I hope when Sunshine introduces their announced but not released new version
of the saw tooth car they do multiple versions. Since I have the original
Dennis Storzek version (still a great model) I'd like a different one, maybe
the 6 ft door, arch roof car.

Jim Hayes
Portland Oregon

--- In STMFC@..., "bierglaeser" <bierglaeser@y...> wrote
What is the best candidate for modeling ERIE's 15000-15249 series of
70- ton, inside length of 65'-6" gondolas in HO scale?

I too have an interest in these cars and have considered stretching
the P2K car but these cars have 25 ribs while a stretched P2K would
only have 17 or 18.

The ribs are closer to the ends on these Erie mill gons compared to
the P2K gons. My perception is that the fishbelly is deeper,
possibly with a different taper.

Someone pointed to the builder's photos on the fallen flags web site.
You could get the relative demensions from a broadside.

I've wondered how much a model of these cars would suffer from no
rivets.

Looking at tghe Athearn cars, they don't have enough ribs and the
ribs are too far from the ends; all in all they look too modern for
STMFC.

Ed

The new "long gondola" kits, mostly Bethlehem, are Quick Kits meaning sides
and ends are one piece.

Jim Hayes
Portland Oregon

Shipping charges are still $4 for up to 5 kits.

Most decals are available separately. There is no list available; order by
kit number. If I remember right, single color is $2, 2 color $3, 3 color $4.
Shipping included.


Jim Hayes
Portland Oregon

The drawing in the RMC plan book and the original Storzak model had
an "outside metal rood" with rectangular ribs.

In builders photos I've noticed that some of the cars of this type
came with another roof. What's the name of this other roof and what
does it look like?

I've also seen a photo of some Swift stock cars with saw tooth side
braces (photo was from Rich Burg). Anyone know anything about these?

Ed

________________________________


Speaking of Sunshine kits, does someone out there know whether one can purchase any of the decals that go with the kits separetly from the kits? Does Mr. Lofton publish a list of such decals?

Tom

Thanks for the posts on the latest kit releases. BTW does anyone have
current shipping charges for Sunshine? I want to send an order now
rather than do the SSAE inquiry.

Are the "Bethlehem" 52'6" gondola kits one-piece bodies or flat kits?
I'm thinking a P&WV 7200-series gon could be kitbashed by applying
fixed ends to a Sunshine kit. I'd buy the flat kit for that if it was
available.

Thanks in advance,

Charles Tapper

STMFC List,

This message just appeared on the Railway Preservation News "Interchange" board, and may be of interest to some here. Copy services are available; not free, but not unreasonably priced. Here is the text of Ted's message:

===================
With orders down the past two months, we have been working on a little-known portion of the collection, P-S freight cars. Here is a summary of what is slowly becoming available, with many gaps.

We have drawings for Haskell Barker of Michigan City in a few cases dating back to 1896. When they became part of Pullman Standard in 1930, their drawing series was gradually worked in with Pullman Car Works (Calumet). We have the drawing journal from that era toward about 1950 or so and can locate a car by lot number to see if we have the drawings. Since the drawings are not easily available, expect a delay as we search. There is much more happening as we organize material, but this is probably the easiest to find. We are working also on other resources in the library: wood passenger car drawings (1880-1910), Standard Steel Car, and Osgood Bradley. It all takes time! The library is not open to the public. Inquiries are by mail only.
Please include a phone number, e-mail if available, and return address.
Sincerely, Ted Anderson, curator
_________________
Ted Anderson, curator
Pullman Library
Illinois Railway Museum
P. O. Box 427
Union, IL 60180


Dennis Storzek

--- In STMFC@..., Dennis Storzek <dstorzek@e...> wrote:

The short answer is 32800 - 41798 and 131000 - 135798, all even numbers
only. Almost 7000 cars, built by several different builders over a period
of seventeen years.

Oops! I forgot to pull out the numbers for the double sheathed truss rod cars built in 1917 by Haslkel & Barker. Soo 36600 - 38198 should not be included in the above group, but it appears that I missed 130000 - 130996 (even), so the total number of cars is still about the same.

Dennis Storzek

Yeah, it is. Try this one for broader access:http://www.imagescanada.ca/r1-110-e.php. I suggest searching the site with "Steal" & "Company" & "Canada", selecting "all fields" for each search term, for some yard photos of a really diverse gondola fleet. I'd and others would love to see some of those cars identified.

Rob Kirkham

Ian:



Could you please update the STMFC listing of holder of 'c, etc? I no
longer own any Loco. Cyc.



Thanks,



Max

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

email: m_robin@...



smail: Max S. Robin, P.E.

Cheat River Engineering Inc.

