet obviously
the ordinary train will have foreign road boxcars -- and not just for the
4-5 largest road names. You simply have to compose the indicidual consist
of each train according to some other guideline, one probably greatly
influenced by location. This is why is I always try to include the phrasing
"roster of boxcars" and avoid "consists". They're two wholly different
concepts and I have little to add about the later... other than to say swap
cars in and out of storage and take advantage of all those road names when 1
car, now and then, will add to variety.

Well said. I think this sums it up for me too.

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

Tim Gilbert wrote:

Both Dave & I have found that there is a correlation between the distribution of ownership of boxcars of those in each of the wheel reports and the percentage that the boxcar owner owned of the national boxcar fleet. Sometimes that correlation is good - and sometimes not so good.

Exactly.

Thus, the rule of thumb which infers in the absence of any other data to the contrary, the distribution of ownership among all the boxcars on a model railroad should roughly parallel the percentage that the owner owned of the national boxcar fleet.

This is clear and I hope not disputed by anyone: subject of course to "IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY OTHER DATA," as stated.

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

Tony Thompson wrote:

Dave Nelson wrote:

Most conductor's logs will contain more than 25 trains. Tim and I have
looked at several thousand boxcar entries from hundreds of trains.
They
give a clear and unambigous body of data that shows those railroads
with the
most boxcars (e.g., PRR, NYC) have their cars recorded most often and
those
with the least, least often, with everybody else in between, generally
falling in line by the size of their boxcar fleet.

I am convinced by these data for the overall national behavior.
But if anything, these combined data will OBSCURE local differences
with particular trains. Tim O'Connor has made this point: the modeler
wonders if a PARTICULAR train exhibits the overall averages.
Statistically and in common sense, the answer must be NO. To some
extent, that's what Mike Brock is saying.
You can't have it both ways: the bigger the sample, the less
information about particular trains. That solves some problems, sure,
but obscures others.

Tony,

I agree with you in terms of a "fixed" consist in a specific freight train a la the "California Zephyr." Mike Brock seems to have been trying to "California Zephyrize" his freight trains which infers running the same consist every time he operates his railroad. Freight train consists in specific trains, however, in the real world were different every day.

The freight car data which Dave Nelson & I have parsed from wheel reports and other car reports will not solve Mike Brock's "California Zephyr" problems. All they represent is a pool of cars which were reported by a railroad over a course of time.

The boxcar pools of each report are the subject of this thread. Both Dave & I have found that there is a correlation between the distribution of ownership of boxcars of those in each of the wheel reports and the percentage that the boxcar owner owned of the national boxcar fleet. Sometimes that correlation is good - and sometimes not so good.

Thus, the rule of thumb which infers in the absence of any other data to the contrary, the distribution of ownership among all the boxcars on a model railroad should roughly parallel the percentage that the owner owned of the national boxcar fleet. The Boxcars chosen would represent the pool of boxcars which individual trains haul. There is an element of selective compression in freight cars, too. There is no way to have all 700,000 plus boxcars on any layout.

Some of the smaller roads may not be represented on a layout limited to 100 boxcars. In 1947, roughly 84% of the national boxcar fleet was owned by some 28 RR's having more than 1% of the national boxcar fleet. How to allocate the remaining 16% among the 100-odd other RR's can become a problem.

If the model is designed to make pick-ups and drops, the consists of the freight trains should change each operating session. If there are no pick ups or drops on the model RR, then a bit of 0-5-0 switching will have to be done in staging. That does not mean that the percentages should be locked in, but adjustments should be made when better information becomes available.

For instance, both Dave & I have found that the total number of home road boxcars reported in a wheel report exceed by quite a bit the percentage of home road boxcars of the total US boxcar fleet. Canadian boxcars in the US are tough to get a handle on because of the Custom restrictions to their free movement in getting reloads when they are empty. OK, in these cases, home road & Canadian boxcars should be removed from the equation and "dealt by hand."

