Now that I am a little more caught up on the conversation, I feel I should exercise my brain on the topic as well.

I think all parties involved have made some valid points but I also hear a lot of crap here too. As my father said in his message I am a history major, transition era (steam to diesel) modeler, and a Vol. at the Southeastern Railway Museum.

As far as the modeling goes I think I should remind everyone of the rule that I hear most often in our hobby, "Its his railroad and he can draw the line in his detail where he wishes." Now I am not saying this gives someone to say that their car is 100% accurate as I don't think any one of use can say that no matter how many hours or years we put into a model. We are all human after all and small errors even if they are only a scale fraction are still just that errors.

As for museum equipment, I will be the first to admit that there are several pieces of equipment on our site that are wrong. There are some practices by some departments at the museum I do not agree with, but I can make sure my own work is as correct as possible. When a museum acquires a piece of equipment the discussions begin before it gets through the gate on how it should be restored, as is, some mid-life appearance or as built. Most seem to default to the as built appearance. The level of the rebuild is the next discussion because this is where the biggest factor will come into play $$$. I can want and plan to do a restoration a specific way all my life but until I define it and raise the big $$$ noting will move forward. I personally think it is more important to tell the history of a car then to complain about a steam era car painted as built that has AB brake when it was built with K. While you can still piece together a K brake system I think that this is out of reach of most museums with large collection that they want as built. Concessions can be made but point them out, explain what K brake is and how it differs from the AB present. A car can only be truly accurate for the points in time that the car's current set up is arranged. Example: At SRM we have several SCL office cars. One being the "Superb" an SCL office car, ex-ACL, ex-Pullman. It was used the Pope on the Cardinal train and also by President Harding. I have not done much research myself on this car but I can safely say that the car's arrangement both under car and interior are only correct for the car as an SCL office car, maybe a late ACL car, but not a Pullman pool car. Things have been changed on the car over the years. The car however is painted as a Pullman, incorrectly, but that will be fixed. My point is even with all the research you can do a car to the best you can, I am not justifying Red Big Boys or Green Southern 2-8-2s (although that one could be argued as correct, just not for steam era revenue). As far as a museum goes the fact that the car got painted, saved, and shared is the most important first step. If the car rusts away and has to be scrapped because it can not be rebuilt then it is a total loss, which I say is far worse than a bad paint job. Now I do not accept an incorrect paint job advertised as "historically" accurate when the information otherwise was presented to the organization. That is foul play and I don't buy it at all. Most RR museum, small museums that is, do not have professional historians on site. It is a need that this hobby faces.

Lastly, facts are facts, heights, lengths, weights, etc. are facts and will always be truths. Color could be argued but paint chips, and color photos I would call fact. There are some truths in history. History can be a hard science in some cases but it is true it does tend to follow the soft science mode more often. But assumptions can not be handled as fact. If you feel the gaps between two points of fact that does not make your filler fact as well. It is nothing more than theory at best.

I will step down from my soap box now.

Jason Greene
Murrayville, GA

Group:
Need some help trying to locate Ackert Industries, a manufacturer of
brass detail parts. The proprietor was at the Naperville RPM meet
last year and passed out some flyers. Does someone have one that they
can check the contact information? I'd be much indebted.

Many thanks,
Eric Hiser
Phoenix, AZ

OUTSTANDING response and summation!

Professor H. L. Hanger
MCC

Anthony Thompson <thompson@...> wrote:
Rich Orr wrote:

You are never going to win this. From the previous comments it is
very clear that the revisionist historian philosophy is being
espoused. That is the 'historians" are free to reshape the data in
any manner as long as it supports their hypothesis. Draw a
conclusion and make the facts fit the conclusion. The antithesis of
the scientific method. And those of us who care that facts be facts
which are not subject to interpretation but rather allow one to
understand the entire picture recognize this philosophy which is
rampant among today's alleged historians. It is back dated social
engineering that allows what is politically correct today (i.e.
expedient) to change the facts of the past.

Not a bad (if hostile) summary of Mr. Foucault and friends. You
are right that those who accept this view that "historical conclusions
are all personal" probably could not care less about what we call
"accuracy" on this 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



SPONSORED LINKS
Train travel Train travel uk Train travel in usa Train travel vacation Freight car Canada train travel

---------------------------------
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS


Visit your group "STMFC" on the web.

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
STMFC-unsubscribe@...

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.


