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©2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting Prohibited. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Legal Stuff NOTE: This archive edition covers most single car releases only. Reviews of and commentary on most Micro-Trains locomotives, Runner Packs, most Special Editions such as the U.S. Navy Sets and the Canadian Province & Territory cars are available exclusively in the e-mail subscription edition of the UMTRR. © 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited. N SCALE NEW RELEASES:
031 00 072, $35.65
Please refer to the April 2008 UMTRR (e-mail and website versions) for a discussion of the C&O Cameo Car series.
045 00 340, $11.30
Given Micro-Trains' copy for this car, namely, "It was renumbered from MP 8692" and the build date of July 1943, I started with the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for January 1945. Sure enough, the series 8600 to 8995 is there, with all 395 possible cars shown. However... the "inside length" is a mere 41 feet 3 inches, "outside length" 42 feet, and capacity a rather puny 80,000 pounds. This series is in place through at least the April 1976 ORER, and gone from the April 1981 Register. So, do we have a "length thing" here in terms of the prototype versus the model?
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
No, not at all! In the April 1970 ORER there is an 800308, or more correctly, a series numbered 800307 to 800309 with only one car in it. The dimensions on this "Flat, All Steel" were "inside length" 53 feet 6 inches, "inside width" 9 feet 4 inches, "outside length" 56 feet 8 inches, and extreme height 3 feet 8 inches, with capacity 110,000 pounds. The series is starred on Page 684 of the Equipment Register, which "Denotes Addition." The car isn't in the January 1964 ORER which is the next one back that I have. In the April 1974 and April 1976 ORERs just the single car is listed, 800308. But it too is gone from the April 1981 Equipment Register. So even my above Approximate Time Period may be a bit of a stretch.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Since this was a single car, I don't feel so bad about not finding any photos online. There is one in the Morning Sun Color Guide to the MP, however. Had I not done the ORER lookups, I would have surmised that the lettering was from a period closer to the Union Pacific merger than the early 1970's, given how plain it is; but then the car lacks consolidated stencils also.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
083 00 041 and 083 00 042, $16.85 each
The Morning Sun Color Guide to the Northern Pacific attempts to answer the first question I had with respect to these cars: why are the road numbers painted on twice? "That... may have been a result of historical practice," writes Todd Sullivan, "[as] many freight cars of the 19th Century placed the number on both ends of the side."
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
But, I would have retorted, other of the NP's cars from the 1930's didn't have the number twice. Sullivan continues, "Another possibility is that these cars were used to haul coal, cinders, gravel, stone, mineral ores and concentrates which dented, dirtied and corroded the car's sides... Perhaps the idea was that at least one number would be legible at all times." Ah, good point there.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The exact NP 53200 is pictured in the Color Guide in a worn, corroded and dirty state as of February 1975 at Madison, Wisconsin. It still has both numbers, both legible, and how about this-- it's carrying a wood slab load which extends above the sides (MTL's simulated load doesn't). There are some detail differences between model and real, most notably that the prototype car used grab irons instead of ladders on the sides and had two step stirrups instead of the single step that MTL utilized. The number of panels is correct and the ends appear to be similar if not exact. The Bettendorf trucks were under the car even in 1975.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The ORER for January 1940 is the closest I have to the 1936 build date given by Micro-Trains (the same date is reported in the Color Guide). The series of AAR Designation "GS" cars are described as "Gondola, Flat Bottom, Drop Bottom, Steel" and are numbered from 52000 to 53499. There were 1250 cars in the group at that time. (Can you say, "Runner Pack"?) The inside length was 41 feet 9 inches, inside height 4 feet 5 inches, inside width 9 feet 6 inches, outside length 43 feet 4 inches, extreme height 9 feet 2 inches, and capacity 1775 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. Pulling a previous release of this body style from the accumulation we find that its dimensions are fairly close; the MTL model is a little shorter in inside length and a bit too tall in height. Your conclusion from this may vary, of course.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Returning to the ORERs, we know from the Color Guide that the cars lasted until 1975. So I can jump to the Burlington Northern listing from April of that year to find 336 cars still in service in the series 52009 to 53499. And fast approaching their fortieth birthday, in fact, at which point they should have been removed from interchange service. Sure enough, they are gone from the April 1981 ORER, though over 200 drop bottom gons with NP markings from the 50000 series were still rolling. I would be surprised-- no, I would be shocked-- to learn that any of these cars ever received Burlington Northern paint. Though it would be interesting to see a drop bottom in Cascade Green.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
085 00 060, $19.60
The April 1928 ORER shows a group of "Hopper, Twin, Steel" numbered from 20000 to 20199, of 199 cars with inside length of 30 feet, outside length of 31 feet 6 inches, and capacity of 100,000 pounds. No mention is made of panel sides there, or in the July 1935 ORER for that matter. In the January 1940 Register, individual numbers of 100 cars in the series "equipped with panel sides and differing in cubical capacity... 1769 cubic feet" versus the capacity of 1680 for the straight sided cars. The weight capacity didn't change. Not among the panel side cars is the 20018 modeled by Micro-Trains. No problem, though, as by the January 1943 ORER all of the cars in the series show with the larger 1769 cubic footage. That gives us a pretty fair shot at the start of the ATP.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Reinforcing this is information on the RPI site that the CV along with its parent switched from black to mineral red for its open top cars circa 1943 and also went to the lettering style that appears on the Micro-Trains model by 1945. (There is an older mineral red scheme offered by Accurail in HO with the roadname in a larger single line with what appears to be a service date of 1937.)
