Bob, Um, that's not what was said! What was said was that you swap the right and left parts of ONE SIDE, with respect to the door! I thought Andy made that clear in his first post and I did so in my r

Bob, I believe that Andy is correct. The trusses are with respect to the door. Pratt points down (to the left of the door forming the leg of an "R") and Howe points up (to the left of the door forming

Tim, Another reason to use mill gondolas (and to equip gons in steel service with drop ends) is that these cars are far more flexible than flat cars. If you’re a mill and you have a yard of empties av

Ray, Awesome! That’s the first photo of a TEM car in TEM paint that I think I have ever seen. There’s enough there to potentially do a credibly job patching together the lettering. Regards, Bruce Bruc

Folks, The predecessor of the Ontario Northland, the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, reporting marks TEM (and specifically called out in the ORER as not to be confused with the T&NO RR or Te

Nelson, Some folks across many modeling disciplines, but especially in the military modelers feel that covering a decal with a similar finish to what is underneath it, in this case future (gloss) does

Rob, In general, cars during WWI were "rode hard and put up wet" meaning that they only got the minimum work needed to keep them on the road. Given that the X31 fleet was 10 years old at the end of th

Tim, You might have missed the subtlety, but I was saying that the car may well have been re-stenciled with the OLD reweigh date when it was repainted with the emblem. Thus the weathering on them woul

Fred, Careful with the assumptions. Since this is a tank car, it may not have been reweighed when the logo was painted onto it. Thus the reweight of 6-47 is not an accurate indication of the date of t

One more possible platform would be Yarmouth YMW-370 http://www.yarmouthmodelworks.com/index.php/Products/YMW-370 Regards, Bruce Smith Auburn, AL

Obviously, many of you missed my PRR N4 cabin car clinic at Prototype Rails, Cocoa Beach. I spent about the 1st 1/3 of the hour addressing the "bobber problem". This is well spelled out, with respect

Doug, Clark, Folks, When the “Iron Modeler” concept first came up, as I recall we had several ideas in play. The first would be that at a meet like Prototype Rails, we would have a head to head “compe

Charlie, We’ve discussed aspects of the Barrett fleet extensively here over the years. A search of the archives for “Barrett” will get you there and adding “Tarvia” may help narrow it down. As for thi

Ron, Seriously? A couple of points. First, with respect to contests. If that's your thing, fine, but it's never been mine. While I certainly appreciate feedback on my models, I have never built them t

Brian, I've also had good luck creating chalk marks with gel pens. Regards, Bruce Smith Auburn, Al

Ken, Unfortunately, the Moloco axle length is 1.005" which is pretty much useless for most of the axle needs I have (lots of Bowser, which needs 1.020 to 1.035" axles so as not to be too sloppy). Rega

Folks, With my prior stock of Rapido HO code 88 wheelsets exhausted, and no sign of those sets being restocked, or of my favorite Reboxx ever being made again, what are y'all using for replacement whe

Clark, It might have been used on mixed trains as a caboose, but it also could have been used on branchline passenger trains as a passenger-baggage-mail car. The PRR had at least a couple of classes o

Bob, Most commercial constuction equipment would have been sent on flat cars, including cranes, shovels, backhoes, graders, as well as many construction trucks, such as dump trucks. Commercial Ag mach

Bill, Yes, the car may be perfectly symmetrical, or at least without an obvious difference between the ends. So, just as you have an issue figuring it out, it is critical that service folks be able fi