Sometimes, one or a group of roads owned much more boxcars in a report than their percentage of the national boxcar fleet. Mike Brock found that the number of SP Pacific Line boxcars were such a case in the Spring 1949 UP Conductor Fraley's Wheel Report between Laramie & Rawlins WY. No such aberration showed up in Fraley's Fall 1947 Wheel Report where the number of SP - Pacific Lines boxcars exceeded their percentage of the national boxcar fleet only slightly. I attempted to answer this in my comparative analysis of the two wheel reports in the STMFC message #51085 of 2/3/2006.

The answer of why could be focused around the question "How did the SP supply empty cars for lumber loading?" In the Fall of 1947, there was a shortage of boxcars caused by a severe boxcar shortage caused, in part, by the effect of the Grain Rush "back east" as well as a booming economy. In the Spring of 1949, there was no Grain Rush plus the Economy was in Recession. This downturn allowed the SP (& UP) to stockpile its own boxcars for lumber loading, and send home many empty foreign boxcars from Southern California home across Sherman Hill instead of diverting them to Northern California or the Pacific Northwest for lumber loading.

Which was "more normal" - Fraley's Fall 1947 or his Spring 1949 Report? Mike has chosen May 1954 as the date of his layout - 1954 being another Recession year. If I was Mike, I would give precedence to the Fall 1949 Report. If the date was the Fall of 1955 or 1956, I would give precedence to the Fall 1947 Report.

Tim Gilbert

Tony Writes:

I am convinced by these data for the overall national behavior.
But if anything, these combined data will OBSCURE local differences
with particular trains.
===================================
For real trains yes, but for model railroads something else comes into play.
See, when reduced by whatever factor is necessary to get down to model RR
length trains of 10-20 cars, every foreign road name, save those 4 or 5
largest roads, will have an expected sighting of less than 1. Yet obviously
the ordinary train will have foreign road boxcars -- and not just for the
4-5 largest road names. You simply have to compose the indicidual consist
of each train according to some other guideline, one probably greatly
influenced by location. This is why is I always try to include the phrasing
"roster of boxcars" and avoid "consists". They're two wholly different
concepts and I have little to add about the later... other than to say swap
cars in and out of storage and take advantage of all those road names when 1
car, now and then, will add to variety.

Dave Nelson

These trucks are cast in some form of engineering plastic (Delrin?) They are engineered to take the standard width Intermountain Wheelsets, which are available in both semi-Scale (code 88) and Fat wheel (code 110). Currently the trucks are available only as bulk sideframes (One Piece) with the brake gear factory applied (snapped in). These brake beams are very similar to the Kadee parts, and feature brake shoes aligned with the wheel treads.

In coming weeks (months?) these trucks will become available with factory packaging and with Intermountain metal wheelsets installed. Both Fat and Semi-Scale wheels will be available.

These trucks have been made with an attempt to maintain "Standard" bolster height to lessen the need for shimming and other modifications.

Taho Model Works is already at work on the next truck, and downstream some really needed trucks will be produced. We are so fortunate to have work of this caliber presented to us modelers.
-Andy Carlson
Ojai CA
-Andy Carlson

On Jun 13, 2006, at 1:56 PM, buchwaldfam wrote:

Could you describe the differences between the plain and lateral
motion styles please?
Aside from the Andrews truck features, which class would the Soo
Line truck which Dennis Storzek posted last week fall into?
Also, are these trucks styrene, Acetal, or metal?

The two types were essentially the same except for the presence or
absence of Barber Lateral Motion devices between the bolsters and
spring groups. The Soo Line Dalman-Andrews truck in the image posted
by Dennis last week had Barber later motion devices, and that image
well illustrates their appearance. The Dalman-Andrews trucks used by
the Great Northern and Seaboard Air Line did not have lateral motion
bolsters.

Richard Hendrickson

--- In STMFC@..., "Russ Strodtz" <sheridan@...> wrote:

Tim,

You lost me somewhere. Why does boxcar distribution
have "considerably less variables" than other car
types?

