Date
1 - 20 of 25
War Emergency Hoppers
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Shawn Beckert
Hello List,
I spent part of the weekend poring over Ed Hawkins' article in RMJ concerning the War Emergency hoppers as modeled recently by Life-Like. To my regret, most of the photographs in the article don't give info as to where they were taken. I hate to ask a neophyte question, but how far would these hoppers have traveled in interchange? I've just assumed, judging by who owned these cars, that they were in coal service, and therefore captive on home rails. But I don't really know for sure, therefore the question. Would these cars have traveled far from home? Shawn Beckert
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Ted Culotta <ted@...>
I can only comment on the Eastern cars (L&N, B&O, C&O, etc.), but, in
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general, the large bituminous coal carrying roads of the Eastern US used their cars in basically captive service. If you look at any photos of coal drags from the B&O, C&O, L&N, N&W, VGN, they are long strings of cars only from those roads with a VERY rare off-road hopper in the mix (for example an N&W hopper drag contains only N&W cars, with maybe one VGN or C&O car mixed in - modelers who put an N&W loco followed by hoppers from a number of different roads are usually modeling a fictitious scene). These cars were either to serve on line customers or to move coal to bulk shipment points (the N&W loaded coal onto ocean freighters at Norfolk, VA and points on the Great Lakes via other roads' rails - these cars would then almost always be promptly returned to the N&W to go back to the mines). Some of these cars would make it off line to other roads' rails, such as in the Northeast, but the Anthracite roads' (CNJ, RDG, Erie, D&H, LV, LNE) cars were more commonly seen offline in the Eastern US than their bituminous carrying cousins. Richard and others will have to help you with the Western cars, although comparatively, there were few hoppers west of Chicago.
-----Original Message-----
From: Beckert, Shawn [mailto:shawn.beckert@disney.com] Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 1:39 PM To: 'STMFC@egroups.com' Subject: [STMFC] Re: War Emergency Hoppers Hello List, I spent part of the weekend poring over Ed Hawkins' article in RMJ concerning the War Emergency hoppers as modeled recently by Life-Like. To my regret, most of the photographs in the article don't give info as to where they were taken. I hate to ask a neophyte question, but how far would these hoppers have traveled in interchange? I've just assumed, judging by who owned these cars, that they were in coal service, and therefore captive on home rails. But I don't really know for sure, therefore the question. Would these cars have traveled far from home? Shawn Beckert To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: STMFC-unsubscribe@egroups.com
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ibs4421@...
Shawn,
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Hoppers in coal service, by and large, are somewhat captive, but not always so. Steve Johnson, my L&N/NC&StL/TC Sensei, and I were discussing this one day. I had bought a set of TC hoppers and was wondering just how much they would have been seen on L&N and NC&StL rails. Steve provided me with a list of railroads that he had records for the TC hoppers being interchanged with, it was quite extensive considering! Steve has collected a lot of photos of freight cars over the years, and told me he had one for an L&N twin bay hopper in Calif., and two Reading hoppers in an L&N coal drag. I'm a person that advocates reproducing/replicating the commonplace, not the exception. However, we often hear "there is a prototype for everything", and to a degree it's true. I plan on one day modleing an early 50's L&N coal drag of 50+ hoppers. the great majority of those cars will be L&N, but a few NC&StL and TC hoppers will be seen, and there might just be ONE oddball in the crowd. This, I think, is reasonable. Warren "This train goes down the Memphis Line!"
I hate to ask a neophyte question, but how far would
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Bruce F. Smith V.M.D., Ph.D. <smithbf@...>
Shawn wrote:
I hate to ask a neophyte question, but how far wouldAt the risk of starting a fire where none is needed ;^) I'm not sure that your last statement is all that accurate...after all, if N&W hoppers made it as far as SHerman Hill...<duck> Really, although I would expect a higher percentage on "home rails" I would not term these cars "captive". I would expect to see C&O and B&O cars on the PRR for example, and yes, there are plenty of photos of N&W cars on the PRR (and not just through trains of hoppers). However, one thing to consider is that these cars probably do not represent major classes for most of these roads and therefore should be outnumbered by memebers of the major classes by a significant margin. Happy Rails Bruce Bruce F. Smith V.M.D., Ph.D. Scott-Ritchey Research Center 334-844-5587, 334-844-5850 (fax) http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/ "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" - Benjamin Franklin __ / \ __<+--+>________________\__/___ ____________________________________ |- ______/ O O \_______ -| | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ | | / 4999 PENNSYLVANIA 4999 \ | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__|| |/_____________________________\|_|____________________________________| | O--O \0 0 0 0/ O--O | 0-0-0 0-0-0
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ibs4421@...
