At 06:52 PM 1/1/01 -0500, you wrote:

I know that the CN had straight side flats akin to the Tichy kit, but they
also had cars in the 659000 series (the number Red Caboose uses). Were
these also straight side cars? Did they have 12 pockets? - John

They don't show up in my list of cars similar to the Red Caboose car.
I would guess -- NOT.



Timothy O'Connor <timoconnor@mediaone.net>
Marlborough, Massachusetts

John Nehrich writes:

I think the MDC car is an attempt to model the Santa Fe 7 panel Pratt
truss cars, but on their 1937 AAR box car body. But if I remember, their
earlier cast metal version had a Howe truss, which might have been a little
more useful on that car body.
And the problem is compounded by the fact that it doesn't LOOK like a
single-sheathed car, with too wide grooves for the boards, too shallow
relief for the bracing and lacking that "sunken cheek" look (like someone
with their false teeth out) of a true SS car. Finally, because of the
misfit of side to body, the ribs don't even reach the top and bottom of the
car. - John

Whether MDC intended to model ANY protoype is unknown and, based on their
track record, improbable. Most likely they were just doing another
"interesting" kit using existing resources, perhaps crudely aiming at some
prototype photo but possibly with an entirely generic goal. In any case, we
can agree the car is a poor model and matches no prototype, nor is it
readily kitbashable into anything prototypical. Definitely swap meet
material.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history

Dave Nelson said:

FWIW, within the wine industry it is normal practice to hold the threshold
for issuing an award down at the level of getting the liquid into the
bottle. The Orange County fair for instance, used to have over 1000 wines
present and the wines that did not receive at least a bronze medal award
could be counted on one hand [shudder].

This is very true. My father-in-law used to work for Italian Swiss
Colonies' ad agency, and the Calif. State Fair gave awards based on volume
categories; the top volume included only Gallo and Italian Swiss, so they
divided all the awards, and could claim to be "award winning" with complete
truth. As a wine fancier himself, he found this highly amusing.
But at least those giant wine concerns shipped by rail.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history

Richard Hendrickson wrote:

The other photo is undated but appears to have been taken at about the same
time. It shows CDLX 307 of the same series with fancy lettering and logo
for the Bear Creek Vinyard Assn. of Lodi, CA and the car is obviously
retired and out of service...FWIW, the last reweigh date on CDLX 307 was 12-34,
which was presumably the date when its billboard paint scheme was applied,
and it was only moderately dirty and weathered - ± about 5 years worth, I'd
estimate.

Richard's detective work is right on the money: the reweigh date is
almost certainly the date of transfer to CDLX from PFE, as that is the
month and year of the car's sale by PFE.
On the issue of when the billboard schemes were disallowed, the ICC set
July, 1937 as the date after which no such cars were to be accepted in
interchange. That's not to say that all cars lost their paint schemes then,
particularly if they were used entirely on a single road.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history

I always wonder about the railroad's philosophy of ever stronger ends to
deal with shifting loads. It's as if auto makers worried about making ever
stronger windshields rather than sitbelts and air bags, but it was about
four decades between the first steel ends and load restraining devices.
By the way, what is the earliest the Dreadnaught end was seen? I have a
date of 1925, but maybe someone can beat that? - John

Regarding cross posting (i.e., posting messages simultaneously to this list
and FC): I dunno what the list owner prefers, so Mike, speak up here, but
for myself, I *strongly* prefer people do not crosspost. With railroads &
ice hockey I get in excess of 100 e-mails a day right now (it'll peak at
over 200/day in April when the Sharks hit the playoffs). I'm an agressive
delete-er, but that nonetheless, redundant messages are NOT welcomed by me.
-----------------------------------
Dave Nelson

Larry Kline asked me to post this. This looks like a great event.

Prototype Modelers Seminar - East 2001

1:00 PM Friday, March 23 through
6:00 PM Saturday, March 24, 2001
Holiday Inn, Monroeville (Pittsburgh), PA, (Exit 6, PA Turnpike)

This meet is a follow on to the Prototype Modelers Seminar held in
Baltimore, Maryland last March 31st and April 1st.

Activities will begin on Thursday evening, March 22 with operating sessions
at Bob Prehoda's HO scale Huntington Northern and Larry Kline's O scale
Western Maryland-Pittsburgh and West Virginia Bowest Interchange.

Several prototype oriented layouts will be open on Sunday, March 25th
including the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum's spectacular HO
scale Pittsburgh to Cumberland B&O, WM and P&LE layout (August 2000 Model
Railroader), Neal Schorr's Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division, Bob
Prehoda and Larry Kline.

The model display and vendor rooms at the hotel will be available for setup
at 9:00 AM on Friday, March 23. There will be plenty of display space so
bring your models, including in-progress projects. The model display room
will be open throughout the meet. There will be no talks scheduled during
the hour after lunch on Saturday so that everyone can get together in the
model display room.

