N and HO Northern Pacific log cars are now available

[BCOL 747]

N and HO Northern Pacific log cars are now available. Please feel free to place your orders at http://www.briggsmodels.ca/.

These cars come with a nice amount of etched parts, cast metal center sills and decals for NP and BN. Trucks and couplers are not included. Pricing for these kits are $25 (Canadian) each for N scale and $35 each (Canadian) for HO. Shipping will begin Sept. 19.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Kind regards,

Chris Dittmar

 chrisd@briggsmanufacturingassociates.com

[SD452XR]

Place my order for a fleet of these along with 4 of the C636’s. My winter projects are all lined up now. 

[nkalanaga]

Is the centersill hollow, for the metal weight?  I'm guessing, from the separate cover plates shown.

[Ike the BN Freak]

Does anyone know how long into BN these lasted?

[nkalanaga]

I found pictures of ex-NP and ex-GN 40 ft log car in service in 1980, so they lasted that long.  According to the date on this picture http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3265617, some lasted until 2012, but I doubt that they were  in service, and I'm not sure the date is right.  How many people were taking B&W pictures in 2012?

[SD452XR]

Looking at the photo, The "R" was added to those cars restricting those from interchange. That would put the date in the early 90's. Was there any logging branch lines left on the BN at that time?

[Missaberoad]

I found pictures of ex-NP and ex-GN 40 ft log car in service in 1980, so they lasted that long.  According to the date on this picture http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3265617, some lasted until 2012, but I doubt that they were  in service, and I'm not sure the date is right.  How many people were taking B&W pictures in 2012?

Based on his other photo of the loaded cars with the BN caboose I would agree the date is wrong...

[wazzou]

Looking at the photo, The "R" was added to those cars restricting those from interchange. That would put the date in the early 90's. Was there any logging branch lines left on the BN at that time?

I'm sure the date is when it was uploaded.
The location is on the former Milwaukee Road South of Olympia that likely at the time of the photo was operated by the Chehalis Western, a Railroad owned by Weyerhaeuser.
They operated a large fleet of former Milwaukee log flats after the Milwaukee's embargo of the Coast Division.
I suspect they also took on some of these former BN-NP cars at some point.

[nkalanaga]

SD452XR:  Logging branches as such, probably not, at least in the old sense of a "woods line".  But the BN, even in the 70s, handled a lot of "line haul" logs.  They'd be brought out of the woods to a transfer station, loaded on flats, and taken to the mill.  Carloads of logs weren't an uncommon sight in Pasco in the mid-70s, and there wasn't a tree worth logging, or a sawmill,  within probably an hours drive.  They came from somewhere, going somewhere else, just passing through. 

Also, quite a few logs were exported to Asia, and many of them went to the docks by train.  Log trucks tended to avoid the congestion in the major cities, where the docks are. 

[SD452XR]

I remember growing up in Montana, these cars would get loaded a couple at a time and sent west from my hometown. When MRL took over, they used these type of cars for awhile. By the mid nineties, they were using bulkhead flats with stakes. That pic makes me think of a branch somewhere is all.

[nkalanaga]

They could very well be stored on one of the idle branches, even if the Bn wasn't hauling logs on it.  A lot of old cars sat around for some time before being scrapped, or converted to MOW service.

A lot of bulkhead flatcars were converted to log/pole service after centerbeams took the lumber traffic.  A good reuse, as it solved the problem of logs sliding out the ends of the cars and fouling the next car.

[wazzou]

It looks like my response has been missed.
The picture was taken in Maytown, WA on the former Milwaukee mainline between Tacoma and Portland.
The line was being operated at that time by the Chehalis Western, a Weyerhaeuser Railroad after the MILW had embargoed lines West.

[nkalanaga]

Wazzou:  I DID miss your response.  Don't know how, except that my first response after you posted didn't refer to it, and the next night I started with my last post, to read the new ones.  Sorry!

It makes sense that the CW would want the cars.  Weyerhaeuser still moved a lot of logs by rail after most companies had stopped.

[nkalanaga]

Ordered 3 today. 

[mmagliaro]

Were these cars built as logging flat cars, or were they rebuilds from some type of 40' boxcar?
Anybody know if any of these were handed down to the SP&S?