---------------------------------





---------------------------------
Feel free to call! Free PC-to-PC calls. Low rates on PC-to-Phone. Get Yahoo! Messenger with Voice

You'd think I would know this, but it's been ten years since the last
time I did one of these and a lot of improvements have happened since.
I'm looking for comments on the best, most accurate, Santa Fe 8' and 9'
circle-cross freight car decals in HO.
There's an old Champ set or two, which to my knowledge was never
updated to the quality of the earlier-era name-train sets, and there
are several Microscale sets, which sometimes look just a bit odd but I
haven't tried to measure them precisely. Are there others? Have any
of these sets been upgraded recently?
The specific set numbers of these decals are all listed in
Hendrickson's 'Santa Fe Painting and Lettering Guide'.
What I'm looking for mostly are the garden variety lettering for
mineral red cars, suitable for the early part of the large circle-cross
lettering era, as applied to Bx and Fe cars.

Ron Merrick

Aidrian Bridgeman-Sutton wrote:

It's hard to tell from the image at Walthers web site -- but from
your message it sounds like the F&C kit has metal ends?

Yes – this was typical of the postwar Southern cars whether new or
rebuilt. It's not hard to build new wooden ends for the F&C kit
with styrene sheet, strip and some NBW castings.

When you refer to "postwar," are you referring to World War I, or
World War II?

The GBW's Seley hoppers were acquired 2/22 and off the roster sometime
between 1940 and 1950.
____
Mark

I was given the gift of an old grabiron off of a
wood-sheathed box car (Exact type unknown) that is sitting on
my desk. The clearance is 2-1/2 inches, the diameter is 3/4
inch, the inside width (clearance) is 16-1/4 inches, the
mounting holes are on 20 inch centers, the thickness at the
mounting hole is 1/2 inch and the outside diameter around the
mounting hole is 1-3/4 inches.

What a forehead slapper! As Jimmy Buffet would say, it was so obvious it
plumb evaded me. I have a grab iron here that came from the Milwaukee shops
in Deer Lodge. I don't know what it's off of, but it's black with boxcar red
on the ends where it bolts to the car side. Here are the comparable
dimensions.

Clearance is 2 �", diameter is 5/8", inside clear width is 23", mounting
holes on 24" centers and offset 1�" from center of grab bar to center of
bolt hole, �" mounting hole with square head bolts, and 1�" diameter around
the mounting holes.

Dan Stinson
Helena, Montana

List,

Recently there was a discussion regarding Aaron Gjermundson's new NP flat car and some people having sent money for the kit, but not hearing or receiving theirs. I would like to say that I sent for three of the kits on March 29th and received them this past Saturday, May 19th. The only delay was how long it took for Tom Madden to complete the castings, get them to Aaron and for Aaron to reach my name in the queue!

I must say that I am impressed with the quality of the castings. It appears that Aaron has learned from his earlier mistakes and has his operation up to speed. I wonder what he has in mind for an encore after this model?

Tom Olsen
7 Boundary Road, West Branch
Newark, Delaware, 19711-7479
(302) 738-4292
tmolsen@...

Dennis,

It is not just a museum in New Jersey, but many museums are the same way, not all, but many! An example of this is that there is an PRR H30 Covered Hopper in the Pennsylvania State Railroad Museum at Strasburg Pa. that has a paint date that shows it was painted before it was built!

I was there one cold January day to go out into the yard at the back of the Museum to photograph the PRR observation car "Tower View" for a fellow in Switzerland (a PRRT&HS member) who needed photos to scratch build the car. When finished, I stopped in to thank the, then Museum Director, Bob Emerson, for his assistance in letting me out into the yard which at that time was restricted to Museum employees. In passing, I mentioned the discrepancy on the H30 to him. He went out onto the museum floor to look for himself and came back shaking his head. The car had been repainted only a few months before and he said that the problem would not be corrected until some time in the future when they had an opportunity to revisit the car, but I could tell that he was not very happy that the error had been made. As far as I know, the error remains today!

Tom Olsen
7 Boundary Road, West Branch
Newark, Delaware, 19711-7479
(302) 738-4292
tmolsen@...


Dennis Storzek wrote:

Schuyler,
I was given the gift of an old grabiron off of a
wood-sheathed box car (Exact type unknown) that is sitting on
my desk. The clearance is 2-1/2 inches, the diameter is 3/4
inch, the inside width (clearance) is 16-1/4 inches, the
mounting holes are on 20 inch centers, the thickness at the
mounting hole is 1/2 inch and the outside diameter around the
mounting hole is 1-3/4 inches. Whether this is "standard" or
not, I cannot say, but it seems typical in my experience.

Larry Grubb

Geez, Larry, you're really raising the bar here . . . .8^)

Thanks a lot.

SGL

Eric Hansmann asked:
"Were the XL cars the last PRR house car to get these brakes?"

