Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Gene;

You're not insulting the PRR by stating that a lot of PRR cars on the MStL
ended up with hot boxes.

There were just a lot of PRR cars in most locations in the country. PRR had
a lot of its box cars get picked up by Midwestern roads for use in grain
service, in your time. Lots of general service box cars rarely came home to
PRR rails, and correspondence indicates the PRR was concerned about not ever
seeing these cars.

I think some of it was that some cars series were intended for rebuilding,
but they could only grab up what ended up back on PRR rails; it was not like
they didn't appreciate the payments, right?

So, if you had a lot of old PRR gen service box cars on the MStL, it is
probable a good number could end up getting sent to the shop with a hot box.

Your statistics were fun to look at,

Elden Gatwood

Re PRR box cars never going "home": My memory may be faulty but I seem to recall
reading long ago, probably in "Trains", that in the aftermath of the PC merger
someone in the car service department found records of an X29 that had been
built in the 1920s, loaded offline soon afterward, and had subsequently been
repaired and even repainted on other railroads, then ultimately retired without
ever having come back to the Pennsy. Don't know if it is true, but having worked
for a railroad for many years before incentive per diem rules changed things, it
certainly seems plausible. Tony Wagner





________________________________
From: "Gatwood, Elden SAW" <elden.j.gatwood@...>
To: STMFC@...
Sent: Wed, May 18, 2011 6:35:05 AM
Subject: RE: [STMFC] Re: Underrepresented roads and car types (UNCLASSIFIED)


Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Gene;

You're not insulting the PRR by stating that a lot of PRR cars on the MStL
ended up with hot boxes.

There were just a lot of PRR cars in most locations in the country. PRR had
a lot of its box cars get picked up by Midwestern roads for use in grain
service, in your time. Lots of general service box cars rarely came home to
PRR rails, and correspondence indicates the PRR was concerned about not ever
seeing these cars.

I think some of it was that some cars series were intended for rebuilding,
but they could only grab up what ended up back on PRR rails; it was not like
they didn't appreciate the payments, right?

So, if you had a lot of old PRR gen service box cars on the MStL, it is
probable a good number could end up getting sent to the shop with a hot box.

Your statistics were fun to look at,

Elden Gatwood

-----Original Message-----
From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Gene
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 9:19 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Underrepresented roads and car types

OK, Bruce Smith in message 100189 and Tony Thompson in message 100192 have
set me straight.

In my own case, using the Landmesser hot box list may lead me astray. To be
on the list, which was created in 1948, 1949 and 1950, a car had to be set
out or delay a train for some reason such as a hot box.

This list provides evidence that a specific car was on the M&StL and usually
also gives train # and load. That latter piece of info is interesting, useful
and, in many cases, something I couldn't have thought of for myself.

The question is, were these hot box cars evenly distributed throughout all
the car types and railroads that had cars on the M&StL? For example, of a
total of 1331 entries there are 39 NYC cars and 68 PRR cars. Does that mean
nearly twice as many PRR cars as NYC cars on the M&StL or were PRR cars more
prone to hot boxes? (No insult of PRR intended.) Is one car type more prone
to hot boxes than another?

In line with what has been said in other posts more than half were box cars.

74 flat cars (26 of which are M&StL)
112 gondolas (18 are M&StL)
53 hopper cars (36 are M&StL)
8 covered hoppers (all M&StL)
130 refrigerator cars (none M&StL)
12 stock cars (10 M&StL)
97 tank cars (none M&StL)
5 ventilated box cars (none M&StL)
750 box cars (88 M&StL)
85 unknown types (none M&StL)

This won't quite add up to 1331 because cabooses with hot boxes were not
included above.

In the case of covered hoppers and stock cars, I know just what I should do.
Beyond that ? ? ?

Or is all this academic? After all, short of scratch building one can only
have the models that exist whether RTR or kit.

Gene Green

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Tony--

Until you mentioned this car having been repainted off the PRR, I'd have allowed that this was within the realm of possibility.

I just don't think that the Pennsy would lend out their stencils to an off-line road or shop. So given a paint life of 15-25 years, this car would have been re-painted at least once--off-line?? I suppose some industrious car shop painter could have either used their road's stencils or made ersatz Pennsy stencils when it came time to letter the car? I find this a little hard to believe...

Steve Lucas.

Steve Lucas wrote:
"Until you mentioned this car having been repainted off the PRR, I'd have
allowed

that this was within the realm of possibility.

I just don't think that the Pennsy would lend out their stencils to an off-line
road or shop. So given a paint life of 15-25 years, this car would have been
re-painted at least once--off-line?? I suppose some industrious car shop painter

could have either used their road's stencils or made ersatz Pennsy stencils when

it came time to letter the car? I find this a little hard to believe..."

"Repainted" is perhaps too strong a word.  I have several photos from the Bob's
Photo collection and in the PRR Color Guides showing partial repaints of PRR
reporting marks using non-standard stencils on heavily weathered cars.


Ben Hom

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Steve;

There are PRR cars in paint so terrible, the road forced to fix and reweigh
the car couldn't read the road name, and had to stencil the reporting marks
and car number from the underframe, on a new paint patch.

I did a model of an X29B repatched and stenciled by another road, using their
own lettering. It is definitely not close to PRR lettering!