The presentations will start at 1:00 PM on Friday and continue through
Friday evening and all day Saturday with breaks for dinner on Friday and
lunch on Saturday. The scheduled presentations include:

John Greene Headend passenger cars and train passenger consists
Ralph Barger B&O diner classes through the years
Jeff English Early boxcars of the New York Central Lines
Bill Hanley Modeling B&O offset side hoppers
Tony Thompson SP gondolas - mill, GS, wood chip and sugar beet
John Wesner When boxcars became colorful - 1950s paint schemes
Todd Sullivan Hands-on weathering for your modern freight cars
Scott Chatfield The EMD Dash-2 series
Dick Flock Detailing trucks and trailers 1930s to 1960s
John Roberts Modeling the Appalachian coal industry
Larry Kline Steel industry traffic - car types and commodities
Al Westerfield LCL containers cars and loads through the years
Bob Prehoda Toward more realistic operations
John Teichmoeller Neville Island - prototype for a small industrial layout
Larry DeYoung Freight car distribution on Conrail
Bill Schaumburg Town Talk Tunnel III - Completing the scene
Ed Wolfe Interstate RR - Operations and equipment
Neal Schorr Modeling the Middle Division of the PRR
Jim Kelly Modeling after a prototype: the Tehachapi loop

Note: "Hands-On Weathering for Your Modern Freight Cars," by Todd Sullivan
will be given in two parts on Saturday.
Part I of this two part clinic will be "Learning to SEE how freight cars
weather," on Saturday morning. Part II will be two small "hands on"
workshops on Saturday afternoon. Those wishing to attend the afternoon
workshops should attend the morning talk. Participants should bring: one or
two models, prototype photos, a #2 soft bristle brush, a stiffer 1/3 inch
brush and an #0 or #00 sable brush and Floquil Polyscale or black, white,
oxide red, yellow ochre, and either depot buff or daylight orange.

Sign up early, as space is limited for the operating sessions and the
Hands-on weathering seminar.

Hotel at $59.00 per night. For hotel reservations call the Holiday Inn at
412-372-1022. Be sure to mention the "Prototype Modeler's Meet"

The meeting registration is $45.00.

For more information contact:
Dick Flock,
337 Elm Drive,
Greensburg, PA 15601.
Phone: 724-850-8882.
Email rflock@bellatlantic.net

Or Larry Kline
Klinelarrydanajon@worldnet.att.net

Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope with your postal inquiries

Registration Form------------------------------------------------------

The meeting registration is $45.00.

Name_____________________________________________________
Mailing Address__________________________________________
City_________________________________State___Zip_________
Email address:

Yes I would like to attend Todd Sullivan's Hands-On Weathering clinic

Dave Nelson writes:

Regarding cross posting (i.e., posting messages simultaneously to this

list

and FC): I dunno what the list owner prefers, so Mike, speak up here, but
for myself, I *strongly* prefer people do not crosspost. With railroads &
ice hockey I get in excess of 100 e-mails a day right now

Hockey?

but that nonetheless, redundant messages are NOT welcomed by me.

I would think that, given the purpose of the STMFC, cross posting would be
kept at a minimum. I certainly don't advocate sending stuff to both sites.
If I wonder why an N&W hopper body is sitting behind a small bank in
Rawlins, WY, being used as a garbage disposal, I wouldn't inquire to the FC
but, would, instead, tweak those on the SMTFC...primarily because some might
find this interesting [ painfully, perhaps ] and someone in the group may
have actually been involved with having it put there. I said, BTW, IF I
wondered.....

Mike Brock
STMFC moderator

Mike and friends,

I agree strongly with Dave on this one. Since I do all my e-mail at work
using stolen moments between tasks, I can't afford the time for deleting
duplicate messages.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

Dave Nelson wrote:

I asked the PM-list:

I am working on an ECW 90 ton depressed center flat in HO and a pair of the
same from GHQ in N and would like to decorate all of them in appropraite
NYC paint/decals. Are there any photographs of this flat available? What
color did the NYC paint these cars?

George Hollwedel replied
If you get answers back direct, please send me cc's as I am doing the N
ones as well.

Hi George,

Well, the silence has been deafening. It's sort of funny to me, as PRR
modeler, since I have the feeling that if this had been a PRR question, I
would have had an answer within a few hours...I guess there isn't much
interest in the NYC out there <G-DUCKING!!!!>

I did find some drawings of the cars at George Elwoods amazing site:
http://www.dnaco.net/~gelwood/

the specific drawings are at:
http://gelwood.railfan.net/other/nyc/nyc-f21.gif
and car data at
http://gelwood.railfan.net/other/nyc/nyc-f22.gif

Unfortunately, these do not provide painting information, but I chose to
believe that these cars would have remained black into the mid 1950's. I
decaled my GHQ model with the available decals for #499030, a car built as
part of the original order in 1928 and with a capacity of 90.5 tons. I
found that the decal sheets from GHQ contained only minimal decals (things
like the blt date are missing and the car data is wrong) and I think that
at least some of the decals were a bit oversized, but I chose in this case
to simply follow the available GHQ decals. In reality, it painted and
decaled up into a nice little heavyweight flat after I tossed the supplied
grabs, and bent my own, and bottom mounted the supplied stirrup steps
(instead of mounting them on the side as the instructions suggest). My
brother seemed quite pleased to find it under the tree this Holiday season!
My HO model is still in construction, so I'm hoping for better information
for it!