23 Richwood Place / P. O. Box 289

Denville, NJ 07834 - 0289



voice: 973-627-5895 (Home : 7:30AM - 10:30PM EST)

973-627-5460 (Business: 8:00AM - 10:30PM EST)

973-945-5007 (Cellular : 7:00AM - MidNight EST)

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

_____

--- In STMFC@..., "benjaminfrank_hom" <b.hom@w...> wrote:

Tom Houle's article on scratchbuilding a Soo Line "sawtooth" SS boxcar
in O scale was an interesting read on building a prototype currently
unavailable as a kit; however, the car number on the model (SOO
7594230) is almost certainly bogus. What's the real car series for
this prototype?

Ben,

The short answer is 32800 - 41798 and 131000 - 135798, all even numbers only. Almost 7000 cars, built by several different builders over a period of seventeen years. There was also a tall 1 1/2 door automobile version and a 36' long stockcar not included in the above total. It's a hard to get any more specific than that, as Mr. Houle's model seems to be a mix of details from different series.

I did measured drawings from field notes some years ago that have never been published (because I detest inking drawings). These were the basis for my resin kit of twenty years ago, and also the Chooch "Ultra Scale" O scale kit offered just recently. There is presently a gentleman who has offered to redraw my drawings in CAD, which would make it easy to modify them to reflect the different variations, so hopefully they'll finally be published sometime soon.

One problem I have with going to print is I still don't have the basic story behind the origins of the design. Briefly, the "sawtooth" look comes from using a heavy 4" x 6" angle section for a side sill, rather than the more traditional channel section. The legs of the angle faced upward and inward, similar to the angle section side sill of the much later AAR design boxcars, providing a ledge for the floor and a grain tight connection with the side sheathing. Because the side sill was above the plane of the underframe, the crossbearers could extend under it and connect directly to the side posts, making a simple but very solid connection reminiscent of how the floor beams are connected to the lower chord of a bridge truss, transferring the load directly from the floor to the truss. However, since the Soo Line cars were originally designed with massive fish belly centersills, I don't believe that the engineering was that sophisticated; I think the designers were simply looking for a simple floor to side connection.

And that leads me to my question; who was responsible for this design, the Soo Line, or AC&F. The upper body framing traces its lineage directly to the early 36' single sheathed cars developed jointly by the Canadian Pacific and Dominion Car & Foundry in the last years of the first decade of the twentieth century. This design passed directly to the Soo Line with a group of 750 identical copies built by AC&F in 1912. However, while the CPR continued to build the 36' version, the next year the Soo purchased 40' cars with nearly duplicate upper body framing, but this radically different underframe. AC&F was also building cars with similar underframes for several other roads at that time; a car for the Frisco built the same year as the Soo cars is shown in the 1919 Cyc., but only the Soo seemed to like the design enough to continue to use it, ultimately having it built by several different builders. The Soo Line Historical & Technical Society archives unfortunately does not have the Mechanical Dept. correspondence files that might answer this question; apparently, they no longer exist. Has anyone ever found a reference to this car framing in the ACF archives, or in the preserved materials from the other users, SL-SF and MoP?

As to the cars themselves, I divide them into three rough groups, based on design features. The cars built in 1913, 14, and 15, all by AC&F, have 5' wide door openings, extremely deep (31") centersills, and 9" channel crossbearers. The cars built in 1920, 21, and 23 by Haskel & Barker, then Pullman after they absorbed H&B, and AC&F again retained the 5' door, but had shallower centersills of USRA proportions (26" deep) and made use of more pressings in the underframe. The cars built by Pullman in 1926, 27, 29, 30, and by Siems - Stembel Co. in 1929 had arch roofs, 6' door openings, and metal ends. The 1926 built cars had corrugated ends and wood doors; the later cars had Dreadnaught ends and top supported Younsgstown doors with Camel fittings, except the cars built in 1930 had bottom supported doors.

I could elaborate further if anyone wants more info.


Dennis Storzek
Big Rock, IL

John,

I was one among many who bought the disk from Ted in Naperville. It was a massive effort by Ted in deciphering the chicken scratch into an Excel format.

At the present time, I am making the spreadsheet "sortable" which means adding the date, train #, conductor, and whether the car was loaded or empty for each car. After that, I plan to cross reference the cars with an ORER so as to determine the exact classification - i.e. was the gon a solid botton, center drop or side dump might be important for coal loadings.

I have noted that most of the cars were loaded which leads to the question of what happened to the empties. Maybe some of the boxcars appeared twice which would denote to me that they were reloaded, and sent back in the direction in which they came - not much of a high likelihood in 1950-1952.

Dave Nelson is probably doing some of his magic with this interchange list too. No doubt once we get the spreadsheet "sortable" there will be summaries made by both of us independently. The big question now for me will be whether the distribution of ownership among boxcars approximate the proportion each road owned of the national boxcar fleet in 1950-1952. More later.

Tim Gilbert

John Swanson wrote:

Thanks Eldon.
Yes, it does surprise me. The description says RTR and factory
applied wire grabs all for $19.98. I would have expected it to cost
more.