Yeah, what Ted said!
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Warren Dreaming one day of modeling the Paris Shops on the Memphis Line
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Culotta" <ted@electroneconomy.com> To: <STMFC@egroups.com> Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 4:21 PM Subject: RE: [STMFC] Re: War Emergency Hoppers I can only comment on the Eastern cars (L&N, B&O, C&O, etc.), but, incoal drags from the B&O, C&O, L&N, N&W, VGN, they are long strings of cars onlyan N&W hopper drag contains only N&W cars, with maybe one VGN or C&O carmixed in - modelers who put an N&W loco followed by hoppers from a number ofwere either to serve on line customers or to move coal to bulk shipment pointsthe Great Lakes via other roads' rails - these cars would then almost alwaysbe promptly returned to the N&W to go back to the mines). Some of these carsbut the Anthracite roads' (CNJ, RDG, Erie, D&H, LV, LNE) cars were morecommonly seen offline in the Eastern US than their bituminous carrying cousins.
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Richard Hendrickson
Ted Culotta, after a very good and succinct summary of hopper car traffic
patterns (also usefully supplemented by Bruce Smith) wrote: Richard and others will have to help you with the Western cars, althoughIn the case of the War Emergency hoppers, the only western road that had them was the Santa Fe (the Burlington hardly qualifies as western, from the perspective of a native westerner, as Denver and Cody, WY are only on the extreme eastern edge of the true west). The Santa Fe used their WE hoppers for coal service on the eastern part of the system and also for borate service on the Mojave desert in Calif. In neither role did they go off-line much; all the photos I have show them on Santa Fe rails except for one Paul Dunn shot of a Ga-62 at Zanesville, OH. The Q cars were used mostly in Illinois coal service, as were the Illinois Central's. So the generalization that these cars didn't stray far from home rails applies out west as well as on the eastern coal roads. Richard H. Hendrickson Ashland, Oregon 97520
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Mike Brock <brockm@...>
Say it isn't so, Joe...er, Shawn,
You write: I've just assumed, judging by who owned these cars, that theyOooooh no. I spent a month proving that coal bearing hopper cars not only went off home rails, but did so frequently. I have then paid for this eloquent enlightenment by finding N&W hopper cars showing up unexpectedly in strange places on my Sherman Hill layout. Even in broad daylight. Here I go again. But I don't really know for sure, therefore the question. Would these cars have traveled far from home?Stepping boldly into the abyss....I'd say it depends largely on the RR. This is much too complex to be properly covered right now, but let me address only one example. No, not the N&W but, rather the coal fields of Southern Illinois. A couple of quotes from a great book, Burlington Bulletin, #35, The Q in the Coal Fields: Pg 104 "Under the first...interchange...the Q received loaded coal cars from another RR, and both..." "The Q received considerable interchange coal tonnage at certain points along the Beardstown Div. At Forman, deep in Southern Illinois, the Q interchanged with the NYC..."Further north, at Goreville, was the interchange with the CE&I. Back to the north at Waltonville, the Q interchanged with the Missouri Pacific and received coal from..." Other major interchange occurred with the IC. Photos show both B&O and Pennsy hoppers at the mines along with Q cars and those of IC & C&EI. Q trains include Mopac, C&EI, IC hoppers. Mike Brock
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Mike Brock <brockm@...>
Ted Culotta writes:
I can only comment on the Eastern cars (L&N, B&O, C&O, etc.), but, incoal drags from the B&O, C&O, L&N, N&W, VGN, they are long strings of cars onlyan N&W hopper drag contains only N&W cars, with maybe one VGN or C&O carmixed in - modelers who put an N&W loco followed by hoppers from a number of...Ooooh no, here we go again...Thompson and Hendrickson will be reaching for more wine wondering if the TV might provide relief....Yes, trains would contain mostly N&W cars, although I have noticed quite a few Clinchfield cars coming out of Roanoke eastbound on video tapes. roads. These cars were either to serve on line customers or to move coal to bulk shipment pointsthe Great Lakes via other roads' rails -Yes, but the largest...at least according to the Prince book...amount of coal from the N&W went into the midwest...and, not on N&W tracks. Of 52 million tons of coal moved in '48, 22 million tons went west, 10 million went to the Great Lakes, 10 million went through Lambert Point, and the rest went into the South, VA, and DC areas. Of the 52 million, at least 30 million went off N&W rails. these cars would then almost always be promptly returned to the N&W to go back to the mines).No doubt. Some of these cars would make it off line to other roads' rails, such as in the Northeast,but the Anthracite roads' (CNJ, RDG, Erie, D&H, LV, LNE) cars were morecommonly seen offline in the Eastern US than their bituminous carrying cousins.Yes, but those 32 million tons of coal traveling west and to the Great Lakes did it on foreign tracks. The N&W might have been something of a "captive" RR in that its coal trains consisted of...as you say...mostly N&W cars. But, while few foreign coal carrying cars may have ventured onto N&W tracks, the inverse is not true. N&W coal carrying cars requented foreign tracks often. Anonymous