Funny as #$%%

Elden

Tony--

Until you mentioned this car having been repainted off the PRR, I'd have
allowed that this was within the realm of possibility.

I just don't think that the Pennsy would lend out their stencils to an
off-line road or shop. So given a paint life of 15-25 years, this car would
have been re-painted at least once--off-line?? I suppose some industrious car
shop painter could have either used their road's stencils or made ersatz
Pennsy stencils when it came time to letter the car? I find this a little
hard to believe...

Steve Lucas.

--- In STMFC@... <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> , anthony
wagner <anycw1@...> wrote:

Re PRR box cars never going "home": My memory may be faulty but I seem
to recall reading long ago, probably in "Trains", that in the
aftermath of the PC merger someone in the car service department found
records of an X29 that had been built in the 1920s, loaded offline
soon afterward, and had subsequently been repaired and even repainted
on other railroads, then ultimately retired without ever having come
back to the Pennsy. Don't know if it is true, but having worked for a
railroad for many years before incentive per diem rules changed
things, it certainly seems plausible. Tony Wagner

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

As I recall the car was repainted in the P/L of the road then in possession of the car. It was later identified by the purely PRR trucks and the C/N and original car number on the center sill. Or I could be thinking of another piece of lore.

Rich Orr

--- In STMFC@..., SUVCWORR@... wrote:

As I recall the car was repainted in the P/L of the road then in possession of the car. It was later identified by the purely PRR trucks and the C/N and original car number on the center sill. Or I could be thinking of another piece of lore.

Rich Orr

That was the LaSalle & Bureau County RR, which misappropriated a bunch of cars from the Penn Central, but it wasn't for the desire to make the cars look better and help Pennsey out; it was outright theft, and as I recall, some people did prison time.

It also happened after the cut-off of this list.

I'm going to join the side that says the repainting on a foreign road is an urban legend. The only work a foreign road will do is work where there is a standard AAR charge for the work, otherwise they will have no way to get paid. I doubt the AAR set a charge for repainting cars. I would imagine that they did have a charge for re-stenciling, as the car is unusable if the reporting marks can't be read, so that IS likely.

Dennis

L&BC was got the only one to abscond with PC boxcars LOAM did it too I think that stood for Louisiana Midland


Mike Fleming
Superintendent, Bluff City Div. SER, NMRA
President Emeritus, Memphis Society of Model Railroaders
Vice President, Memphis Railroad and Trolley Museum Model Railroad Club, a 100% NMRA Member Club

I should have been clearer. What I meant by 're-painting' was not painting the
whole car but, in addition to the required periodic reweighing and re-stenciling
which was done routinely on every railroad for both foreign and home road cars,
re-stenciling the road name, or more importantly the car number, if it had
become unreadable on at least one, or both sides of the car. In looking at
photos one occasionally sees a car that was so weathered and/or dirty that it
was difficult to tell who the owner might have been. When I worked as a yard
clerk, writing switch lists manually, it wasn't uncommon to have to take a car's
number off the end or some other less visible location because of paint fade,
rust, or dirt. If all else failed the accompanying waybills could be used,
sometimes by the process of elimination, to determine what the number was. I
also occasionally saw cars where it was obvious that someone had taken the
trouble to clean off at least the car's number and sometimes the initials too,
so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that a car which had not been fully
repainted for twenty years or more might also have received this treatment.
There are also rare photos showing replacement numbers and/or initials in a
different font than the original but that didn't appear to be as common in the
steam/early diesel era than it is now. Tony Wagner




________________________________
From: "SUVCWORR@..." <SUVCWORR@...>
To: STMFC@...
Sent: Wed, May 18, 2011 7:00:14 PM
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: Underrepresented roads and car types (UNCLASSIFIED)





As I recall the car was repainted in the P/L of the road then in possession of
the car. It was later identified by the purely PRR trucks and the C/N and
original car number on the center sill. Or I could be thinking of another piece
of lore.

Rich Orr

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Lucas <stevelucas3@...>
To: STMFC@...
Sent: Wed, May 18, 2011 12:47 pm
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Underrepresented roads and car types (UNCLASSIFIED)

Tony--

Until you mentioned this car having been repainted off the PRR, I'd have allowed

that this was within the realm of possibility.

I just don't think that the Pennsy would lend out their stencils to an off-line
road or shop. So given a paint life of 15-25 years, this car would have been
re-painted at least once--off-line?? I suppose some industrious car shop
painter could have either used their road's stencils or made ersatz Pennsy
stencils when it came time to letter the car? I find this a little hard to
believe...

Steve Lucas.

--- In STMFC@..., anthony wagner <anycw1@...> wrote:

Re PRR box cars never going "home": My memory may be faulty but I seem to

recall

reading long ago, probably in "Trains", that in the aftermath of the PC merger

someone in the car service department found records of an X29 that had been
built in the 1920s, loaded offline soon afterward, and had subsequently been
repaired and even repainted on other railroads, then ultimately retired

without

ever having come back to the Pennsy. Don't know if it is true, but having

worked

for a railroad for many years before incentive per diem rules changed things,

it

certainly seems plausible. Tony Wagner

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Tony Wagner wrote:

I also occasionally saw cars where it was obvious that someone had taken the trouble to clean off at least the car's number and sometimes the initials too . . .

A number of photos of PFE cars cleaned this way, and none too neatly, do exist.

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