Yes, though other PRR house cars built at the same time as Class XL
received them, as these equipment diagrams show:
http://prr.railfan.net/diagrams/PRRdiagrams.html?diag=XM-
.gif&sel=box&sz=sm&fr=
http://prr.railfan.net/diagrams/PRRdiagrams.html?diag=KF-
.gif&sel=stk&sz=sm&fr=


"You state that the brake was omitted form cars built after 1908. Do
you have a final date when were they removed from cars in service?"

Existing Class XL boxcars shopped after July 1, 1911 received a
revised arrangement of safety appliances to conform to the Safety
Appliance Act. The tunnel brake was removed during this shopping.


"Was this a common brake application on rolling stock of other
railroads?"

Not that I know of - a quick scan of White turned up nothing, but I
admitted don't have a lot from the first decade of the 20th Century.


Ben Hom

--- In STMFC@..., "mopacfirst" <ron.merrick@...> wrote:

I'd throw out a request for something we discussed a year
or two ago, and that is a P-S style drop end with three straight
corrugations as used on some of the "Greenville-style" gons built by P-
S. Model reference: the P2K gons released several years ago which
continue to dribble out, now with semi-authentic loads.

Hear, hear!!! This would make kitbashing a PS-5 (that was the gon, IIRC) from the P2K car,
and we can finally have a correct Rutland gon model. Or with die cutting apparently so
cheap these days, perhaps Life Like could make the part in styrene and offer PS-5's along
with the Greenville cars. Perhaps there are few major visible differences in the bodies and
the Greenville shell could be used.

Walt Lankenau

Rich Orr wrote:

You are never going to win this. From the previous comments it is very clear that the revisionist historian philosophy is being espoused. That is the 'historians" are free to reshape the data in any manner as long as it supports their hypothesis. Draw a conclusion and make the facts fit the conclusion. The antithesis of the scientific method. And those of us who care that facts be facts which are not subject to interpretation but rather allow one to understand the entire picture recognize this philosophy which is rampant among today's alleged historians. It is back dated social engineering that allows what is politically correct today (i.e. expedient) to change the facts of the past.

Not a bad (if hostile) summary of Mr. Foucault and friends. You are right that those who accept this view that "historical conclusions are all personal" probably could not care less about what we call "accuracy" on this 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

I think we are dealing here with a conflict between two quite reasonable objectives, and I'd like to make a suggestion that I think resolve the conflict. I respect the interesting input from the professional historians about the "knowability" of history, but I also don't want to see information lost, as I'm sure the historians don't, of exactly what happened or what something looked like if it can be definitely known.

Recognize that there are two constituencies here for the railroad museum. One that works at the micro-level of exact detail like Schuyler and Andy Miller. I have great respect for their work, but it's more than I can handle.

The other is macro-level people like me who are most interested in the overall effect. When I'm operating a model railroad, I don't really care if the grab irons are an inch too far out or the ice hatches have the wrong number of hinges or even if the roof is black or dark red as long as the car I'm seeing from two or three feet away [think 100 to 200 scale feet] looks like my memory of a PFE car.

Suppose you are running a museum in the southwest and you want to show what a reefer that moved produce from the area looked like. And suppose the only car available to you is an ice bunker car that was operated by FGE and its details are different from any car ever operated by PFE or SFRE.

From the perspective of showing the younger generation what cars in that service in your territory looked like, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to paint it in one of those schemes.

But then we have to recognize that there are others who would like to know exactly what a car in that service looked like. It's unfair to them to say that this car is one that operated in the southwest.

Can't we reasonably satisfy both constituencies with the sign/brochure,whatever, that describes the car in the museum. Say that it is intended to show what such cars looked like but is not an exact replica of a PFE/SFRE car. Also state its original ownership and car number.

Doesn't that completely satisfy the requirements of truth and accuracy for both constituencies. Let's recognize ALL of the legitimate interests and stop putting down the guys whose main interest is different from yours.


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

Garth Groff writes-

SN boxcar 2350 (at the CSRM) has arch-bar trucks from SN 2313,
itself now on temporary trucks at the Western Railway Museum; the truck
swap apparently was done by the WP/SN before the cars were disposed of).

True enough. Mea Culpa. I was there at the time.

Through a WP Surgeon neighbor of mine c. 1967-70, I received a call from a WP manager asking if we would be interested in some wood box and stock cars that were otherwise to be disposed of. I said "sure", and I was then given a very short deadline to inspect a long string of wood cars from which to make the selections (sitting on an industrial siding of the SN's old Holland branch in West Sacramento).

By any means the resulting car selection was far less the result of knowledgeable introspective study, than it was of sheer time-driven expediency. We (a WP employee and I) went down the line and marked out several cars, choosing them not by number, but purely by perceived condition and appearance. I marked the chosen cars with a spray can of yellow paint. As I recall, we ended up with cars that all had Andrews trucks, while a number of those NOT chosen had Arch Bar.

