Micro-trains for August 2021

[learmoia]

~Ian:  As far as I know, these were the only gray grain hoppers the BN had, at least in the early years.  These were built for the GN, with aluminum sides, and very quickly weathered to a non-metallic gray.  I don't know whether the BN cars were painted gray, or if they stripped the GN lettering and relettered the bare aluminum.  I suspect they repainted the cars, though, as I don't remember seeing a shiny aluminum BN car.

Gray was common on BN's smaller covered hoppers, and it looks like the same shade of gray.

As for what they carried, I suspect mostly grain, as that's what the GN bought them for.  But the GN also hauled other stuff in them, so they could be used for anything with a density similar to grain, that wouldn't contaminate the car. 

Years ago I made my own rosters for the BN and predecessor roads by copying a big pile of hump lists from June, 1973.  By hand, in pencil.  Those lists showed both the GN and BN cars, but apparently not what the were hauling, as that column is blank in my rosters.  Other cars around them show various grains, so I assume these were mostly grain cars.

If I'd had a computer like today's, I could have digitized the entire lists with less work, in a spreadsheet program, and had every car that went over the Pasco hump that month.  THAT would have been quite a resource!

My job is to manage a railcar database with the help of an analytics reporting program that feeds off the database, and our upper management are old Rock Island/CNW guys who started on pencil and paper..

They will ask for a report, and.. 'Can you get me maybe the last 3 months?'...

And usually my response is.. 'Once the report is setup, I can get you the last 3 years in the same amount of time as I can get you 3 months.. 


Conrail inherited the same style of aluminum hopper from PRR, and the bare aluminum ones tended to weather in the same fashion, while the painted ones weathered normally..

We (the short line) had 50ish of the Ex Soo Line aluminum hoppers for a while, and you could get an extra 10,000 lbs of product in those cars simply because the tare weight was so low compared to the steel cars.

~Ian

[JMaurer1]

Pigs and sheep rode on double decks, cows on single deck.

[Cajonpassfan]

Pigs and sheep rode on double decks, cows on single deck.

Yes, a good point. The excellent Intermountain ATSF Stock cars came in both single and double (collapsible) deck versions, with horizontally split doors to serve the double decks separately. Of course the model doesn’t actually have the upper deck; one would have to fabricate it to model a sheep/pig/goat configuration with loads.

That just seems like a lot of trouble to me, since on my layout, stock car loads go west to LA, empties go back east, and I’m not sure I want to bother “unloading” numerous stock cars before sending them back east. It’s challenging enough to “unload” coal from open top gons and hoppers…😜
Otto

[nkalanaga]

~Ian:  Then maybe the BN cars are bare aluminum.  Thank you!

The lettering on that one looks almost green.  Not impossible on a BN car, but all of the gray covered hoppers I remember had black lettering.  I wonder if this one is actually green, or just weathered black?  By 1996 the paint is probably 15 years old.

[Missaberoad]

I want to say painted grey sandblasted aluminum...  Hard to say tho
Also I would love to see those Magor cars done in N. I would buy at least a dozen in Soo, heck I would buy a runner pack of the MT cars to use as stand ins...
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https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=70474

[mecgp7]

Man, if BLI could combine their livestock sound cars with MTL livestock loads AND Atlas would create the smell, that would be awesome!! Preferred flavor: cattle.

[JMaurer1]

When it comes to N scale and smell, look towards Walthers 

[mecgp7]

No slight to Atlas. Insert any manufacturer. 🥴

[JoeD]

Pigs and sheep rode on double decks, cows on single deck.

Noted..  

Joe

[thomasjmdavis]

Weren't some (all?) of the Despatch stock cars built with "movable" floors that could be positioned to create a double deck car, and lowered to be used as single deck cars?

It is also worth noting that, while double deck cars would be preferred for moving hogs and sheep, there were certainly occasions when hogs or sheep were moved in single deck cars.  For instance, ATSF's publications (see chart on page 19 if you have the Kalmbach Livestock and Meatpacking book by Jeff Wilson) spec 88 700 lb hogs in a single deck 40'car, or 166 (not quite twice as many- I think it might be the weight limitation at 700 lb per) in a double deck car.  I doubt it was worthwhile to use double deck cars if it required moving them 400 miles, and there were several single deck empty cars in a nearby yard. And many railroads just leased cars when needed- and would be constrained by what was available at any given time. 

[James Costello]

Thanks for the ITTX flats @MTLJoe - the weathering artwork looks good. It was a pleasure to hold your beer for a month 

Is the plan to release them as the weathered deck as shown, or is there a hope of a laser cut wood deck to better represent the raised deck of the prototypes?

Hey Joe @Shipsure - when it comes time to expand the range of DODX flats and equipment - when you consider the ITTX flats, how about a laser cut wood or delrin deck that sits on your new detail-less 89' flat deck (from the turbine flats) that allows for the timber risers and hold down chain channels. When you look at the proto photos it seems that's all that TTX has done - the yellow side of the extension sits pretty clear of the logos etc of the original deck height.

https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=41854
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=86344
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=102305
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=3928
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=89172
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=101271
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=43900

Should be good for a standalone detail part and for other loads too:
https://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=97929

[JMaurer1]

Thomas: the answers are yes and yes. Since we are talking about the MT Dispatch stock cars, if you had sheep or pigs in them, you would have had it set up for the double deck configuration. I'm not sure how easy it was to unload these cars, especially if they were being unloaded for watering (in route) at a 'standard' corral or did the ramps go up that high?

[Mike C]

  There is a pic here unloading sheep .     

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_car_(rail)

[rodsup9000]

But I'm certainly willing to discuss it, if loads (that is, 35 cattle or 100 sheep or 75 hogs packed together, as a one piece part to drop into a cattle car) can be done at an affordable cost.

I'm in need of cattle for a stock yard, if you're interested. 

Rodsup: you have my attention as well...

  I found a sheep and a couple of pigs.  I tried putting cows on a printed plate in CAD and because of the way MT's metal frames are made, it's very visible, so that isn't going to work. I did play around with making a 2nd deck  for the MT's and I think it'll work for a double deck. I searched photos of double decks and some used the single doors like MT's.
 Here is the pigs and sheep. I haven't scaled the yet, but will work on getting some printed this weekend.

[thomasjmdavis]

Thomas: the answers are yes and yes. Since we are talking about the MT Dispatch stock cars, if you had sheep or pigs in them, you would have had it set up for the double deck configuration. I'm not sure how easy it was to unload these cars, especially if they were being unloaded for watering (in route) at a 'standard' corral or did the ramps go up that high?

The photos I have in a couple books show there being separate loading/unloading ramps for the upper decks.  In one photo, it looks like they were unloading the upper deck of car 1 onto the higher ramp, and car 2 is unloading the lower deck at an adjacent lower level ramp, with the sheep all ending up in the same pen.  I would speculate there might even be some adjustable height ramps to deal with the occasional triple deck, and/or for variations in specs between railroads.