Lee, all of the B-50-47's had H/C underframes including the T&NO cars. My notes say SP Equipment Co. was the builder of all of the cars. Unfortunately I've never seen a photograph of one of these! You

Larry, That's weird, I have scans of NYSW 501 and 510 and they are 40 foot cars. Also the 1965 ORER lists 501 to 524 as 40 foot cars. The 3645 cubic feet is consistent with a 40 foot car, not a 50 foo

Note to self: Stop chewing on model trains. A bad habit, and possibly hazardous. Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@...> -->> NOTE EMAIL CHANGE <<-- Sterling, Massachusetts

Tim, I have a very nice 1950's photo of BAR #6722, a wood reefer in blue (lower half) and white (upper half) with a big red potato logo. There is a second car painted the same way in the photo, perhap

George, the paint scheme and information on the MT site is correct, but the model appears to have an incorrect roof and underframe for the BAR cars. Also, the white painted panel on the left side appe

Tim Gilbert wrote Tim, may I ask why you say that? I know SP freight cars that numbered in the hundreds, and ran for years and years, and photos of them are as rare as diamonds. Just because you haven

Yes Larry, they are clearly rebuilds of something. Also, as I was digging around looking for the BAR reefer photo, I found another NYSW photo - #504 in fairly new paint and it also has the 6/5/5 ends

Mont, the car in the circa 1980 photo matches those features, but we're talking about 30 years later! By 1959 the NYSW only showed two cars remaining of those 35 PS-1's they bought in 1952. What happe

And therefore, the probability that NONE of the Monon box cars showed up in a year's time in any particular location is less than 6%... Or put another way, there's a 94% probability that at least one

Oops. My calculation was wrong. If you have ONE box car on your layout at a time, and .14% of the fleet is Monon, then the expectation is 40% that at least ONE of those days during the year, the car w

Tim Gilbert conjectures I have to disagree. It just could be bad luck. SP and SSW painted a small number of box cars in red and gray paint -- seen many pictures of them? Until the last 2-3 years, I'd

40 freight cars a year for 25 years will get you 1,000 freight cars. I think everyone here can afford that! (Internet access alone costs me as much as 20 Sunshine kits every year.) Tim O'Connor <timbo

Mont, I guess I'm not following you exactly. NYS&W acquired 35 cars in 1952. In 1956, 25 were sold to the Monon. Two were retained on the roster evidently to 1980 or even beyond. And 8 were vacated fr

Al, here is a company selling phosphor bronze wire. I have to say, it looks very similar in color to the wire I have from CMA. http://www.allproducts.com.tw/manufacture9/ohe/pb-06.html In any case, I'

Jim, I don't recall them being discussed before. I have never seen a picture of one. What do you mean by "Reading appearance"? Do they have Wooten fireboxes or something? Perhaps flat panel roofs? Tay

There do appear to be some brands of polyester/polyurethane/polycarbonate resin blends... but most of the applications seem to be for pretty durable stuff. Polycarbonate after all is used for automobi

I think it was CP that had some 1937 AAR cars with flat roofs, and some others with 5/5 ends. If the Reading cars were basically stock AAR design except for the roof and doors, it sounds like we need

Nope. The N&W split at Portsmouth -- one line going north to Columbus and the other going west to Cincinnati. There is a small book on N&W coal with a flow map that shows where it went when it left th

The rail haul to New England coastal cities is vastly more expensive than coastal shipping. Even today, commodities like cement, salt and oil arrive in New England by ship and some of it is transloade

Jace, Don Tichy has always been the owner of CMA. Companies are often incorporated for marketing or tax or legal reasons. Just ask Fred Becker! And yes of course you still can buy the wire. http://www