40388 is a good number, built by Pullman Car & Mfg. Co. 8, 9-28 Lot 5432 Series 40200 - 40598 even. The lettering scheme is as delivered with the corporate initials above the SOO LINE name. Dennis Sto

I think a better way to phrase the question would be: "What determined whether the solid door was on the right or left?" Examples of both exist, but I've never paid enough attention to determine wheth

Not Vulcan, rather some sort of Andrews patent truck. Vulcan trucks had the end of the sideframe encircle the journal box, which fit in the resulting slot, and retained by a horizontal bolt through a

They look like additional tractor engines on skids; the fuel tank is mounted over the engine and the clutch housing is facing us. Dennis Storzek

That would be Al Armitage, the "dean of styrene". With that booklet he singlehandedly changed the course of scratchbuilding (and pattern making) in our hobby. As to the Revell engine house/bakery/prin

But paint did. The National Environmental Protection Act of 1970 was not kind to paint manufacturers, forcing them to stop using a lot of traditional materials, all to the detriment of paint performan

Jeez, guys, just order it from McMaster Carr. Nice clean flat sheets in a variety of sizes and thicknesses. https://www.mcmaster.com/lead-sheets They also have lead shot and lead wool... search those

Bravo, Tony. I had a '58 ORER out on my desk at lunch to compose a similar reply, but got called away. However, I'll relay one thought impressed on me by one of my operating mentors, a man who spent h

I don't think so. While I see some strange stripes on the wheel plates, I think they are oil drips, one reason why nobody bothered to paint wheels fancy colors, at least not after the first time :-) M

Coming in on this late. I just finally panned all the way to the far end of the string of cars, and adjacent to the track is a fire hose house, and interestingly, the hydrant identification number is

Why does everyone always go off on the dates the interns at these university libraries enter? They know absolutely nothing about railroads, or cars, or ships... they are just told to enter all the inf

This photo was bugging me as I can't ever recall seeing a draft gear like this, so I did some research. Turns out this is a pattented Commonwealth "Transom Draft Gear". The springing is contained in t

I donno Mont. It was well into the diesel era before the CSS&SB (South Shore) dieselized. Dennis Storzek

Leave it to Google. "Green sand" in foundry terminology means it is used damp, like "green" wood, as opposed to core sand, which has different binders and is baked before the molded cores are placed i

Yes. It actually looks like a passenger car underframe; I wonder if it is an express car? Dennis Storzek

I agree. I seem to recall the IC was called upon to provide boxcars for temporary housing for several of the bad floods in the early part of the twentieth century. Dennis Storzek

I've never read that the Westinghouse brake schedule designations had any meaning beyond just being a designation for the schedule of equipment, but they had to come from somewhere. The meaning of C a

It's temporary. Note it's laid on top of the pavement and the ramp rails on each track. Likely they are doing track renewal somplace out of the picture and need the ability to establish a single track

That's what they make shovels for. The men on work trains were mostly rated as laborers anyway... want heat tonight... shovel enough coal into the bunker to last us the week. Long after the steam era,

I thought I wasn't supposed to see any of those cracks between the boards? Dennis Storzek