Well, for bad, worse, or otherwise, in the interests of "truck diversity", we decided to change out the trucks on one car, and that is what happened. It would have been way out off the edge of the bell-shaped curve for either of us to either be overly concerned at that time 45 years ago about the matter (Hey, there were still thousands of wood cars still out and about, and one car could surely not make a difference!) .

With the knowledge that the rest of the cars were heading imminently to the scrapper, who also would have thought that all these years later the car that was robbed of its rightful trucks would still be around to haunt us?

The CSRM does have a nice collection of wood freight cars ripe for restoration, and as has been noted, they have on occasion in the distant past been displayed outside near the Arcade Station where they looked good just as a part of the scenery, but at tremendous resulting cost to their integrity. . One of the cars in this regard not mentioned by others is a truly fine ATSF wood caboose- one of my personal favorites.

Denny
--
Denny S. Anspach, MD
Sacramento

Way to go, Larry. That's a source that few could argue with. - Andy

Andy Sperandeo
Executive Editor
Model Railroader magazine
asperandeo@...
262-796-8776, ext. 461
FAX 262-796-11142

Schuyler,
I was given the gift of an old grabiron off of a wood-sheathed box car (Exact type unknown) that is sitting on my desk. The clearance is 2-1/2 inches, the diameter is 3/4 inch, the inside width (clearance) is 16-1/4 inches, the mounting holes are on 20 inch centers, the thickness at the mounting hole is 1/2 inch and the outside diameter around the mounting hole is 1-3/4 inches. Whether this is "standard" or not, I cannot say, but it seems typical in my experience.

Larry Grubb

In a message dated 5/22/2006 11:35:49 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
thompson@... writes:

This is fine, but let's see if this matters for how freight cars
are painted at museums. History is not science, nor is it "facts;" the
famous analogy is that an accumulation of facts is like a pile of
bricks: it's not a house. History makes A house (each historian will
put the bricks together differently). But that is not the topic of what
was said so far. What was said so far, as I understood it, was about
authentic bricks. I don't see how you can, for example, paint or modify
an artifact like a freight car in a way which is not representative of
its origins, and still use it as a brick. Otherwise, bricks are only
what historians choose: they can invent bricks to please themselves.
That might sit well with Foucault but not with most people.
I think you are confusing museum practice with the practice of
history. They are of course allied, or should be, but do not always
have the same goals. Playing games with question marks around "truth"
doesn't help the discussion, though perhaps it would get you some
applause in that room at an academic meeting.



Tony,

You are never going to win this. From the previous comments it is very
clear that the revisionist historian philosophy is being espoused. That is the
'historians" are free to reshape the data in any manner as long as it
supports their hypothesis. Draw a conclusion and make the facts fit the
conclusion. The antithesis of the scientific method. And those of us who care that
facts be facts which are not subject to interpretation but rather allow one to
understand the entire picture recognize this philosophy which is rampant
among today's alleged historians. It is back dated social engineering that
allows what is politically correct today (i.e. expedient) to change the facts of
the past.

Rich Orr

For this, I would use a PS-1 end as a form, and with a burnishing tool
and aluminum or brass sheet form the end. Martin used such a technique
with his Greenville gon kit and I remember being very satisfied with
the results.

He included the form which I think he refered to as a mandrel.

Bill Welch

--- In STMFC@..., "cf5250" <timboconnor@...> wrote:

Bill Welch wrote

1). I have finished an Improved Dreadnaught end for the long
mill gon, and will be sending the pattern to Ted for casting.

For years I have wished for a replacement end for the Greenville
(Proto 2000) gondola that matches the SLSF and I think RI cars,
which had non-tapered sine wave ends (like a PS-1 end). I think
such ends also were applied to some 65' gondolas. I don't know
how you could make a master to produce such an end in 3-D.

Tim O'

Jack Hanger asked:
"Was curious as to the accuracy of the Boxcar Red/White paint scheme
offered on the Ontario Northern, Canadian Pacific and/or the Canadian
National stock cars being offered by CMT?"

Clearing out the e-mail backlog and didn't see an answer to this
question.

Jack, I'm not sure which stock car models you're asking about. If
it's the Proto 1000 Fowler/Dominion stock cars, there are no pictures
on the CMT website, so I can't make a determination on accuracy.
http://www.modeltrains.com/Default.htm

Here's a link to the Westerfield models of these cars to illustrate
what this scheme looked like:
http://www.westerfield.biz/cg330001.htm


Ben Hom