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Here's a not too great shot of 5026.http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2989797
5026 looks like it might have coloring like 5002 here: http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=fec5002&o=fec
But I actually trust the manufacturer to be somewhat more accurate when it comes to paint,
The real one was also an ACF car but that's another story...
Does anyone have a FEC freight car roster? Looks like there was alot of orders in the 5xxx series...
Well, I need to try to get a few things sorted out here, and I'm doing so with the much appreciated assistance of Jon Halloran and José Cabanillas who are both FEC followers.The first observation from the ORER Accumulation is that there are no cars numbered in the 5000s in the listing for line in the January 1964 Register nor are there any cars that come near the dimensions of this boxcar. José notes that the same is true in a Westerfield CD-ROM version of a 1965 ORER. Note that the first run of the 33080 has a "New" date of July 1967. But José has a copy of the FEC's 1963 Annual Report which prominently features a group of 15 plug and sliding door cars purchased for gypsum service. These were the first new boxcars for the line in quite a while. Jon passes along into from the FEC Railway Society that these cars came from FGEX. That's Fruit Growers Express which did used to build cars at its shops in Arlington, Virginia. José provided UMTRR HQ a scan from a slide and commented that the cars as painted by MTL look more than a shade darker than they do in the photo. It also has a white sliding door, probably a Superior type (also known as "wide rib" in collector circles) and a diagonal panel roof. This must have been a very popular group of cars among the FEC management, as they appear in two different annual reports in the 1960's, reports José. A "roster shot" of 5012 and others shows the lighter blue paint; the extended draft gear couplers match in shade. But the cars don't show up in the ORER for that time period. Could be, he notes, that the cars didn't go off line and thus might not be listed in the Register; but that doesn't explain why flat cars used in captive service would be listed there. (And that's, mercifully, another story.) Now, we jump to the April 1970 ORER, where there are two series numbered 5001 to 5015 and 5016 to 5030 respectively. Both these groups are AAR Class XL, described as "Box, Steel" and had inside lengths of 50 feet 6 inches and inside heights of 10 feet 6 inches, but they differ on outside length, extreme height, and capacity. But both sets have 16 foot door openings. And this is where I wish the ORER had given a little more data, e.g. what type of doors did the second group of cars have? Of the first number of the 33080 and the only number of the 36060, one of these is probably going to be wrong; that is, I really doubt that the FEC was going to mix door arrangements within a short series. And that may explain why MTL jumped out of the 5020's from the second series 5016 to 5030, and down to 5002 from the series 5001 to 5015. Based on the data from José and Jon, I'm going to speculate that they're in the correct group of cars this time and the original run has the wrong doors; and the 36060 is also correct with respect to the double plug doors. This release would therefore mark a correction of sorts. Be that as it may, or may not, in the April 1976 ORER-- are you ready for this???-- the two groups of cars are slammed together into one series, 5001 to 5030, with 29 total cars. As Charlie Brown would say, "AAUGH!!!" This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. As I mentioned above, Jon Halloran added that the 5001 to 5015 were obtained from Fruit Growers Express, while the 5016 to 5030 were built by Berwick Forge and Fabricating, this data from the FEC Railway Society of which he is a member. So it's possible that MTL wasn't really thinking of a "correction" if they went to one of the ORERs where the cars are grouped together. These 29 cars stayed together in the April 1981 Register, but the roofwalks were probably gone by then. And in the January 1985 book? The two groups are resplit into 5001 to 5015, 15 cars, and 5016 to 5030, 12 cars. That's about when I gave up.
Thanks to Jon Hollahan, UMTRR Gang Member, we have some information direct from the Florida East Coast Historical Society on this reprint. Or should I say, this "not a reprint," as the lettering, and in particular the depiction of the "Hurricane" herald, is different enough to warrant that designation. According to a file describing the FEC's steelframe boxcars, the series 5016 to 5030 was ordered from Berwick Forge and Fabricating in September 1969 and delivered in January 1970. From the July 1970 ORER (transcribed into the table) we have the inside length of 50 feet 6 inches, inside height of 10 feet 6 inches, outside length of 55 feet 3 inches, extreme height of 15 feet, door opening of 16 feet, and capacity of 4952 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds, raised by January 1980 to 154,000 pounds. From July 1970 to January 1982 these cars were grouped with cars 5001 to 5015, which may or may not have been a good idea considering that the 5001 to 5015 were of the plug and sliding door type built by FGEX and modeled by MTL as their 33080. Starting no later than the January 1983 Register, the groups were split up and the 5017 to 5030 received their own listing. There were 13 cars in the group from then until January 1990, at which point the number in service dropped to 12. The spreadsheet from the FECHS has the 12 cars lasting into the January 2001 ORER. But as of the January 2002 ORER there are gondolas occupying the number series, so whatever happened, the ATP is over by then. Strictly speaking, the appearance of the FEC "Hurricane" herald (and this is my term, not anything official) dates to about 1973 according to the RPI website, so these cars might not have been delivered in this paint scheme. The use of the yellow dot wheel inspection symbol dates to about 1978 and theoretically should have been removed when the car was serviced in 1982 as MTL notes. FEC went to red with yellow lettering and large reporting marks after the red and white that MTL depicts. At "press time" I didn't yet have a date for this change but hopefully I will have it Incrementally next issue
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Topic: Looking for FEC boxcar references (Read 1962 times)