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Are we done yet? No! There is a reversal in the July 1950 Equipment Register, with 85 cars shown with panel sides and 110 exceptions which are back to straight sides! The 20018 is not in the exceptions (and don't you love how there are more exceptions than the main series?) so we presume that it retained the panel sides at this point. By January 1955 it's all but over for panel side hoppers, as only two, the 20132 and 20153, still have them and the rest, 166 in number, are back to straight sides.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
How about those Andrews trucks, though? Well, the information I have shows them still in interchange service in the early 1950's, though largely being replaced by the Bettendorf version by then. So you do appear to be OK with them for the entire relatively short ATP.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
121 00 090, $14.55
It's not an understatement to say that the CN has variety in its scale test cars, and that it would therefore be very dangerous to extrapolate anything about the CN 52277 Micro-Trains has modeled from photos of any other of the CN's Scale Test Cars. From the "Canadian Freight Railcar Gallery" we have plenty of proof of this. CN 52014 looks somewhat like the MTL body style but without the handrails. CN 52258, pictured while a load on a flat car, is an ex-Pennsylvania Railroad car painted in red and white (without the CN herald) that's fairly close. CN 52259, the very next number, is a converted slab side covered hopper (itself a body style that is distinctively the Canadian National's). CN 52285 is a converted cylindrical covered hopper that I believe was in cement service; the closest N Scale item I can come up with is the old Lima/AHM "Flexi-Flo" hopper model for that one. And finally CN 52286, the next number after that, is a converted ore car. See what I mean?
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
On the other hand, we can conclude from both the 52258 and the CN 52257 pictured on the Fallen Flags website that the CN had at least a few similar cars. And then we can examine the actual CN 52277 that Micro-Trains modeled as found on RRPictureArchives.net, captured in Waycross, Georgia in November 2006. No, I'm not sure what it was doing in Waycross, Georgia, either! Interestingly, the car is attached on blocks without its wheels atop a TTX flat car, with the wheels attached adjacent to the body. This would be a modelable idea for those of us who like a particular scale test car that isn't for our particular railroad-- it's in transit to somewhere else. Be sure to use plenty of 1:160 chain and tie down hardware!
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The real CN 52277 is not an exact match, with the principal difference being the brake wheel position; it's horizontally attached to a mount not unlike that on Micro-Trains and other N Scale cabooses. The paint scheme doesn't match the MTL model; it has stenciled reporting marks on the left and other small unreadable data on the right where Micro-Trains has the CN herald. This leads me to believe that the CN herald appeared on previous paint jobs.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Otherwise, we run into the usual general lack of information on company service equipment here; the result is a very Approximate Time Period. A comment posted with the photo agrees with the MTL car copy, built in 1957 by Eastern Car Works. The CN herald was introduced in 1960 but I can't be sure on when red was used on scale test cars. If it's any help, most cabooses were Morency Orange during the sixties but some were "CN orange" which is more red, per the Morning Sun Color Guide to the CN Volume 2. In theory the ATP could go to the day before the referenced photo of CN 52277 was taken, but my guess (and it's only a guess!) is that the 1990's would be a more appropriate end of the ATP. Incremental information would be most welcome here.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
038 00 161 and 038 00 162, $13.85 each
Usually, it's the Z Scale releases for which I "borrow" previous N Scale commentaries. This time, I get to go the other way and quote myself from the Z Scale release of August 2007 for the information for this virtual two-pack in N Scale.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Western Fruit Express was an affiliate of the Great Northern Railroad-- all those goat heralds were a rather large clue-- but was also closely affiliated with Fruit Growers Express, which helps to explain why I saw so many of those goat heralds while growing up on the east coast. The WFE, FGE and the Burlington Refrigerator Express all shared officers and offices in Washington, DC and operated their equipment more or less as a pool, directing cars where they were needed during varying harvest seasons.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Burlington Northern picked up the WFE name and operation and although it shifted some refrigerator class cars to BN reporting marks-- like this one-- it kept the Western Fruit Express name. In case you're wondering, by the way, some of WFE's wood side refrigerator cars did make it into BN logos. Looks kind of strange, if you ask me.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