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Dave & Libby Nelson <muskoka@...>
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-----Original Message----- I can only comment on the Eastern cars (L&N, B&O, C&O, etc.), but, inTed's is the safe answer. There were exceptions: I have a number of Southern Rwy conductors books from the 40's & early 50's for the main east out of Asheville, NC -- I've got a count of 191 SOU hoppers listed (mostly in company service), but well more than 200 hoppers from 26 other roads (including the NYC, MILW, B&M, Alton, C&NW, and MSL to cite the most unexpected). Toledo Ohio -- Lots of N&W cars, no N&W rails. Brewster, Ohio on the NKP -- plenty of N&W hoppers. Some evidence they got to the steel industry near Chicago. Soldier Summit in Utah: plenty of D&RGW coal gons, but cars in coal service from the MP, UP, WP, CBC, and B&LE appear in photos and much of the Utah coal went to the pacific coast. On occasion there were DMIR ore jennies in Utah on the LA&SL (U.S. Steel moved their cars around). Dave Nelson
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Dave & Libby Nelson <muskoka@...>
these cars would then almost always beYes doubt. The ICC would occasionally have to issue service orderspromptly returned to the N&W to go back to the mines).No doubt. requiring all roads in possession of hoppers from the VGN, N&W, and INT to return them on release from the consignee -- no other loading allowed. Happened to D&RGW cars once too. Dave Nelson
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Mike Brock <brockm@...>
Dave Nelson writes:
Ted's is the safe answer. There were exceptions: I have a number ofNKP -- plenty of N&W hoppers. Some evidence they got to the steel industry nearservice from the MP, UP, WP, CBC, and B&LE appear in photos and much of the Utahin Utah on the LA&SL (U.S. Steel moved their cars around).Good stuff, Dave. I recall you mentioning the cars out of Asheville. Mike
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Shawn Beckert
Mike Brock, in the midst of an informative post, wrote:
Oooooh no. I spent a month proving that coal bearing(Sigh). I'll have to get painfully specific here, which I probably should have done in the first place. I model, or am attempting to model, the St. Louis Southwestern as it would have looked from roughly World War Two up until the mid 1960's. From what I can tell from my sources of information, the fixed plant of the railroad changed very little in this period. Means I get to run 2-8-0's, FT's, and if I feel frisky, GP-20's, all on the same layout. Not all at the same time ,of course ;-) My problem is nailing down the type of traffic that moved on the Cotton Belt during these years. Since this was a "bridge line" moving freight through the St. Louis gateway to points West, I can get away with running all types of cars, up to a point. What's hard is trying to pin down what percentage of what kind of freight moved on the SSW. And one of my problems is knowing how much coal - if any - they were moving in my era of interest. I asked about the P2K hoppers because I don't want to spend money on them if they wouldn't normally be seen in Cotton Belt territory. Thus my question to the List. Can anyone tell me with confidence that these cars should not be represented on my railroad? Shawn Beckert
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Jeff Aley - GCD PE <jaley@...>
Mike,
It appears to be established fact [*] that eastern road hoppers went off-line. Question: when they went off line, did they do so as [essentially] unit trains (i.e. all N&W hoppers together in a giant block) or were they evenly distributed like box cars (an N&W car, then a C&O, then a VGN, then a couple more N&W...). Regards, -Jeff [*] If you state anything long and loud enough, people will believe you :-) -- Jeff Aley, Development Engineer jaley@pcocd2.intel.com Graphics Components Division Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA (916) 356-3533
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Dave & Libby Nelson <muskoka@...>
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-----Original Message----- (Sigh). I'll have to get painfully specific here, which My problem is nailing down the type of traffic that movedYou want the ICC Commodity Classification reports. I placed a spreadsheet copy of the Rutland report (from 1948) in the shared files area here on egroups.com. In addition to the raw data, I converted the tons to carloads etc. etc. Take a look and judge whether such info could be of use to you. My source is Stanford Library -- their government document repository. There are a few other major universities that have the same reports. Dave Nelson
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thompson@...
