I've reviewed many of these historic Lackawanna images and they seem to fall into a few categories. 

First, many images document an accident. The images of the NP boxcar with the Cleveland tractors are typical. Many seem to document a worker injury or a fatality. I can't tell you how many I've seen that illustrate a crossing and the crunched remnants of an auto.

Second, many images document new facilities, especially passenger stations.

This last point took awhile to figure out. There are quite a few images of homes and pastoral scenes. I think these document property the Lackawanna needed in order to upgrade their right-of-way.

At any rate, we are fortunate that this extensive collection survived. I am not familiar with a similar railroad company photo archive. Barriger's images come close but they lack the subject focus of the Lackawanna images. 

Eric Hansmann
Murfreesboro, TN

Reading my post, I now see an error. The 6000 series were built with double doors. And it was the later 30000 series that had single 6 foot doors.          Good grief.          Jim Dick  

The 6000 series (6000-6999) was built in 1923 if I recall correctly in November 1923 by GACC.

    It was one of those, “we need these yesterday if not sooner” car orders. The cars were needed for automobile service and at that time in the early 1920’s, if you wanted to carry auto traffic, you had to have cars sitting around empty in the rail yards of the railroads that served the Detroit auto makers. GACC responded to the NP’s demands by stating that they had just completed a group of SP cars and I believe and the jigs were still in place and NP would be given a price break and earlier slot if they agreed to compromise a bit.

The NP did, but just a bit.

    The NP demanded much, much, thicker floors (1 ¾ inch) and that affected the lower side sill attaching to the floor. It also affected how the bolsters and trucks interacted with the ability of these cars to negotiate tight industry trackage affected. I believe that later necessitated a new bolster design be cast and applied.  

    One thousand cars were built and about 10 years after the initial build, half or about 500 had double doors applied and these were renamed to the 30000 class.  Of the original 1000 cars built, excepting the occasional car involved in a wreck or incident as seen in the railfan.net photos, both series of cars gave very long and from the NP’s POV, a very satisfactory life lasting into the 1960’s.     

     These cars were downgraded from auto service into general merchandise well prior to WWII, so they would have traveled widely.

     I had always thought these cars (as others have posted) would be a great addition to modeling and so walked with a cardboard tube into CCB about a decade ago and handed these off to vendor. Still have duplicates of all the plans, steel detail plans, AB brake application, paint and stencil plans along with builder’s photos. I also have the roof detail plans. That is all I will say out of respect to who I gave the plans to.

      Since the time I gave these to a few other observations have come to lite and if I see that same vendor at Chicagoland or CCB, I will get an update and decide if the project should be re-let.

      OF the roof detail data supplied to Dennis, my late brother found them and we poured over these one evening while archiving.  One of the letters from the Mechanical department related on how one of the cars involved in an acute angle accident collision had most of both body sides torn clear however the roof maintained structural integrity (which must have provided the shipper whose lading was thrown about great consolation).  

     I know I have interior shots of these cars somewhere however here is an interior photo of another radial roofed car, XM #4982 (another as constructed, auto car.)

     The SP cars that these shared major dimensions with could closely resemble a Westerfield produced model also of 1922-23.

      Still it would be nice to see this car produced as the same plan could be used for the most part for the 6000 series accurate to 1923 and later, and the 30000 cars also. Some of these cars had Camel doors applied.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Jim Dick – St. Paul

Also, those crawlers are new, the clean paint on the treads give it away.

    On the right under the "no brake" look to be engine part/s.  Anyone have any idea on this.  Were they removed from the car?  Also note the wheel chalk in front and the wood frame that contained something.

-- 
Jon Miller
For me time stopped in 1941
Digitrax  Chief/Zephyr systems, 
SPROG, JMRI User
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

I keep wondering why this image was of importance to take, and noticed the brake end. The lumber door is at an unusual angle, and the brake staff has a big bow in it.  Relevant?  The No Brake may be in reference that you can't turn the stemwinder. Hmm...

Also, those crawlers are new, the clean paint on the treads give it away.

http://lists.railfan.net/erielackphoto.cgi?erielack-10-01-18/X5242.jpg

I’m not convinced that the equipment in the car is/was new.  The crawler looks a bit “experienced” to me, and I don’t see how the radiator could have been bent back like that from the crawler.

I find it especially interesting that the roof sheathing is laid on the bias.