While it is correct to view a road's boxcar roster as
a contribution to a National Pool geography also paid
a part in what was where. Most roads did not have a
lot of interest in following SCO 90 guidelines so cars
without any logical home route would be used over and
over again. One example is the rather heavy usage of
T&NO and TP box cars in the Chicago Area in the late
50's and early 60's. <snip>

Russ,

In going through switch lists of the Wabash at Forrest, IL, during
1954 and 1955, I also noticed large numbers of T&NO and T&P cars.
The Wabash handled these empty cars from Chicago to Forrest and
interchanged them to the TP&W, destined for Peoria, Il, in care of
the TPW agent at that location. Some of the cars were captured by
the Wabash at Forrest for loading on the Streator branch.

I did a study of how many foreign road house cars were on all the
switch lists for March 1955 and it totaled 873 cars representing 75
railroads. The top ten were;
ATSF - 99
T&NO - 60
NYC - 48
PRR - 45
CB&Q - 42
IC - 35
SP - 30
UP - 28
MILW - 27
GN - 25

The T&P was 13th with 23 cars. The Wabash interchanged with the
Santa Fe at Streator and that accounts for the high number of ATSF
cars. Many of the ATSF cars were inbound loads for the Smith-
Douglass fertilizer plant at Streator, being loaded toward home, as
they should. The Wabash also interchanged with the CB&Q at Streator.

The complete list of railroads and number of car for each is
somewhere on this site. Don't remember the message number.

Chet French
Dixon, IL

SAL's class S-1 stock cars, numbered 7900-7949 then 6900-6949 then
3020-3054 (50 cars, two renumberings), were rebuilt from class B-3
Pratt truss boxcars, hence the dimensional similarity. :-) There's a
photo of SAL 3043 in Lines South 4th/04, p 26, accompanying John
Golden's article on SAL's composite boxcars and rebuilds from them.
SAL 3033, shown on the back cover of the same issue, was an oddball
rebuilt from a B-*5* box.

Al Brown, Melbourne, Fla.



--- In STMFC@..., "ed_mines" <ed_mines@...> wrote:

Anyone see a photo or drawing of one of these rare cars? What do

they

look like?

The dimensions in the equipment registers are near identical to the
classic single sheathed Pratt truss SAL box cars.

Did any railroads have Pratt trussed stock cars besides PM or the

old

Ulrich model?


Ed

I'm just a part-time lurker on this list, so I apologize if you've
covered this a couple of years ago. I finally got around to buying a
set of 12 bulk containers to fill up a Walthers USRA 46' steel
gondola (the gon and loads are all lettered D&H, and I don't know if
those are correct schemes, but I'd like to know which schemes are
correct).

While the containers almost completely fill the width of the car,
they leave about 2 scale feet of empty space along the length. What
should be done in terms of spacers to fill the empty space? Where
should the spacers be located -- on the ends, in the middle, between
each set of containers, or what? And what should the spacers look
like?

Also, would the road names of the containers and the gon normally
match, and if not, would all the container road names normally match
each other or not?

Any answers or references to old discussions would be welcome.

Thanks,
John Thompson (modeling 1947-56)
Bellevue (Seattle) WA

Dave Nelson wrote:

Most conductor's logs will contain more than 25 trains. Tim and I have
looked at several thousand boxcar entries from hundreds of trains. They
give a clear and unambigous body of data that shows those railroads with the
most boxcars (e.g., PRR, NYC) have their cars recorded most often and those
with the least, least often, with everybody else in between, generally
falling in line by the size of their boxcar fleet.

I am convinced by these data for the overall national behavior. But if anything, these combined data will OBSCURE local differences with particular trains. Tim O'Connor has made this point: the modeler wonders if a PARTICULAR train exhibits the overall averages. Statistically and in common sense, the answer must be NO. To some extent, that's what Mike Brock is saying.
You can't have it both ways: the bigger the sample, the less information about particular trains. That solves some problems, sure, but obscures others.

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

Could you describe the differences between the plain and lateral
motion styles please?
Aside from the Andrews truck features, which class would the Soo
Line truck which Dennis Storzek posted last week fall into?
Also, are these trucks styrene, Acetal, or metal?