That coal hoppers went off line is not in dispute. That they did so "in
large numbers" is relative. The fact remains that most photos of coal trains in coal country show very high percentages of home road cars. OTOH, research has demonstrated that coal moved via certain routes off-line, e.g. to the Great Lakes for export. But please note that such is NOT the same as "going everywere off line," as we might expect with XM, FM, etc. cars. I think if you want to model off-line coal hoppers, you need documentation of what you choose to model. As someone else has said, the favorite modeler's coal train in which every hopper is a different road is plain silly. The farther we get from that, the better. (All spoken, of course, by someone who has close to zero need to model ANY coal cars of any description.) Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history
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Bill Schneider <branch@...>
I can't speak to western roads - which for me include Nickel Plate :>) -
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but I have done a study of freight train photos on the O&W in the 1950's for my own roster that may add a couple of things to this discussion. During the 50's the O&W operated primarily as a bridge line between the LV and the NH/Erie/NYC/L&HR/L&NE at Maybrook, NY. Most of the O&W's trains in this era are mixed consists and heavy on house cars, so this will directly influence the results, but... most of the photos I have that show hoppers are a mixed bag of road namesin a given train, and seldom more than 2 of any given road. The most common hoppers on the O&W are D&H - not surprising when you consider the locale. Pennsy also shows up on a regular basis, again no surprise. However, I have seen single B&O hoppers (including a war emergency car circa 1950) on a regular basis. Also in singles: Cambria & Indiana, Montour, Illinois Central, Berwind, Reading, NYC, L&NE, DL&W and Erie. Very rare are O&W hoppers, most were rolling rubble by this point. Notably absent (so far) are N&W. They must have run them over Young's Gap at night... (sorry Mike). Based on this small sample I would have to say that individual cars would not be uncommon on a road with predominantly mixed traffic. OTOH, its not uncommon to see Pennsy coal drags with large blocks of Berwind, Cambria & Indiana, C&O, B&O, L&N, N&W and other cars. So, as far as the SSW goes, grab all the photos you can and see what shows up! Bill Schneider Jeff Aley - GCD PE wrote:
Mike,
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Ted Culotta <ted@...>
Tony's point is exactly right. When I used the N&W example, I meant it very
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explicitly that the cars went to their offload or transshipment points on foreign rails (after handoff to the foreign road by the N&W) and then went promptly back to the N&W (and, yes, I'm sure that one out of 1,000 was kept by the forwarding road for some purpose, but that's the EXCEPTION). Ted
-----Original Message-----
From: thompson@signaturepress.com [mailto:thompson@signaturepress.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 11:43 AM To: STMFC@egroups.com Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: War Emergency Hoppers That coal hoppers went off line is not in dispute. That they did so "in large numbers" is relative. The fact remains that most photos of coal trains in coal country show very high percentages of home road cars. OTOH, research has demonstrated that coal moved via certain routes off-line, e.g. to the Great Lakes for export. But please note that such is NOT the same as "going everywere off line," as we might expect with XM, FM, etc. cars. I think if you want to model off-line coal hoppers, you need documentation of what you choose to model. As someone else has said, the favorite modeler's coal train in which every hopper is a different road is plain silly. The farther we get from that, the better. (All spoken, of course, by someone who has close to zero need to model ANY coal cars of any description.) Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@signaturepress.com Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: STMFC-unsubscribe@egroups.com
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Shawn Beckert
Bill Schneider wrote, in part:
