Western Maryland gurus, a couple questions

[2-8-8-0]

Hello WM peeps!

I have 2 quick questions please;

1) I want a couple good books on WM equipment, I think one logical one is the Western Maryland diesels sold by the WM Historical Society, but is there a good all around book on their freight cars as well?

and

2) Did the WM have any OS quad hoppers? All the ones I have are in a grey WM speed lettering scheme, I was going to repaint and decal them all for B&O, but if they are Western Maryland O.K., ill leave some alone. (the Trix ones there are like 3 million of) And what year did the grey Speed Lettering style appear?

Thanks

(After all, B&O and WM kinda go together)

[Bob Bufkin]

Looks like an answer from Lee here.

[sirenwerks]

Whatever Lee tells you to buy, try Chuck @ Railroadbooks.biz. He has great prices. And tell him I sentcha.

[wm3798]

Jack Brown's Color Guide to Western Maryland Freight and Passenger Equipment.  (or words to that effect).

I recommend you look it up on Amazon via the ad links provided by the Railwire.  Keep the money in the house!

Another excellent book is Fireballs and Black Diamonds.  There's an earlier edition, from the mid 80's, and a later one from the 90's.  The main difference is the later one is more depressing because it discusses the further work of Chessie the Knife tearing up rail and burning things down.  But both are excellent discussions of the operations of the railroad.

Western Maryland in the Diesel Era is another good book about the operations on the various subdivisions.

And don't forget to sign up for the WMRHS, $30 a year will net you a quarterly magazine that's consistently good.  Plus the full color calendar...

Lee

[Mark5]

2) Did the WM have any OS quad hoppers? All the ones I have are in a grey WM speed lettering scheme, I was going to repaint and decal them all for B&O, but if they are Western Maryland O.K., ill leave some alone. (the Trix ones there are like 3 million of) And what year did the grey Speed Lettering style appear?

I don't think WM had any quads.

Mark

[wm3798]

WM had zero offset side hoppers.
WM had ONE quad.  It was a corrosion test car, rated at 90 tons.  It was fabricated with different alloys on each panel to see what would last the longest under bituminous coal.  It was delivered from Bethlehem steel painted white, then later in oxide red, and finally in Chessie.  The car number was 90000, and it included "Corrosion Test Car" lettering below the speedlettering.
http://www.train-worx.com/wm.htm

I took the gazillions of Trix offset hoppers I had accumulated and painted them for the Laurel Valley...



I believe they're somewhat suitable for B&O hoppers, but I've never studied them to know how close they are.

The WM received its first batch of grey speedlettered 100 ton hoppers in 1963 for dedicated limestone service between Bittenger Quarry near Hanover and Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point mill.  The new equipment was acquired after WM achieved trackage rights over the Penn Central to make the move from Fulton to Bayview, and thence to the PBR at North Point.  Prior to this, the stone arrived in Port Covington in smaller cars, and were ferried across the harbor to Sparrows Point.  After the Chessie "inclusion" (a euphemism for rape and pillage) in 1973, the trains moved over to the B&O, traveling the Howard Street Tunnel and Baltimore Belt Line, then over to Sparrows Pt. via Penn Mary and Dundalk.  This remains one of the few scheduled trains on the east end of the old WM.

The WM cars continued in this service into late 1980's


The ubiquitous Atlas 90 ton hoppers in this paint scheme are reasonably good stand-ins, but a close comparison with the prototype photos reveals some discrepancies.


One interesting note:  The interiors of these cars were painted oxide red.  I made a simple mask with a sheet of styrene and some blocks to position the car, and shot them with a big can of primer.  The train currently resides at the Maryland & Ohio, running regularly from the big quarry on the upper deck to the steel mill.



Lee

[sizemore]

The ubiquitous Atlas 90 ton hoppers in this paint scheme are reasonably good stand-ins, but a close comparison with the prototype photos reveals some discrepancies.

Microtrains are you listening? One roadname I'd easily buy 30 cars of right out the gate.

The S.

[2-8-8-0]

Thanks much!

The trix OS cars are quite a close match for the B&O/C&O fleets of OS quads they built in the late 20s and early 30s. Rivet plates in the right place, right number of ribs, even the ends are pretty close. I think they were just a scaled down version of the famous Athearn car (once again, Micro Trains, YOU THERE?) and the Athearn car was a model of the B&Os W-2. I dont know about other roads, but B&O had about 6000 cars in the W2 class and subclasses, and C&O also had 2000 or so. Pretty important car for any of us modeling eastern roads.

Ill just strip em, paint em black, and run em. Thanks

[Mark5]

How long did those B&O quads stay in service?

[wm3798]

There's shots of them in Fireballs and Black Diamonds sharing the road with chopnose geeps... so at least into the mid-1960's.  I'll have to dig a little, but I believe there's evidence of them into the early 70's, but I won't say that with a lot of certainty.

Lee

[sirenwerks]

I recommend you look it up on Amazon via the ad links provided by the Railwire.  Keep the money in the house!

I'm all for the latter. Railroadbooks.biz sells through Amazon. But the way Amazon does business, Chuck's forced to have a seriously marked up book on the site. He sells the same thing for significantly less through his own site.

Maybe John can inform me off-list how Amazon referral works and Chuck can set up something similar?

[wm3798]

By the way, that scene is about to get ripped out...



Lee

[2-8-8-0]

I have a photo of a B&O W2A in 1976, in a train, so some remained that long. Apparently, B&O and C&Os quads were both based on a USRA design, with C&O aquiring 3000 of em starting in 1928, and B&O with over 6000 starting in 1926; the two are basically identical (C&O of course added end extensions). The Trix car seems to be a generic "USRA" car, so works for me. (Info from Freight Car Equipment of the C&O Railway, Aug 1, 1937, and B&O Freight Car Equipment, 1917-1960).

The roundhouse RS and OS 3 bays are the ones I wish would be remade. I can add end extensions for C&O cars.

PS...so far, the bext books on freight cars I own, hands down, are the ones from the C&O Historical Society on C&Os freight car fleet. I wish a B&O book existed which was so thorough and well laid out.

[bobcat]

By the way, that scene is about to get ripped out...



Lee

I think you have been hanging out with John a little too long now. ;D

[Bruce Bird]

Don't forget the softcover Western Maryland Diesels by Jahn and Johnson.  A class by class look at all of the diesels along with a short bit of history and some good maps.  Quite a few black and white and color shots of the WM too.  It is probably a little hard to find.  I nabbed mine a few years ago when one of the authors found about a dozen stashed away in his basement and sold them through the WM Yahoo group.  A little musty but a very good info book.

Bruce