Rob, The lettering pattern of the reefer at 6:49 indicates it was an FGEX or WFEX reefer. Todd Sullivan

Dennis, That's interesting about the MILW arrivals. Did the MILW have more mud in its ballast? Todd Sullivan

I do most of my weathering with acrylic paints, ustabe Polyscale, now craft acrylics (not my favorite paint, but cheap and available). For solid bearing trucks' wheel faces, I start out with black, an

Interesting photo, but why on earth would they do that? Todd Sullivan

Bruce, Most certainly coal would freeze in the winter if the loaded open-topped coal cars were snowed on or were subjected to other winter precipitation that froze in the loads. Back in the 1980s and

Thank you, Ray! Todd Sullivan

Ted, I don't know if it suggests that, but cattle shipments did tend to be seasonal. My understanding is that, in the spring, cattle were often shipped from winter grazing areas to summer pastures at

Oops, forgot to add suggestion for the paint colors. It sure looks, to my eye, that the colors are the same yellow and green as used on CNW's diesels and passenger cars in the 1950s. Lloyd Keyser woul

Charlie, My Jan 1952 ORER has NWX 70000-70650 503 cars, 40-0 over strikers, 4' x6' doors, 1944 cuft, 8000 capy. No other dimensional data listed, but that was typical in the Private Car Owners section

Gary, Sounds like a trust plate. I think that most trust plates were cast metal early-on, and then RRs decided on a cheaper way to record the trust (loan) series for the cars by stenciling the trust i

Neat photo & story, Bob. The tank car kinda looks like a tank strapped to a GN flatcar, with a number change. Given that the water company operated in Great Falls, MT, it's not too far fetched to beli

Nelson, Thanks for the correction and very useful additional information! I will look for a paint color similar to Floquil's 'Old Silver'. I don't believe I have any in my stock of old and older paint

My recollections from working around freight cars in the 1960s is that clad hands were made of bronze or a similar metal, and were not bright silver, but a bronze color. I could be wrong ... does anyo

Probably not, but they probably need to be sprayed with water (like hogs) every 28 hours. ;-) Todd Sullivan

Bob, Aside from harassing bullfrogs, where can you get Bullfrog Snot? Todd Sullivan

Wow! Some of those turnouts look like No.3s. Amazing what you can get away with when space is tight. Todd Sullivan.

I believe ti was a very early version of an insulated tank car. The corrugated 'skin' covered the insualtion. Todd Sullivan

Hi Johannes, I looked at the box label which says it is a "ICC 103 D W" tank car. It looks more like an ICC 103BW, which would likely be a rubber-lined uninsulated car used for shipping acids and othe

According to my friend Chuck Yungkurth, the steel bridges on the ERIE eastbound track across the Southern Tier of New York had significant corrosion from the ice drippings from eastbound reefer loads.

Brad, I just looked through my copies of Morning Sun's Color Guide books on NYC equipment, and there was perhaps one photo of an NYC boxcar painted BCR with a black roof. Some of the really old rusted