Dan and friends, A lot of early US O-scale was 1:45, including freight cars (mandatory content). Some models 1:45 were still available using pre-war tooling in the late 1940s. It took a while for thin

Bob and Friends, F&C offers a 1930 40' C&O automobile boxcar as their kit 6770. Sorry, I no longer have the original photo to compare. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Don, Richard Hendrickson used the Ertl car to make an ACL K-7. His biggest change was to scratch build a fishbelly underframe. Richard's extensive article was in the October 2007 SEABOARD-COAST LINE M

Friends, Great photos. Who was OVOX? These marks are not shown in my 1958 ORER. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Friends, Before we crowd our bandwidth with messages about the gondola list, let me say that when I dug the piece out I saw that it was actually a list of Sunshine cars, but forgot to say so when I pu

Friends, Attached is the list Bill Welch and Martin Loftin prepared, posted with Bill's O.K. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Friends, Bill Welch and Martin Loftin compiled a list of prototypes and close cars to the Accurail gon. At some point this was posted on the STMFC web site, and I printed copy, but there is no file nu

Mike, I've never heard of a dome with a side vent (No doubt here comes the lesson!). Do you mean an "L" or "Y" shaped vent on the dome facing the car end? If so, yes, they were common on cars built up

Friends, I have just added four new photos to our albums section for your pleasure and approval. MEC 4952, a 10' IH boxcar, is found in my "Album 3, New Hampshire" on page 8. B&O 914255, a scale test

Tim, The item is not listed as in-stock at Intermountain and they have been caught in the Chinese closure mess. Check Des Plaines, Caboose, Klein and Walthers and other vendors. Somebody out there pro

Jim Thanks for your information on the RF&P/PE cars. It looks like this knocks them out as USRA cars, and even clones, though they do have a similar appearance. Based on your information that 9 sold t

Seth, The RF&P had cabooses which appear to be USRA or clones. I have no information about them, except that in 1950 several were sold to the Pacific Electric. Ira Swett's CARS OF PACIFIC ELECTRIC, Vo

Friends, These cars survived a long time, long enough for me to photograph one of the last in service in 1967. See my Album #7 on page 9 of our photo section for steel-sheathed B-50-15-A 114216. This

John, Nice hand-outs. Any chance your lecture text is available? I have a passing interest in Santa Fe's marine operations. When I took basic training in 1975 at USCG TRACEN ALAMEDA (Government Island

Ken, The SP operation used gondolas. We discussed this a year or so ago here, and were provided with several photos. They should be in our group's photo files somewhere. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Gene and Bill, Nobody has mentioned the Bowser/Cal-Scale brass and plastic brake wheels: http://www.bowser-trains.com/history/hocalscalefreightcar.html . The catalog drawings are crude, and I suspect

Ben and Bob, On some railroads this was called a "jumbo car". As the legend on the Erie car implies, it was used in tunnel maintenance in a way that was similar to tower cars from which overhead wires

Bill, In James Kinkaid's SOUTHERN RAILWAY GUIDE TO FREIGHT AND PASSENGER EQUIPMENT there is a Jim King photo of Southern 51861, a Thrall knock-off of a 53' GSC flat. The car was built in September 195

Ike, Would the SRHA have painting standards? This might help solve the color question about the 41' 6" flat cars we've been agonizing over. I say black until the 1950s, though I've never seen a color

Friends, While digitizing my father's Iowa Traction Company slides, I went searching for information on prior owners of their electric motors. I stumbled onto the attached photo of the ex-PRR gun flat