That’s helpful Dennis – thanks. I’m not at all sure this is an inside metal roof here Dennis. I’m not really clear on the spotting features. Its described in Railway Mechanical Engineer as a double bo

I'm not Dennis, but I'd say the answer is probably not. Hand grabs and ladders can easily extend further out from the car side than the roof, depending on car design. In my case, the roof was a "doubl

Hi there – I’m trying to compare various sources of dimensions for a reefer model. It was double sheathed, with exposed steel L section side sills. I came across a Railway Mechanical Engineer article

Hi there, Just an observation on the “no way to know” observation about whether cars are empty or loads. In this case, I basically agree with that conclusion because of the angle and imperfect focus o

That’s just weird – tried the right click a few times before giving up; this time I gave it another go and it worked. Thanks for the push Dave. Unfortunately, the image didn’t allow me to read the car

I wish I could figure out how to copy the image so I could put it into software and try to identify the car number. With the help of Ian Cranstone’s work, this is an interesting series of cars to watc

Bill said: It seems like it would be pretty easy to print this w/o so many of the details like grabs, sill steps, brake parts, door hardware, etc. I agree. If I needed one of these I’d ask the modelle

The material looks like Shapeways hi-definition acrylic: https://www.shapeways.com/materials/high-definition-acrylate A reasonably nice material for HO scale parts; I did a set of murphy car ends usin

Thanks for the explanation and links to those excellent photos Dennis – that makes it all very clear. Makes me think a nice detail part to model that would be useful to some of us. Rob

Any idea what “metal draft arms” means? I find this hard to follow. Rob Kirkham

Actually I’ve had good success with Shapeways ends and doors. I don’t have doors up in my public profile, but have multiple examples here on models. I do have some of the ends I’ve modelled : https://

I’m delighted to see these cars being delivered at last. I’m wondering whether some of the lucky folks who already have one could take out the calipers and start to give us some core dimensions of the

Thanks for posting these photos: That photo #130 contains a very interesting Seaboard ventilator 89819 - with the Murphy style ribs of the upper panel truncated on either side of the vents. Cool. Rob

The PRR and B&O empty gondolas just right of the centre bottom of the image appear to contain left-over mineral chunks – could be broken cut stone, or something else more unprocessed. Cars on the left

Sorry, I seem to be receiving no e-mail from yahoo today and cannot seem to access it online either. Rob

Hi Pierre – do you have an image of the running board lateral supports folded up? I’m curious to see how they are supposed to look. Rob

My apologies for sending irrelevant stuff to these lists. Not at all sure what’s occurring but will go silent for the time being. Rob Kirkham

OK give the next a try. Rob

That’s interesting. Any idea whether the full length rib versions or the shorter ribs? Rob Kirkham

Well, in a pinch I’ve used a door hinge as a vice and a razor blade to fold over the part. Worked well enough. Rob Kirkham