The Fallbrook Railway was built from semi-bituminous coal fields in the Southern Tier of New York and Northern Tier of Pennsylvania to the Corning, NY area to haul coal for the Corning Glass Works. To

And, according to Tony Koester, the cars were often used for back-hauls of sand for the factory. I spent a few weeks in Marion, IN in the early 2000s rehab'ing a house for Habitat for Missionaries, an

Hi John, As you may be aware, Life Like Proto 2000 did a short height Mather boxcar in plastic with separate grabs, etc. some years back. The schemes included MWR, MRS, PHD, TC, IN, ACY and FDDMS. The

Fenton - That's a right nice looking car! Lots of complicated looking hardware on the roof for the hatches, and such a clean look otherwise. The lettering says they were used for cement. Were they use

Hi Nathan, Roundhouse made a similar model but it had a variety of problems such as the enter outlet bay pointed in the wrong direction relative to the B end and minimal detailing. The Atlas model is

Schuyler, I also found it hard to read that line in my ORER. Guess I need new glasses, LOL! I will do that as soon as we get to the point with the corona virus where I feel comfortable being close to

Ken - My January 1952 ORER shows DL&W series 11300-11599 as 40'-7" IL double door boxcars with 12'-6" wide door openings, AAR mech designation XMR (auto racks installed). This is the same number serie

Thank you, Dennis. You're a pretty good sleuth! Todd Sullivan

Hi Bill, To feed my head, I like to check Google for model freight cars that interest me. It takes some time to look through everything Google Images throws up at you, but there are often very helpful

Hi Jim, Ice reefers were often used as insulated boxcars. Shipping potatoes and seed potatoes is one example, and shipping beer and other beverages is another. I think that other uses in off-harvest-s

Yup, still coated black. I decided to try some of Kadee's code 88 wheel sets, but I don't have an operating layout at the moment, so I can't comment on whether or not the wheels still deposit 'stuff'

Hi Tod, No such thing as being an old fool. I've been in the hobby for over 60 years, and every day I learn something new. That's one of the delightful things that keeps me in the hobby. Todd Sullivan

Hi Jim, I've had superglue glue caps on that took lots of effort to break off, and also superglue that set up hard in a bottle. I currently use Loctite Super Glue Ultra Liquid Control. It comes in a s

Hmmm, never thought about the roof panels not lining up after narrowing the roof. Such a replacement roof (40ft, narrow, overhanging eaves) would also be valuable for modeling NYC System 40ft USRA ste

For the Pacific Northwest: NPModelers NPTelltale SPSRY Todd Sullivan

Tim - I looked at the ends and also the height. The SP&S car is taller than the SP car which has a 10'-0" IH, and the GN-built cars for the SP&S had the 10'-0" IH also (13000 series, 12 panel sides, e

And if you do enlarge it, and look at the second car, you can see the original SP&S steel boxcar lettering. Too bad the numbers on both cars are obscured, but the SP&S car is from the 11000-12499 seri

I guess it depends on how aggressively Hygrade had General American repaint the Kingan reefers. I suspect that it would have taken a few years. You have 5 years between Hygrade's acquisition in 1952 a

Hi Brian, What year do you model? Todd Sullian

Thank you, Tony, Ben & Ron. The photos are very helpful. Todd Sullivan