Happy Rails
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith V.M.D., Ph.D.
Scott-Ritchey Research Center
334-844-5587, 334-844-5850 (fax)
http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Benjamin Franklin
__
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| / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 &#92; | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
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Bob Schliecher had an article maybe a decade ago on the side dump cars, and said that while intended mainly for ballast, on occasion they were used for coal. I think that while sometimes they were used for on-line coal service, I would be interested in any proof or hint that these cars went off-line. - John

I asked the PM-list:

I am working on an ECW 90 ton depressed center flat in HO and a pair of the
same from GHQ in N and would like to decorate all of them in appropraite
NYC paint/decals. Are there any photographs of this flat available? What
color did the NYC paint these cars?

I have both builder's and in-service photos of these cars which show both
original and later lettering arrangements. Though both photos are b/w, it
appears to me that, in both the 1941 builder's shot and the 1943 in-service
photo, the cars are painted mineral red; perhaps Jeff English can enlighten
us further on this subject. I can scan my photos for you if you can
receive JPEG files.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

Richard - I ran to my Cycs. thinking this would be an easy task to post a
picture, but realized I could find any. If you can send me the scan(s), I'd
be glad to post them on our ECW section so other people can refer to them,
too. - John

I have both builder's and in-service photos of these cars which show both
original and later lettering arrangements. Though both photos are b/w, it
appears to me that, in both the 1941 builder's shot and the 1943 in-service
photo, the cars are painted mineral red; perhaps Jeff English can enlighten
us further on this subject. I can scan my photos for you if you can
receive JPEG files.

Richard,

Thanks! I'll take those JPEGs! The builders photo must be of the third
group of 14 cars, #499050-68, built in 1941 in East Rochester (I grew up
just down the street!). The first two batches of 5 cars each were built
for the NYC (499030-34) and the B&A (17100-04) in 1928. I'm not sure where
I saw the post, but I thought that I had seen a post indicatiung that NYC
flats were originally black and were repainted mineral red in the mid '50s.
Of course, I looked over Jeff English's recent reply on NYC repaints, and
it led me to wonder if that weren't the mid 40's <G>. Additionally, this
could also lead to the interesting possibility that the '41 cars were
painted red from the beginning while in my era (1944), the 1928 cars may
still have been black (given that I saw a Freight car color PRR lettered
flat roll past my street in Auburn AL a couple of months ago!). I'm
looking forward to the scans and thanks again!

Happy Rails
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith V.M.D., Ph.D.
Scott-Ritchey Research Center
334-844-5587, 334-844-5850 (fax)
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

John Nehrich wrote:

Bob Schliecher had an article maybe a decade ago on the side dump cars,
and said that while intended mainly for ballast, on occasion they were
used for coal. I think that while sometimes they were used for on-line
coal service, I would be interested in any proof or hint that these cars
went off-line.

I've never seen any photographic evidence that Hart Selective ballast
hoppers or the similar cars with dump mechanisms by Enterprise and other
mfrs. (which I assume are the cars you're talking about) ever went off
line, regardless of who owned them. So I'm as skeptical as you are.
There's evidence that some RRs (e.g., the UP) sometimes hauled coal in
them, but with the cars being costly to build and maintain and intended
primarily for ballast service, I can't imagine any RR willingly allowing
them to go off line in interchange.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

John Nehrich wrote:

....what is the earliest the Dreadnaught end was seen? I have a
date of 1925, but maybe someone can beat that?

That's the earliest date I've seen for cars with Dreadnaught ends. And it
seems significant that they're not shown in the 1925 Car Builders'
Cyclopedia, where they would surely have been included if they had been
developed earlier than that.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

Does anyone know an address for Tichy? I used the one on the box but
the letter came back as insufficient address.

Jon Miller
AT&SF
For me time has stopped in 1941
Digitrax DCC owner, Chief system
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

Hi John:

The 659000-659999 and similar 660000-6601999 series flat cars have been given a fairly complete treatment by me in two issues of CN LINES (Vol. 5 No.'s 3 and 4) [high quality Back Issue copies are available from us]. This article has been in RMC's black ace files for maybe about four to five years now.

I know that the CN had straight side flats akin to the Tichy kit, but they also had cars in the 659000 series (the number Red Caboose uses). Were these also straight side cars? Did they have 12 pockets? - John

They were fishbelly side sill cars with 12 side stake pockets and the Red Caboose model is a decent stand-in.

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--
Stafford Swain
26 Kenneth Street
Winnipeg, MB, Canada
R3T 0K8
(204) 477-9246
sswain@total.net

Jon Miller wrote:

Does anyone know an address for Tichy? I used the one on the box but
the letter came back as insufficient address.

Jon, I just received today one of Tichy's new kits for the War Emergency
composite gondolas and the address on the instruction sheet is Tichy Train
Group, P. O. Box 39, Plainview, NY 11803-0039. Nice kit, by the way,
though some details (sill steps, towing staples) are so delicate they were
broken when the kit arrived.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

Stafford - Thanks. - John