----- Original Message -----

From: Andy Laurent via Groups.Io

To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io

Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2019 12:49 PM

Subject: [RealSTMFC] ERIE 7211 & Friend

Gents,

The Barriger Library posted this image of two ERIE FD cars with large loads:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barrigerlibrary/49066491078/ 

ERIE 7211 is the car in the distance, car in foreground has its number obscured.

Andy
Wisconsin

On 19 Nov 2019, at 18:19, Ken Adams <smadanek44g@...> wrote:

Paul

I know you are located in the UK so may not have been able to pick up a copy of the SPH&TS Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide by Tony and Dick Harley. About 40% of that volume is devoted to PFE paint schemes. So you might try Dick Harley's website https://harley-trains.smugmug.com/PFEModels/PFE-Modeling-Clinics.

I just noticed Dick's presentation at the 2019 SPH&TS presentation at Ogden this past spring which I was unable to attend is now included. 

best

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Fritz Milhaupt via Groups.Io
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2019 4:56 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] Interesting load on a SAL flat

Here's an earlier version of a water tube boiler on a flat car, from Saginaw, Michigan in 1895.

The Flint & Pere Marquette was one of the predecessors to the Pere Marquette, which owned the second flat car in the photo at the top of this thread.

- Fritz Milhaupt

Dick Harley wrote:

Tichy PFE decals have lettering that is the wrong size and shape - some too big, some too small.  The numbers are the wrong size, and their shape is nowhere near what PFE (and SP and UP) used.  The UP medallions are the wrong shape and style.

Compare lettering to the SPH&TS painting & lettering book, or new Microscale sets 87-501 or 60-501.  Compare medallions to the book or Microscale 87-414 or MC-4021.
Tichy's PFE artwork is just not accurate - or even close. 

     Dick is exactly right. I haven't bought any Tichy PFE decals, because I rely on the "gold standard," the new Microscale sets with Dick's superb artwork, taken from PFE drawings. But I recently looked at a friend's PFE set from TIchy, and as Dick says, not even close. I have no idea what, if anything, these decals are based on, but obviously not the prototype. Caveat emptor.

Tony Thompson

tony@...

You may want to take a look at the old Rivarossi snow plow/gondola.   They are available on ebay (  https://www.ebay.com/itm/HO-Scale-Rivarossi-Erie-077-Snow-Plow-Kadees-Sprung-trucks/333403583761?hash=item4da066f511:g:J8AAAOSwa-hd0sOU  )   and often for not much money.

Steve Kay

After looking thru a bunch of freight guides, Milw had some very similar plows. These appear to have about a 6-7 foot front radius and about a 2-3 foot radius at the exit. Milw drawings are available at the Milw Public Library. 

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io [mailto:main@RealSTMFC.groups.io] On Behalf Of np328
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2019 2:40 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] NP Wood Reefer

Brian Leppert wrote : I've spent too much time trying to research NP wood reefers and really wish someone else would do the job.  The roster changed over time.  

      I live here in St. Paul, MN. Fifteen minute drive from the Minnesota Historical Society and tried over years to put a semblance of a form to the car roster. After a while, many decades, not all research time spent on researching reefer, but plenty, I came to the conclusion that:
1) Leasing affected the roster. I've dug into some accounting records, not exactly my idea of fruitful research as things just got murkier. (Leighton Hudson, fellow archivist here will say - It seems like they will roll in a car, then take a crane and lift the body off the trucks, lower a different car body on the trucks and stencil the body with the car number those trucks rolled in on.     After spending some time in the accounting books I must admit, no other theory worked as well as that.)   
2) Loading commodities affected the roster (From an NP Officer, Once having carried fish, reefers are then unfit for any other commodity. Fish service is where reefers go to die!) Was there a certain class selected to haul fish from the west? Not that I found, it seemed rather to be cars the west coast yardmasters chose on the spot. A west coast yardmaster at Centralia or Chehalis, WA  ( I forget ) sent a relatively newer reefer to a fishery and got the above telegram from the NP officer at the St. Paul offices.  
3) Changing suitability demands, in the time frame of these reefers, they could from time to time be placed in passenger trains, and often were - east of St. Paul.
       A listing of car numbers of groups of reefers that were run from Northtown (Minneapolis) to St. Paul 4th Street yard (in the direct vicinity of St. Paul Union Depot) where as soon as they were re-iced they were taken to the next passenger train east headed east at SPUD. CB&Q, Milwaukee, C&NW, didn't matter (although CNW seemed to be favored) and headed east.
          The tie-in is in the 30's after I cannot call what event wreck, roads east of Chicago required reefers have buffers of a certain quality when placed in a passenger train. (Not just steam lines which were already there, or signaling air lines, rather the whole buffer and in some cases, trucks be of a certain wheelbase.)  Many NP reefers at the time lacked these heavy buffers and so the NP rebuilt some reefers, but not others. And this created sub-classes out of what was one class prior.    
4) Bunk houses, really. In my studies on stations and depots on the NP, from time to time when sent to a remote area, an operator or agent with a family would/could demand housing. The local B&B forces would be asked to just grab "a reefer, in decent shape and suitable to be used as housing" and put in a few windows, a wall or two, and a stove. Then take it to the site requested. A later letter in the same study topic has a President (in the early 1940's I believe) ask his officers if "something can't be done about all these reefer car bodies used as housing along the ROW."     

      I was reminded of the above at the impromptu SWIFT reefer gathering at Chicagoland where some of the same concerns were listed.        Jim Dick - St. Paul                           

The pages with the kit construction, pp 2-7, did not make the kit instructions pdf.

Gary Laakso