I counted the ribs on the Athearn gondola and came up with 19. All I
have for the ERIE gon is an equipment diagram which shows 25 ribs.
25 ribs would have the panels in between slightly less than a mean of
2'-6" measured from center of rib to center of rib. That's pretty
closely spaced. Did the draftsman really like making vertical lines?

Gene Green

--- In STMFC@..., "Gatwood, Elden" <Elden.Gatwood@h...>
wrote:

Gene;
This offering from Athearn may surprise you. Take a look before you
decide.
www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH93605

Elden Gatwood


-----Original Message-----
From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On

Behalf Of

bierglaeser
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 1:21 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] ERIE's 15000-15249 65'-6" gondolas

What is the best candidate for modeling ERIE's 15000-15249 series

of 70-

ton, inside length of 65'-6" gondolas in HO scale? If I have my

facts

straight, these Erie gons were built by Greenville in late 1939.

Where

might one find a clue as to how these would have been painted and
lettered in 1950?
The Life-Like Proto 2000 HO mill gon is only 52' inside. Could one
splice two P2K gons?

Looks like Athearn has something coming in both HO and N scales

along

these lines. This lists archives don't seem to contain any other
candidates besides Athearn. Ugh!

Gene Green
Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso









Yahoo! Groups Links

Tony:

I believe it was some time in 1959 that the Allied Full Cushion trucks
were banned from interchange service.

The Monon had these on their troop kitchen cars that were converted to
head end cabooses, then storage mail cars then MofW cars. Those cars
still in revenue service in the early 1960's had lost these trucks, but
those in non-revenue service (MofW) kept theirs.

I've seen photos of a derailment where these trucks seem to have been
the culprit. There was no text, but a very nice shot of one of these
trucks in pieces amid the carnage.

Mont Switzer

It's been on my web site since way back when -- it's currently at:

www.nakina.net/fclorer.html

I can't say that it has been updated in some time (aside from my own holdings).

Ian Cranstone
Osgoode, Ontario, Canada
lamontc@...
http://freightcars.nakina.net
http://siberians.nakina.net

--- In STMFC@..., "Eric Mumper" <eric.mumper@m...> wrote:

A while ago Chet French posted lists for Wabash train 72 from
Forrest, Ill. to Streator, Ill. The list for 12/24/1954 shows:

SHPX 5585 ANHY AMON S/DOUG

The list for 12/28/1954 shows:

SHPX 2999 ANHY AMMON SMITH D

The cars were destined for the Smith-Douglass fertilizer plant in
Streator. This plant was built postwar on the site of an old brick
works.
If anyone knows what these cars are, I would appreciate it since I
have no way of looking that up. <snip>

I went back through the switch lists for December 1954 and January 1955
and found that the following cars of anhydrous ammonia moved up the
Wabash's Streator branch to the Smith Douglass fertilizer plant at
Streator.
12-1954
SHPX 5590 mty to Council Bluffs
SHPX 5525 mty to Toledo
NDX 10146 mty to Council Bluffs
USAX 8556 mty to Toledo
GATX 77668 mty to Toledo
SHPX 1715 mty to Council Bluffs
SHPX 5505 mty to Toledo
SHPX 5585 mty to Toledo
SHPX 2999
SASX 1133

1-1955
SHPX 3776
UTLX 94664
NDX 10146
WRNX 10035
GATX 67364
SHPX 2992
CSVX 332

Here are the owners of the cars with the not so familiar reporting
marks.

NDX - Nitrogen Div., Allied Chemical & Dye Corp.
USAX - Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Transportation,
Railway Transport Service Div.
SASX - Southern Acid & Sulphur Co. Inc. (Mathieson Chemical Corp.)
WRNX - Warren Petroleum Corp.
CSVX - Commercial Solvents Corp.

I also checked the almost 8000 cars on the IC to the Milwaukee
interchange at North Forreston, IL, CD that Ted Richardson was selling
at Naperville. This covered the time frame of Sept. 1950 to mid 1952,
and not one tank car of anhydrous ammonia showed up on the setout lists.

Chet French
Dixon,IL

Richard, are you certain about this?? The ERIE gondolas had 25 ribs.
Precision Scale made a PRR G26 gondola (#15472), a CNJ/CRP (Bethlehem)
22 rib gon (#15474), and a New York Central (623-G) gondola (21 ribs)
(#16034). Those are the only ones I've ever seen from PSC.

Page 42-43 of the November 2005 issue of Trains has a C. W. Witbeck
photo of an IC local near East Jackson MS dated October 1940 which is
an excellent snapshot of the pre-WWII steam era freight train,
including a Central of Georgia ventilated boxcar running as a boxcar.


Ben Hom

Tom Houle's article on scratchbuilding a Soo Line "sawtooth" SS boxcar
in O scale was an interesting read on building a prototype currently
unavailable as a kit; however, the car number on the model (SOO
7594230) is almost certainly bogus. What's the real car series for
this prototype?


Ben Hom