While the Western Fruit Express was around for quite a while, having been founded in 1923, this car wasn't painted this way for nearly as long. I didn't pick up this road number in the April 1970 ORER, not surprising since the BN had just been formed, but it wasn't in the July 1974 or April 1975 Registers either. In the April 1976 ORER, though, the BN entry consolidates all of its Refrigerator Equipment under all reporting marks into a separate listing. And among those-- finally-- is the series BN 745450 to 745499, with 43 cars in the main series and a single exception including pallets. The cars are given AAR Classification RBL and described as "Refrigerator, Movable Bulkheads, 50K" with these dimensions: inside length 50 feet even, inside width 9 feet 5 inches, inside height 9 feet 6 inches, outside length 55 feet 4 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 9 feet 2 inches wide by 8 feet 11 inches high, and capacity 4520 cubic feet or 137,000 pounds.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
By the April 1981 Register the BN had changed its mind and the Refrigerator Equipment was back among the overall car listings. The series had been split into 29 cars still with the movable bulkheads and 19 cars without, including the 745461. Not that this would be evident from the outside! The capacity of these cars was raised to 141,000 pounds and all 48 of these cars were being called "Refrigerator, Bunkerless." Only three years later, in April 1984, the group was down to 15 cars with bunkers and nine without, nine months later in January 1986 it was thirteen and four, eighteen months after that in October 1986 there was just a single group of twelve cars without bulkheads, and nine months after that in July 1987 just one car was shown. Yes, I do have all of those ORERs in the Research Accumulation. I must be nuts.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
Anyway, all that data is nice, but a photo would be good too. We can get close on Fallen Flags with similar car BN 745029 in an undated photo taken at North Little Rock, Arkansas, which shows a paint scheme very much like what MTL used on this car.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
520 00 151 and 520 00 152, $18.85 each
Back in April 2001 when the N Scale version of this car was released, my initial comment was, "The N&W with stock cars? Whuda thunk it?" And then I plunged into a rather labyrinthine look at the Approximate Time Period for the prototype series. Fortunately, I can shrink that a bit for this coverage.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
It appears that the series of stock cars numbered 33000 to 33249 may have started as a group in the 29000s. Between the January 1953 and the January 1955 ORERs, the series 29000 to 29749 was reduced and the series 33000 to 33249 appeared. The dimensions of the groups aligned: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 9 feet 1 inch, outside length 42 feet 2 inches, extreme height 14 feet 6 inches, and capacity 3065 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. They are AAR Classification "SM" which is "for transportation of stock on the hoof, equipped with roof, slatted sides and side doors, single deck. With or without feed and water troughs." In the 1953 Register there were 664 cars in the 29s and in the 1955 Register there were 250 in the 33s and 381 in the 29s. These cars lasted to at least April 1970 when 86 total cars remained, but the series is gone from the July 1974 Register. Obviously some backdating is also possible, to about the 1930's and back into the 29000 series with a little bit of care and very small renumbering!
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The 1973 Quadrant Press softcover book, "Norfolk and Western Steam (The Last 25 Years)" by Ron Rosenberg with Eric A. Archer, notes that the N&W kept two Class G-1 2-8-0 Consolidations on their roster from the late 1940's to the late 1950's. "Locos 6 and 7 served into the 'fifties on seasonal cattle extras between Bluefield and Honaker, Virginia over a line marked by several spindly trestles," Rosenberg noted.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
An image of the real N&W 33000, the initial car of the renumbered group, appears in Virginia Tech's "Imagebase." Comparison to the model shows that there isn't an exact match, mostly since the MTL body style has solid boards running from left to right across the center of the car side, which is where they put the lettering. The N&W added its own letterboards for the road name on the right side of the car. At least in 1953, the prototype had a steel roofwalk as opposed to the wood one that's standard on the MTL model, but that's an easy change for those who so desire to make it.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
522 00 161 and 522 00 162, $23.50 each
[The following is mostly a reprint from the review of the N Scale reprint of this car, released February 2008.]
