After Blowing this image up, I don't think the structure in the middle distance is a scale house. It appears too large for that purpose, and has no windows facing the tracks.

The long, thin, vertical object just to the right of this structure looks like an electrical pole with it's cross arms edge on to the plane of view. Considering the power lines to the right of the cut of hoppers on the higher track, this power pole could be connected there, and supply electricity to the structure, which may be a pump house for the nearby water tank.  

 

Hi everyone,

 

It seems as though this thread has gone "off the rails" discussing what those extra tracks on the left side of the image are, rather than focusing on the FAR more interesting and important (and in-scope) freight cars to the right. Considering that it's far more likely that there are more general pre-WWI modelers here than there are DL&W Scranton Division modelers, we really should be focusing on  that FASCINATING string of coal-carrying cars instead of a small stretch of very specific right-of-way.

Here are a few notes about what I "think" I'm seeing in photo C1106 (which was taken just west of Scranton on 5/2/1912):

1) There are three types of cars in view: hoppers, solid-bottom gondolas, and hopper-bottom gondolas. Each car is a specific car type, built to do different things for different reasons.
     a) Hopper cars have slope sheets and rapid discharge doors on the bottom.
     b) Solid bottom gondolas are just open-topped boxes with a flat bottom and NO doors, and come with several different side heights, especially         when dealing with wood construction freight cars.    
     c) Hopper-bottom gondolas are a hybrid, and are a good example of the frugality of early period railroading. They're more similar to solid-bottom         gondolas in that they "mostly" have a flat bottom, with between two and four "hopper-like doors" cut into the floor. Hopper bottom gondolas         specifically lack slope sheets for true rapid discharging, and require a lot of man-muscle to empty (manpower is cheap in 1912. Steel and         specialty car are expensive, and automatic unloaders are basically H.G. Wells-inspired fiction). 

 

2) All of the cars in this photo APPEAR to be DL&W equipment, which is no surprise: before the 1920s it was far more common to see nothing but home road cars in large groups like this. And while this is  a "staged" photograph, it's not very staged: chances are extremely good that all the photographer did was to tell the security agents to "stand over there", and that the car selection was 100%  random and "natural".

 

3) The steel hoppers seem to be mostly DL&W 72000-75999 series cars (built in 1905) with one or two 69900-69999 series cars (built 1900).

 

4) the DL&W 5/1915 ORER capitulation lists 2,528 gondolas and 10,368 "coal cars". A more precise breakdown of the cars is as follows:

     Gondola, all-wood, 31'5" OL, low-side: 196 cars
     Gondola, all-wood, 31'5', high side: 1 car
     Gondola, all-wood, 31'5", "conventional duty": 838 cars
     Gondola, "steel" (with all-wood sides). 36'5": 495 cars
     Gondola, "steel", 40'5", four drop doors: 1,000 cars
     Gondola, hopper bottom, all-wood, 30'6" to 36'4", 4,245 cars
     Gondola, hopper bottom, all-steel, 30'6", 10 cars
     Hopper, all-steel, 30'6" or 34'6", 6,113 cars

 or:
     31' all-wood gondolas:  1,035  (8%)
     40' composite gondolas:  1,495 (12%)
     All-wood hopper bottom gons: 4,245 (33%)
     all-steel hopper bottom gons:    10  (0%)
     All-steel hoppers:  6,113 (47%)

 

5) I count 21 cars in this photo: 13 steel hoppers, six hopper-bottom gondolas, and two plain gondolas. Statistically, if these really are all DL&W cars there should be far more of the all-wood,  hopper bottom cars; steel coal-carrying cars are over-represented. (that said, "statistics" really don't mean a thing in the real world, and this mix is most likely "normal")

 

6) ALL of these cars have archbar trucks. The Archbar truck ban is nearly 30 years in the future and T-section Bettendorf cast trucks were only introduced in 1904; MOST freight cars will be  delivered with archbar trucks for another decade.

 

7) Archbar trucks under all-steel, "modern" cars like these hoppers is nothing new. Early PRR and B&O all-steel freight cars had them (including X29 and derivitave boxcars), and archbars pop up in  AC&F builder's photos through the late 1920s. The NYC was an early and widespread adopter of cast sideframe trucks under everything, but few other railroads were until much later.

 

(PS: notice that it's May, and there's basically nothing green growing at all. Welcome to the world of no EPA and lots of raw pollution)

Regards,

Steve,

 

On the C&O's Goshen (three-rail) Branch, the 3-foot narrow gauged line shared one track with the standard gauged line from 1880s through pre-WW1.  Apparently the branch-line rails were close enough to the narrow-gauge iron ore mine and blast furnace track in their weights to share one side.  The Victoria blast furnace yard was mixed with standard, narrow, and three-rail tracks (WV coke and local limestone came in, and pigs went out, via standard gauge cars).  During the depression, the slag-recovery folks were force to build a transfer tipple to load all the slag on to standard gauged cars before entering the C&O line. The C&O folks were always worried about the furnace folks messing up their tracks (with their overloaded slag cars) that serviced tank cars and timber flat cars going to paying customers down the line.  Interesting the current maps show that the branch-line after the first mile and half off the main is still narrow gauged ROW property.

 

Al

From: "stevecaple@... [STMFC]" To: STMFC@...
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 1:38:06 AM
Subject: RE: [STMFC] Re: Hoppers from early 20th century
 

This could be narrow gauge mine locomotive trackage.  A variety of gauges were laid in and around the anthracite mines.

Wayne Dzwonchyk