Home Page Forums Prototype and Historical Freight Operations & Equipment USRA Rebuilt gondolas information

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  • #5562
    Charles Duckworth
    Participant

    From Ed Hawkins..

    I have a Mopac photo of MP gondola #71100 with shop stencil “DES. 7-49” and
    “built 9-19”, thus documenting the car was one of the original USRA gons. The
    car was completely rebuilt with steel sides and has 8 vertical side posts
    (9-panels). There is no diagonal bracing. The photo is a broadside so I
    cannot see what type end it has (Murphy or Dreadnaught). The car retains its
    original Andrews trucks but has been equipped with AB brakes. Capacity was
    1885 cu. ft. as compared to the USRA capacity of 1770 cu. ft. See below for
    more information on these cars.

    The 73501-74250 series cars were built in 1925 and were not quite the same as
    the USRA cars. The composite superstructure was the same as the USRA cars,
    but the 1925-built cars had wine door locks along the side sill on the middle
    5 panels (photo in 1928 Car Builder’s Cyclopedia-page 201). As far as I can
    tell, there were at least 235 of these cars rebuilt as all steel cars
    sometime between 1/52 and 4/55. However, I don’t have any ORERs between these
    dates to show the history. I do not have any photos of rebuilt cars from this
    series.

    The following list provides number of rebuilt USRA gons that were “All Steel,
    Fixed Ends” cars in service per ORERs (70351-73500 series). Note the January
    1952 ORER shows 389 in service, so the rebuilding was occurring over the
    period 1949-1951. Anyone with other ORERs is welcome to help refine these
    numbers to define the maximum number of rebuilt cars.

    April 1951 – 337 (47 additional composite cars and 6 modified with coke racks)
    January 1952 – 389 (no composite cars left)
    April 1955 – 378 cars
    April 1957 – 77 cars
    January 1959 – 5 cars

    Thus, the year 1951 ended the time when the MP USRA composite gondolas were
    in service. Hope this helps.
    Ed Hawkins

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