Brian and friends, Like most freight, loading pulpwood was the responsibility of the shipper, and some (probably many) small pulpwood operations were owner-operated companies where the boss was right

Friends, Some 20 years ago when I used to take Amtrak's Cardinal to Chicago on the first leg of my annual trip to visit my parents on the Left Coast, I passed by the Armco/AK Steel furnace complex in

Friends, Here is another of my junk box salvage photos. No indication of where or when it was shot. A short note on the back says the intent was to show the catenary. Instead, we get at least a partia

Richard, Not the best source, but Tyco 50' plug door boxcars have a 3/3/3 end. These are easy to find at train shows because there were tens of thousands of them. Get two, and use only the A ends to m

Dave, The Sacramento Northern did this with their cabooses from at least the late 1930s. The practice stopped on some repaints of cabooses obtained from the WP in the early 1950s as far as I can tell

Chris, Right here. You will probably have to shrink it down a bit. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆

Brian, Thanks much. Obviously there is a lot of track missing from the Sanborn map. Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆

Bob and Friends, Interesting that both Santa Fe cars are 50' auto cars. I have attached a 1949+ Sanborn map which sadly does not show the trackage. My best guess is that this was the State Belt Railro

Friends, I did a blow up of the cars in front of the Hills Brothers Coffee plant in San Francisco from one of the photos we discussed. Can anyone identify the wooden boxcar in this clip? With all wood

Eric, Absolutely WP. These cars were WP's signature boxcars. They were built by Mt. Vernon in two batches as series 16001-16800 in 1917 and 16801-18300 in 1918. Also built in 1917 were matching ventil

Tony, Although I never met Richard, we did correspond from time to time. He was always gracious and generous with his knowledge and his photos. To me he will always be "Richard", never "Dick". In fact

Bob and Friends, According to the late Richard Hendrickson, these cars were confined to the State Belt Railroad in San Francisco. They shuttled bags of beans from a dock to Hills Brothers' plant which

Friends, I just received Tangent's June new products email, and was really excited by some of the parts they are now offering: https://www.tangentscalemodels.com/product-category/unique-and-useful-par

Tim and John, Ted Culotta covered some of the C&NW's "USRA-clones" in his "Essential Freight Car" series in the October 1003 RMC. The main difference is that they had an IH of just 8' 7", versus 9' fo

Ed, Absolutely true. But if an RF&P car was to be regular on my small layout, I would want to justify it by having an industry that would receive cars regularly from the RF&P. Thanks for the car numbe

Rob, Thanks for the photos. I see what you mean about the ends. I can also see that Richard was right about the hat section bracing. I appreciate having the number of a surviving car too. I know this

Friends, With three Tichy USRA SS boxcar kits in my to-do pile (really more of a closet), I did a little digging to find which roads still rostered these cars in more-or-less original condition circa

Randy, A small addition to your otherwise excellent information. The model blacksmith car goes back at least as far as Truescale, probably to around 1958 or 1959. The Truescale line of plastic MW cars

John, Aren't the roof stiffening panels cut backwards? Yours Aye, Garth Groff 🦆

Ray and friends, Nevada Northern? Try these. Sorry for the low quality, but I was only about 15 years old at the time and just learning how to use a camera. Kennecott Copper also used these cars at th