I'm glad this topic is being discussed. It's very important to those of us who are trying to develop accurate history. On many lists I've made many statements of what I believe to be true. sometimes I

Perhaps asking when truss rods were outlawed is asking the wrong question. The more relevant questions are: 1. When were the rules changed so that truss rods alone would not do ? -- requiring steel ce

Thanks Rick for all the detail about SLRX.. Your comment about Varney was interesting. They were nice kits, but I've never had a feeling of the extent to which lettering on them was for cars that actu

PRR did start buying standard AAR design freight cars in the 1950's and that did not result in a miraculous financial turnaround. What you see as unmitigated arrogance sounds like it could simply have

Another car that I retrieved today is a wood sided reefer decorated for "Rath Black Hawk Hams". I was thinking of taking it to run in our club op sessions (1954-55), but saw that it had truss rods. It

Most Listmembers are aware that St. Louis Refrigerator Car Co. reefers were used to ship Bud Beer around the country. ================ I wasn't. This interests me because earlier today I was looking a

an internal argument made that 10'6" box cars would just confuse shippers, add to spare parts inventory (and thereby increase the cost of maintenance) , Tim O'Connor ------------------------------ I d

I know this is straying from STMFC topic, but don't know what list electrification belongs on, so I'll try to make it brief. The primary reason that electrification economics didn't work in the U. S.

Ripe bananas were a good deal for tug boat crews moving car floats of reefers loaded with bananas from Standard Fruit, pier 3 East River to W. 72nd St. and Weehawken. If they were yellow they wouldn't

Posted by: "ed_mines" > Would specialized box cars like double door cars, 50 ft. cars & hide loading cars be set aside in larger yards? No, unless there were enough cars of a type, e.g. grain boxes in

(1957)," 23,000 tons of PA Anthracite was terminated in WV and 78,000 tons were terminated in VA in 19850. Tim Gilbert ========= Thanks Tim. That indicates about two carloads a weekday in WV and seven

There was another step in the chain beyond just switching empty box cars into a track for distribution. It was common, especially at yards serving a lot of box car loading industry, for the cars to be

Tim, is there any information that might give us an idea of how much if any anthracite traffic went to VA and WV ? Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383 New England Rail Shipper Directories 19 Holden

I recall that during the 60's we (NYC) were not allowed to load hopper cars covered by a Car Service Directive, the number of which I don't remember. It said that other roads could not load hoppers be

I have to take exception to the notion that cars built from the old kits don't look as good because they don't have as much detail as the new plastic cars. I'm currently building six Silver Streak kit

What is an "EARLY diseasel" ? ============ When I started this topic, I was thinking of first generation diesels, e.g. FA, PA, GP-7/9, FT, F3, F&/9, etc. Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383 New Engl

Mike is right. I was referring to the late steam era, also early diesel era, of the 50's. I'm with a club that has a target date of 1954/55, so mixed power, diesel only and mostly steam and steam only

I'm involved in a discussion/debate about the speed of freight trains on grades in the 50's. One of our members contends that 10 mph was a typical freight train speed on grades. While this may have be

Regarding the returning of empty rail cars, Canadian or otherwise, I have posted in the files section, a document that I found in the NP company records. Note how cars are classed by car number and no

Posted by: "Russell Strodtz" Clark, Only weights that were acceptable for trade were scale weights. If the elevator had a track scale they should have been able to get a WWIB weight agreement and then