List,

Thanks to Brian Ehni's generosity in sharing photos, I was made
aware of just how long the prototype for Intermountain's latest
kit lasted in service - far longer than I would have expected
for a car of this vintage. A casual look through the April, 1959
ORER last night showed that the GPEX series was still very much
in existence. I couldn't find mention of the CMWX reporting marks,
which is confusing (or maybe I just missed it) because according
to the "Reporting Marks" web page, "CMWX" was in existence from
January 1941 to January 1975.

Another wierd thing - One would assume that CMWX belonged to the
Chateau Martin Winery, since photos show the cars with these marks
painted in the Chateau purple scheme with billboard lettering. It
didn't, though - it belonged to the Commodities Car Company. Quite
a coincidence, and a bit misleading.

Now, GPEX belonged to General American-Pfaudler from July 1930 to
October 1966, so there's some overlap between this and the use of
the CMWX mark. So I can't really pin down when the GPEX "milk" cars
became the CMWX "wine" cars. Worse yet, browsing the internet this
morning revealed no information on the Chateau Martin Winery, so I
can't even hazard a guess as to when this company came into being,
much less when they acquired a fleet of wine cars.

Does anyone have better information on when General American sold/
leased/gave these cars to the Chateau Martin Winery, assuming it's
not way beyond the time limit of our list?

Thanks,

Shawn Beckert

Beckert, Shawn wrote:

Another wierd thing - One would assume that CMWX belonged to the
Chateau Martin Winery, since photos show the cars with these marks
painted in the Chateau purple scheme with billboard lettering. It
didn't, though - it belonged to the Commodities Car Company. Quite
a coincidence, and a bit misleading.

Why you think this is "weird" is unclear. It is certainly no coincidence that "CMW" are the initials of the winery, and quite possibly the small CMWX fleet was entirely dedicated to the winery's use. The car company being separate is a device used by many entities; it may well have been owned by the parent company of Chateau Martin, or may simply have been a lessor set up in order to get CMW's business.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

On 7-Apr-05, at 1:05 PM, Beckert, Shawn wrote:

Thanks to Brian Ehni's generosity in sharing photos, I was made
aware of just how long the prototype for Intermountain's latest
kit lasted in service - far longer than I would have expected
for a car of this vintage. A casual look through the April, 1959
ORER last night showed that the GPEX series was still very much
in existence. I couldn't find mention of the CMWX reporting marks,
which is confusing (or maybe I just missed it) because according
to the "Reporting Marks" web page, "CMWX" was in existence from
January 1941 to January 1975.

You must have just missed in Shawn — I see an entry for the Commodities
Car Co., Inc. on page 649, with what I presume are the relevant cars
listed in various series from CMWX 106-153. It would seem that the CMWX reporting mark was added sometime between 4/1938 and 1/1941 -- one
of these days I will work on entering data from an ORER between these
dates.

Another wierd thing - One would assume that CMWX belonged to the
Chateau Martin Winery, since photos show the cars with these marks
painted in the Chateau purple scheme with billboard lettering. It
didn't, though - it belonged to the Commodities Car Company. Quite
a coincidence, and a bit misleading.

Actually, what probably happened here is that Chateau Martin Winery
leased these cars from the Commodities Car Company from day one, and
the reporting marks were created for their exclusive use. This wasn't
uncommon in the industry, and continues today (DMLX is used only for
Dominion Milling Ltd. cars, and has always been listed by GE since the
reporting mark's inception in 2000).

Ian Cranstone
Osgoode, Ontario, Canada
lamontc@...
http://freightcars.nakina.net

The CMWX car in question is actually CMWX 1008, a "round-bottom" ex-milk
car.
--
Thanks!

Brian Ehni