A couple from my photo archive: 36' car / photo dated May 1951 40' car / photo dated July 1958 Hope this helps to identify Craig Wilson

Thanks ... that is what I need to do a dive into the information. I will check the Bluecamp archive too as he collects a lot of photos of early freight cars and I have gotten prints of Haskell and Bar

An interesting aside to the Bx-Z story is that the Ann Arbor RR had 2 of them, evidently an add on to the AT&SF order. Whoa... Wait... What...? Any idea of what the AA numbers were for these cars? At

Another technique I have used - get some "pumice" based hand cleanser (GoJo is one brand I have used) and some cotton swabs. "Q-tips" have flexible shafts that don't work as well as ones with wooden s

When Intermountain came out with their 70T flatcar I negotiated a "bulk buy" of the Protowest kits. I always thought they built into nice models and I was using them as the basis for DT&I flatcars tha

Andy Carlson wrote: Let us not forget the evisceration Richard Hendrickson received for accurately calling out the CB&Q historical society for a society special run of a box car. The ire was raised fr

And my favorite . . . baghouse fume. I looked it up . . . powdered zinc. Mined in western Canada and often shipped to battery plants in CP cars. Slab side hoppers (both CP and CN) were commonly shippe

I think Sunshine offered a mini-kit for the PMcK&Y box car to model the WABASH version, which had a different end. Wabash also had double sheathed rebuilds. But the above mini-kit cars ended up on the

This MILW car is the only photo I have - no date or location noted but it appears to have a 1969 reweigh date. It is also stencilled "Pipe Loading Only". I couldn't find any photos of the cars carryin

Here is a partial view of a GTW composite gondola with a lumber load. No date, location or source noted on the photo but I believe the steam locomotive is Canadian National rather than GTW from its nu

Here is the only diagram I have ever seen for the AA wood cabooses: I suppose if you zoom in and look closely you can probably get what you need. The diagram is from the 1920's and is labeled "Standar

I especially enjoyed seeing the Fingerle Lumber vehicles (pronounced Finger-LEE). Fingerle Lumber was a prominent builder supply business located in the city of Ann Arbor located just north (railroad

Color photos show them painted black. Craig Wilson

Ex-C&NW and yes can be done using Red Caboose model. There is a photo of LS&I 6337 on page 23 of the Henry Maywald "Classic Freight Cars" book Vol 6. It has "bulkheads" made from what looks like steel

The car ferry manifests from 1971 show very few cars with BN reporting marks and lots of the predecessor roads (GN, NP, CBQ). The 1975 manifests list a lot more cars witn BN reporting marks as would b

Lettering practices at the time the AA single sheath cars were built were based on Wabash drawings, so yes. That said there were some minor variations in placement of the lettering, the 14-inch "ANN A

On a friend's layout, the focal point was the harbor at Frankfort/Elberta Michigan and car ferry dock/yard there. He visited there on his sailboat every summer. He knew little of the railroad beyond t

A friend of mine had a layout based on a railroad that shipped taconite in ore cars via car ferry during the winter months when the lakes were iced over. He made loads out of seeds (maybe Anise, I don

There were many "ice service" refrigerator cars. I have seen pictures of ART. FGE and PFE cars lettered for this service. Intermountain produced a model (47739) for a wood FGE car. I was introduced to

Here is a technique that I have used: a hand cleaner that contains pumice (brand name "GoJo"). A small amount is applied using a cotton-tip swab - like a Q-tip although I avoid the ones with a flexibl