Richard - Check the glossary section for some freight car terms at:
http://www.union.rpi.edu/railroad/images/Glossary/Glossary-A.html
and what you don't see there, let me know and I will try and post it, or
look it up.

Sunshine does not have a web site. I've talked to Martin and have his
permission to post the information in his flyers at:
http://www.union.rpi.edu/railroad/images/rolling-stock/Kits/Sunshine-kits.ht
ml
although this is going slow and I have a lot to do. (The flyers I have are
often for kits that have since come out in plastic, such as X29's and the
AAR 53 ft. 6 in. gon, so the interest in them isn't as strong. Martin is
supposed to send me the more recent ones, but he is busy and hasn't done so
yet.)

Storey - I've love that information on the T-M cars. I just posted a
sketchy bit of information at:
http://www.union.rpi.edu/railroad/images/rolling-stock/Kits/T-M-kits.html
Let me get together what I have at this end and meanwhile maybe you can
check some confusion, such as on some kits, what type of end they had.
(With Outlook Express, I can't figure out how to write to someone off-list.)

And speaking of T-M, I realize they generally used accurate schemes but in
their quest to make a three car reefer set of one all wood car, one wood car
with steel ends and one all steel, they put many schemes on too modern cars.

Did URTX ever get Dreadnaught ended wood cars? Did they rebuild older all
wood cars? When was their first all steel cars. (I think 1937, but that is
just prior to the billboard ban, certainly after the switch from URTCo.
marks to URTX, which makes a blanket statement easy.) (I know the T-M steel
car is not that close to the 1937 URTX steel car, but if a scheme should
have been on a wood car, that makes the error a greater magnitude.)

And is there any prototype for the T-M steel reefer? In their use of a
common mold base, they produced a late '30's steel reefer basically with
1920's height. - John

Richard - Check the glossary section for some freight car terms at:
http://www.union.rpi.edu/railroad/images/Glossary/Glossary-A.html
and what you don't see there, let me know and I will try and post it, or
look it up.

I'll try to find time to do this, but it won't happen in the next week or two.

Did URTX ever get Dreadnaught ended wood cars?

No, but see below.

....Did they rebuild older all wood cars?

Many URTX wood reefers were rebuilt beginning in the mid-1950s with 4-4
Dreadnaught ends and steel roofs, but they were much taller than the T-M
models, among other things.

When was their first all steel cars. (I think 1937....

June, 1936, built by General American (who owned URT) with Pennsy style
flat riveted steel roof and ends and four-hinge doors that had latch bars
on each door half.

And is there any prototype for the T-M steel reefer?

Sure there is. And the moon is made of green cheese. The entire model is
fictional, especially those absurd 2-2-2 (!) Dreadnaught ends. It was
designed (as you correctly observe) to fit the same mold base as the other
T-M house cars and to use as many existing parts as possible, so it's a
mish-mash of components most of which weren't prototypically accurate for
anything to begin with. In my kitbashing days, I puzzled for a long time
over what, if anything, the steel reefer kit could be reworked into that
would at least vaguely resemble a real freight car and never came up with
an acceptable answer.


Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520