MTL gives the build date as 1955 and the service date as 1959. At that point the prototype was probably painted into what I consider one of the most attractive and well known schemes of what I call the "era of color"-- the Chinese Red and white of the Burlington Route. It would be hard to miss the boxcars and gondolas in bright red with that billboard sized roadname, and let's not forget the sharp red, gray and white paint that adorned classic diesels like the GP-30. This decoration was adopted in 1958 according to information on the RPI website, and lasted at least somewhat into the Burlington Northern era which began in 1970, thanks to the slow pace at which repainting took place.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The ORER for January 1959 shows the series 82000 to 82199, of 200 cars, described as "Gondola, Steel, Drop Ends, Steel Floor" with AAR Classification "GB." The inside length is 52 feet 6 inches, outside length 55 feet 1 inch, extreme height 7 feet 4 inches, and capacity 1,745 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. Ditto in the January 1964 Register. In April 1970 under Burlington Northern, the series is at 97 cars, and in April 1976 it's at just 8 pieces numbered from 82040 to 82188.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Morning Sun Color Guide to the CB&Q has... no, not the Chinese Red version, but a 1970 shot of similar car CB&Q 82615 in the original mineral red paint with plain white lettering. A potential future release? Well, perhaps if a less beat up example is available to get the lettering from! There are other illustrations of the 1959-era scheme on other gondolas pictured in the MSCG. Online, a 1979 (!) photo of CB&Q 81395, a car from the adjacent series, is on Ken Harstine's "Boxcars and Freight Cars of North America." When caught, the 81395 was carrying a somewhat randomly stacked load of logs, another idea for you besides the "gravel load" that MTL supplies with this reprint.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
531 00 081 and 531 00 082, $17.05 each
"Alkali Resisting Light Gray" is what Kadee calls the color on its HO Scale model of the PS-2 covered hopper lettered for the Union Pacific. Alas, it's only a rimshot as it's numbered 11443, from the follow-on series of cars to the one that Micro-Trains selected. And yes, there are differences between those two groups, though they'd be hard to discern at 1:220.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
I was a bit surprised that a group of cars built in 1957 would not have made it into the January 1959 ORER, but they didn't so there you go-- or not go. I therefore need to go to the January 1974 Register for the group 11000 to 11399 of 398 cars with inside length 29 feet 3 inches, outside length 35 feet 3 inches, extreme height 13 feet 6 inches and capacity 2100 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. From there I skipped ahead more than twenty years to the April 1984 ORER where the group has shrunk to 182 total cars in the group 11003 to 11396, at that time the lowest numbered cars in the Union Pacific's revenue roster. Just 42 remained in October 1986 as the cars approached the forty-year rule and all were gone in the July 1987 ORER. By 1991 the numbers used for these PS-2s were redeployed to 4400 cubic foot covered hoppers. (And yes, I almost blew the lookup since they were again covered hoppers.)
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
The Morning Sun Color Guide to the Union Pacific shows the UP 11136 as found in 1960 in Omaha. MSCG author Lloyd Stagner notes in the caption that these cars were among the first Union Pacific equipment to come equipped with roller bearing trucks. Said trucks are rather brown looking in the prototype photo, perhaps leading MTL to use brown trucks on its model as well.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
982 01 071 and 982 01 072, $185.95 each
It's sort of a two for one special for this sharp looking pair of diesels, and I don't mean because there were two road numbers released at the same time. The Minneapolis and St. Louis was a "welterweight" road that had the slogan "The Peoria Gateway"-- perfectly OK, since it did reach Peoria but did not serve St. Louis! It did connect the Twin Cities to Peoria and cities in Iowa, and had a long branch to Leola, South Dakota. It advertised itself as a route bypassing Chicago-- a nontrivial attribute considering what a bottleneck the Windy City could be-- but was perhaps even better known in railfanning circles for its large variety of locomotive paint schemes. Its approximately 1400 miles (in 1954) were largely duplicated by other lines, and so it was one of the first lines to be merged into a rival, in this case the much larger Chicago and North Western in 1960. The UtahRails.net site notes that GP9's 600 to 608 came over from the Louie, and kept their numbers, but not their paint. The M&StL was treated as a subsidiary and its reporting marks were retained on its equipment for some time, even as major portions of the railroad were abandoned in favor of C&NW trackage. In fact, the MSTL lettering survived on some C&NW cars past the North Western's merger into the Union Pacific.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
There is a fairly definite end to the Approximate Time Period for these units, as they were rebuilt to GP9Rs in 1972 and renumbered into the 4300 and 4500 series. Both the 604 and 608 had dynamic brakes so no worries there with respect to the Micro-Trains model.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
There are several photos of the 604 on RRPictureArchives.net. A three quarter ground level view in glorious black and white and a similar view in color were contributed by Jim Sands from the Vern Wingfield collection. Both show that MTL has the paint scheme spot on including the "Radio Equipped" legends. The same site even has a old color photo of the unit as Minneapolis and St. Louis 604, in red paint with a white stripe... Micro-Trains, please take note. There are four views of the 608 as well. That loco was "chop-nosed" (its short hood lowered), became Montana Rail Link's unit 130, and was still in service in 2005 when its picture was taken in Livingston, Montana.
© 2008 George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. Reposting prohibited.
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