...Based on this small sample I would have to sayBill, that's exactly what I've been doing. Many a night has been spent going over photographs and books with a jeweler's glass trying to read reporting marks. A lot of the pictures from that era and local are your typical 3/4 wedge shots, unfortunately. Most photographers then were interested in the motive power and not the consist, a common problem for us freight car fans. I would give much to find some yard photos taken on the Cotton Belt during the 1940's and '50's. There are a very few out there, mostly in books, but they don't show much in the way of detail. Ah well, the search goes on... Shawn Beckert
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Ted Culotta <ted@...>
For what it's worth, Berwind cars had instructions painted on the cars
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instructing to route either via the Pennsy or the C&O to get them back to the Berwind-owned mines. Also, it was not an either/or proposition. Some cars were assigned to mines using Pennsy lines, others to mines using C&O lines. Ted
-----Original Message-----
From: Beckert, Shawn [mailto:shawn.beckert@disney.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 12:43 PM To: 'STMFC@egroups.com' Cc: 'branch@ntplx.net' Subject: [STMFC] Re: War Emergency Hoppers Bill Schneider wrote, in part: ...Based on this small sample I would have to sayBill, that's exactly what I've been doing. Many a night has been spent going over photographs and books with a jeweler's glass trying to read reporting marks. A lot of the pictures from that era and local are your typical 3/4 wedge shots, unfortunately. Most photographers then were interested in the motive power and not the consist, a common problem for us freight car fans. I would give much to find some yard photos taken on the Cotton Belt during the 1940's and '50's. There are a very few out there, mostly in books, but they don't show much in the way of detail. Ah well, the search goes on... Shawn Beckert To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: STMFC-unsubscribe@egroups.com
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Mike Brock <brockm@...>
Tony Thompson writes:
That coal hoppers went off line is not in dispute. That they did so "inI believe that most photographic evidence will show that during the steam era, N&W coal trains operating on N&W tracks contained a very high per centage of N&W hoppers. I'm not nearly so certain about the C&O...primarily because there were certain areas where coal was, I think, interchanged between other RRs and the C&O. In particular, I refer to the L&N. Before making a claim like that, I'd want to do some research, however. OTOH, research has demonstrated that coal moved via certain routes off-line,e.g. to the Great Lakes for export. But please note that such is NOT the sameas "going everywere off line," as we might expect with XM, FM, etc. cars.Here, things get a bit tricky. The Prince book shows...and there is a pamphlet published by the N&W itself supporting Prince's book...that 22 million tons went west of N&W's coal fields...basically through Cicinnati. Now, this stuff, apparently, found its way into Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, Chicago being mentioned. There was a lot of plants using coal back then in those areas. I have seen some photos of groups of N&W hoppers in trains moving through the area but real data would be needed to know for sure. The B&O steam tape by Heron does show 4 or 5 N&W hoppers being moved near a B&O coaling tower in the upper midwest. Tony is certainly correct in his statement about hoppers not going everywhere off line. In fact, I recall being told at one time in the 50s that coal could only be shipped about 400 miles by rail economically. Now, I don't know how accurate that statement was, but.... I think if you want to model off-line coal hoppers, you needYes. However, IF one were to model the Q in the Southern Illinois coal fields, one might come closer to that than in other areas. Apparently some mines were served by as many as 5 RRs with one...and it changed every yr...providing the motive power. Thus, photos show mine yds with IC, Q, MP, C&EI and NYC cars present. My all time favorite, of course, is that damned Lackawanna [ heck, I don't know how to spell it, why should I? ] hopper behind the Challenger on Sherman Hill. Second, though, has to be the lone MP hopper in the long string of B&O cars heading from Lake Erie back to West BY God Virginia. Well, both B&O and MP cars WERE black, after all. Mike Hopper Brock
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