Might be something useful here: https://www.irm.org/gallery/IC40285 This looks to be the same class of car with the door opening expanded, but I have no idea when. Dennis Storzek

A lot of the hardware on that Indestructible end looks familiar... If re-working an Accurail car it would be well worth saving the end sill just for the polinf pocket castings. Unfortunetly, the NYC u

That photo of the Hutchins end with two pressings per panel is a new one on me... learn something new every day. Hutchins must have bought a bigger press before they were forced to end production. Den

Rob, where did you find a reference that shows two pressings per panel? Any drawing or photo I've seen shows only one, and lots of separate panels combined to make up the end. Dennis Storzek

Be sure to include examples of Alonzo's patents. His patent for a "Flying Machine" is a classic. Any company that could build a skyscraper in Chicago's Loop district might have been scrappy, but was h

Lester, You mention grinding the stiffening rib off scalpel blades to get them to fit an X-acto handle. There is another way. I've had little use for X-acto blades over the years, but at one point at

Not much plywood production in 1900, that had to wait for better glues. Meanwhile labor was cheap, and even stacks kept the boards from twisting as they dried. This is classic air drying before planin

Tom, that's the classic double board roof used by lots of roads in that era. Milwaukee Road was another big user. The rabbets milled on the face of the board are actually intended to act like gutters,

But that point is moot because the FRA wasn't created until SEVEN YEARS after the cut-off date of this discussion group. Yes, in our era the ICC could make force of law rulings, but only in areas wher

I recall it was a few years later than that... I married in 1975, went to work for the transit authority later that year, and it was in my early years with the CTA that the age limit on UF's was insti

Someone should mention, so I will, that most items "banned" from interchange service were about parts inventory rather than safety. The AAR interchange agreement anticipated that most defects were to

Why is everyone missing the fact that the two cars have "X" car numbers, which is a clear indication that they are in some sort of company service. Many RRs marked their work cars as to function, bunk

The car is just one long tube, which originally had tracks to guide the containers and a winch to pull them off the truck chassis. I suspect the side doors were to keep an eye on the progress of the c

It is my understanding that the insulation requirements were higher for an RB. RBs always had plug doors; either the sliding or swinging type. XI was kind of a catch-all classification for boxcars tha

Very likely so. When we were moving wood working machinery out of the former TM Cold Spring Shop in Milwaukee in the seventies (then being used as the main bus shops of the Transport Co.) there were s

Seems to me that unless the drop staff has a detent to hold the wheel 4" above the deck, they violate the requirement for hand clearance when in the down position. Can't comment on the swinging variet

Coming into this late. I would postulate that any car with a hand brake not in the position specified in the ICC safety appliance diagrams has a defect and won't move past the first inbound inspection

Well, I certainly have egg on my face. I haven't corresponded with Mr. Stoving since we collaborated on the history for that instruction sheet over thirty years ago, and some how I had in my mind that

Don, Unfortunately writing the history section of the instructions was the end of my research on these cars. As I recall, it was the late Richard Stoving who provided the bulk of the roster data for t

No. The Hutchins Camber Roof is a all steel roof with rather prominent seam caps: The CV part models what modelers have been calling the NP "circular" roof. Here's the Soo Line version: The seam caps