Anyone know the story of the Kratville series of freight car magazines
printed around 1980?

How about the "Freight Car Journal"? I subscribed (or was a member)
for a while but the subject matter didn't interest me - it was mostly
current stuff but every so often a pre1900 drawing would show up. One
thing I did like was a drawing of a RDG USRA mil gon. This magazine
(or society) is long defunct, right?

I also remember buying some color freight car cards (about 1980?). I
think only one printing came out.

"Prototype Modeler" and it's predicessor regional magazines had a lot
of freight car articles. I was sorry when they stopped publishing.
Richard hendrickson wrote some articles for them. I wonder what the
story was?

Ed

Ed Mines wrote:

Anyone know the story of the Kratville series of freight car magazines
printed around 1980?

Not sure what Ed means by "story" here. They are a most miscellaneous collection of photos, obviously whatever Bill had at hand, with many oddball cars and a certain number of railroad PR photos, and sometimes erroneous captions. That said, they can be useful sources of info. I have issues 1 through 5, which I think is all there ever were. You see them for sale occasionally. Bill told me that the sales were abysmal.

How about the "Freight Car Journal"? I subscribed (or was a member)
for a while but the subject matter didn't interest me - it was mostly
current stuff but every so often a pre1900 drawing would show up. This magazine
(or society) is long defunct, right?

I'm not sure if it's still around, though someone on the list will know. My reaction was exactly like yours: poor focus, and a tendency to do contemporary cars (they did do a nice issue on the historical IC fleet).

"Prototype Modeler" and it's predicessor regional magazines had a lot
of freight car articles. I was sorry when they stopped publishing.
Richard hendrickson wrote some articles for them. I wonder what the
story was?

Money (not enough of it) after it was sold. Richard Hendrickson may want to add more.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

FCJ was David Casdorph, with help from Eric Neubauer, Jim Eager and
others. It was very idiosyncratic, but a number of issues had some very
good stuff. David decided a few years ago to go electronic and has done
a number of "issues" on CD-ROM. He also runs the freightcarworld Yahoo
group. His focus is mainly contemporary, and since September 1996, holds
absolutely no interest for me.

Tim O'Connor