1963? All this speculation about the future.... Here are the REAL top 20 tank car numbers: UTLX 38678 GATX 26916 SHPX 6896 SDRX 5599 NATX 4427 CYCX 3929 TCX 3901 RPX, SEPX 3254 PTX 2497 MPLX 2160 COSX

Richard, For 1941, somehow the FW&D originated 10 tons of bananas (one carload - perhaps from a truck?), but received 2,274 tons from connecting lines that were delivered by FW&D, and they also receiv

Doug, The 1941 ICC report distinguishes cars loaded with Bananas on the railroads terminals/port piers ("originating") - essentially the first railroad to handle a car load of Bananas. Some west coast

Argh...too late for this. Corrections inserted. ---In STMFC@..., <devans1@...> wrote : Gentlemen, How deep into Banana traffic do we want to go? I have the 1941-1945 ICC Class I railway fr

In 1943, PRR freight schedules and arranged freight log sheets indicate banana specials out of Bayview yard in Baltimore on Mondays and Thursdays. The special was westbound out the PRR main, and in ad

Ed, You raise an interesting concept, and raise an interesting question. The interesting question - "it should make little difference whether a model was a 70 YO antique of the past or something of cu

Rob, From my engineering experience, a norm sounds more like a market analysis. Not sure that is NMRA's job, nor very productive, except to help existing manufacturer's promote their products over oth

Tim, As someone who returned to the hobby after a 25 year hiatus, and have been trying to collect a WWII freight car fleet since 2005 that is at least representative of the prototype's fleet, I would

All, Sorry for what may appear to be a shameless plug, but one thing Bruce and Elden did not note, but has been important to the success of TKM, is that nearly every rolling stock article that I can r

Schuyler, Interesting perspective. I am sure the PRRT&HS also had its share of railfans in the early days, but it is pretty hard to mint new rail fans for a long-fallen flag. Still the same problem. Y

Really guys? First - where are the moderators - I thought STMFC was NOT supposed to be a forum for attacking organizations business practices? Second - talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Last

Mike, Now I am very jealous - to my knowledge there are very few known WWII era freight train consists for PRR Pittsburgh Division, nor movies of entire freight trains. And I am very reluctant to infe

Mike, You are raising a valid concern about car movements based on photos. I expect this is era dependent, but through WWII, film photography was not an inexpensive hobby, and one would expect photogr

Bob, There are quite a few freight cars with re-weigh dates of '41 and '42. And I think I spotted a few bearing repacks of the same vintage. I was wondering if the safety film was originally triggered

Gentlemen, An interesting YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqpayZ2JqlU Lots of steam era freight cars, including FGEX 45014 - an ex-PRR R7 with a reweigh date of 3-41 at the 12:47 mark.

Mike, Not being good at detecting sarcasm (?), I'll bite.... ---In STMFC@..., <brockm@...> wrote : SNIP... BTW, I don't recall anyone commenting on free rolling trucks and hump yards. Mike

Paul, Tom,With all of the discussion about presentations at Prototype Rails being videotaped and such, I will provide a testimonial that Tom's very illuminating presentation on this topic at this year

Denny, I have visited both Aberdeen (APG) and Fort Eustis in the past month, and saw a big rail gun at Fort Lee last summer (visible on Google Earth). Checking the Fort Lee web site, it appears the ne

John, AWESOME DATA! Many thanks for sharing. I am also trying to estimate a WWII freight car distribution - although on the other coast. I noticed that by late '43, over 2/3rds of ATSF box cars were o

---In STMFC@..., <tony@...> wrote : Dave Evans wrote: Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA Tony, I guess it depends on the field - in some fields the precision of standards