Thanks,
Phil Buchwald

--- In STMFC@..., Andy Carlson <midcentury@...> wrote:

I have good quantities of the HO bulk Dalman 2 level trucks

produced by Tahoe Model Works back into stock. I am shipping both
Plain and Lateral motion versions for $2.50 pair, less wheelsets.
Please contact me at >midcentury@...> off-list if interested. Thanks,

-Andy Carlson
Ojai CA

On Jun 13, 2006, at 11:19 AM, Mike Brock wrote:

Thus, we find some RRs with major connections to the UP's Wyoming/ Nebraska
trunk line to have a significantly higher number of box cars present in UP
trains than that of the national fleet.

It seems clear from the 1949 Fraley data that box car populations of SP,
C&NW, and CB&Q on the UP between Laramie and Green River, WY do not follow
the national percentages during the spring of 1949. Period.

Mike, Mike, Mike...

What we find is these numbers in the trains that Fraley recorded. Wasn't Fraley working the extra board at this point? So while he might have gotten some "regular" trains as a substitute, he more than likely did not get a uniform sample. Since he did not record every train the sampling is flawed and cannot be used to make generalizations.

I don't, however,
suggest running 2 SP GS gons, Armand. Don't want to push the issue you
know.<G>.

I don't know - I plan to have on UP gon on the line since I bought it before I had to pay royalties on it.



Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Benjamin Franklin
__
/ &#92;
__<+--+>________________&#92;__/___ ________________________________
|- ______/ O O &#92;_______ -| | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ |
| / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 &#92; | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
|/_____________________________&#92;|_|________________________________|
| O--O &#92;0 0 0 0/ O--O | 0-0-0 0-0-0

Most conductor's logs will contain more than 25 trains. Tim and I have
looked at several thousand boxcar entries from hundreds of trains. They
give a clear and unambigous body of data that shows those railroads with the
most boxcars (e.g., PRR, NYC) have their cars recorded most often and those
with the least, least often, with everybody else in between, generally
falling in line by the size of their boxcar fleet. Yes, there is some
variation from the expected -- we'll see road A in 17th place where expected
but road B in 18th instead of 19th. But on the whole the correlation between
sightings and fleet size is very high... IIRC the correlation I calculated
exceeded 0.98.

What comes next is then the challenge of trying to describe what has been
seen. I think we've pretty much settled on the qualifiers: Post WWII, class
1 Mainline routes, US boxcars. There are some questions about North:South
routes, corner cases (e.g., Seattle, San Diego, Miami, and Bangor), Canadian
cars, rural vs urban locations, and the amount of influence from connections
(as in if you expected to see 1.25% and see 1.81%, does that mean
connections are usually 1.5X expected OR does it mean thinking in terms of 2
cars/100 modeled instead of 1 -- an insignificant variance?). Some of that
can be quite important and there just isn't enough data yet to close the
questions. But given what we can agree on so far -- Post WWII, Class 1
mainline, US Boxcars, AND perhaps most important, an absence of other more
complete data for the specific locationa and time of interest, a decent rule
of thumb is to build your boxcar roster according to the road ratios found
in the US fleet and then compose your trains as desired. Swap cars to/from
storage to add variety.

Dave Nelson
________________________________

A person intimately involved in statistical research would say that we
need way more data to be able to make real use of predictive models,
but we don't have all that consist data. A person might argue that we
need at least 25 trains worth of data to develop a model with a certain
confidence of being statistically useful.

Elden

Tim Gilbert wrote:

This assumes that few boxcars were in assigned service - in the Fall of
1947 when there was a severe boxcar shortage, there is evidence that
even automobile cars equipped with loading devices were reloaded with
Lumber on the west coast. With lesser boxcar shortages, those automobile
cars would have been returned to Detroit empty.

Let's not forget that auto assembly was significantly decentralized at that time, and the auto cars with loaders were carrying finished automobiles away from MANY plants all over the U.S., not just from Detroit, though of course a large percentage of cars WERE built in Detroit.

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