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I happen to like the Drury Inns, in fact the only thing that got me to quit staying at the one in Wichita was buying a house there……
The 5:30 kickback is what regular people would call a happy hour. One of the other things I like about Drury is their habit of rescuing historic structures, like the downtown St. Louis Drury that happens to be the old Railroad YMCA. You should have seen the look on the kid’s face when I told him I’d stayed at that hotel forty years ago and he said, but, but, the Drury has only been here a couple of years ????
Back to the subject, I don’t think the Austin Drury is historic but it’s well located for our purposes and I’ll be happy to stay there.
RG7
Charlie:
If I were to guess, you were probably in one of those round roof cars (200s) because I think (all) of them were converted to bunk cars. I never saw one of these, after the first couple years of freight service, that wasn’t a bunk / office car. On the other hand, I don’t think any of these 135 cars ever had any conversion except to a tool car, meaning no conversion at all except to have parts stripped off it over time.
As for the shock absorbers on the trucks, I too have noticed some cars didn’t have them. For those, the Athearn express BX truck might be better. If there are other differences that split neatly along a 25 trucks one way and 25 another way, then maybe it’s really true that 25 pair came from under the old 86100s.
RG7
Idea — since the passenger car buzzsaw was 24″, maybe we could market those also as a 12″ buzzsaw in HO scale, maybe for MoW vehicles or office doors or something.
RG7
I should have good more-or-less broadside shots of the numbers. Let me look.
RG7
The Screaming Eagles site on Trainweb, created by Todd Grueter, has a lot of useful photos. In particular,
http://www.trainweb.org/screamingeagle/mow4.html
has several good underbody photos taken by the late Elvin Klepzig of a car that had all its original underbody equipment. Even the steam line is intact, except for the Barco joint being removed and the line capped off. There’s even some weathered asbestos in one view.
It’s pretty apparent where the air reservoir and the brake valve are in those photos, but it’s less obvious to me exactly where the brake cylinder is.
RG7
Re the underbody detail on these cars —
The diagram says the brake gear is AB-1B. I recall a post from Dennis Storzek on STMFC or somewhere on exactly what it is. From memory, it’s basically the same as a freight car AB brake with a few enhancements that might not be visible from trackside.
And of course, there’s the steam line, which was wrapped with asbestos insulation. I’m not positive about the line size or the insulation thickness, but I believe you’d end up with an effective 4″ diameter or so line under the car. MoPac had the steam line running close up under the floor from each end through the bolster, then dipping down a few feet past the truck so that it cleared the crossbearers. And of course the steam connection was on the left side of the coupler at each end, so it also crossed over the centersill. As such, it’s pretty visible under these cars.
RG7
I’m finally getting the plywood top on the second turnback loop, and it may be ready to go upstairs by the end of this weekend.
I moved everything inside before we left on vacation that fateful last week of August, and some time later I got the 50% complete module out of the storage room. Had it propped on one end, the wind knocked it over and broke a couple of pieces loose as well as bruising some of the corners. Then the Gulf Coast “winter” caused me to make very little progress for weeks, now I’m trying to wrap it up.
Discovered a design flaw when I tried to set the first turnback loop. It had six legs, four on the inside and two on the outside curve, about 2′ away from centerline. That was ok for weight balance and stability when being turned upright, but definitely not ok for supporting the outer corners. Without clamping to the next module, I had about 1/4″ of droop. So I’ll have to turn that module upside down, cut into the curve bracing and add two more leg clips on the train room floor. Oh well, there’s so much sawdust up there now a little more will only incrementally add to the mess.
I have two “air-suckers” (HEPA filter units), the old cylindrical Honeywell ones, up there and I think that does help keep down construction dust. Only thing is, the soft plastic wheels under those units are disintegrating so they no longer roll, but there’s a handle on top so no big deal except the disintegrating plastic smears a little on the floor. I don’t see an easy way of replacing the wheels, so I may just take them off.
One thing that helped with wiring the underside of the first turnback loop, and later with uprighting it, is I set it on 4x4s so it was a little ways off the floor, so I wasn’t kneeling so far. Then I raised the outer radius with more wood until it was at about a 20 degree angle before I tried lifting it.
RG7
Yes, the Microscale set would be good for these cars, or any blue passenger cars with the buzzsaw, with one exception, and that is I think the numbers in that set are the 8″ numbers that were used on locomotives after the late 60s. Earlier Jenks blue engines, and all passenger cars as far as I know, would have had 5″ numbers. That’s the size that was in the old Champ set.
Looking at other photos, for instance the ones in the Kinkaid book, there do not seem to be any end numbers, which were 3″ as on the B ends of F units.
The photos I’ve found so far don’t show the capacity marking on these cars clearly, or at all. MP wasn’t in a real hurry to apply that stenciling. The capacity markings visible on that photo above are stenciled on a 250 car. The 1970 SoE shows light weight of the 135 series as 67000, and the 200 and 250 series as 77800.
The correct truck for this car, and the 200 express cars, is the Athearn BX truck with 5′-10″ wheelbase, modified by removing the outer portions of the sideframe that would have held outside brake shoes. There are two similar trucks available, you want the one that has the shock absorber at the truck centerline. The truck under the 250 cars is longer wheelbase, and has outside brake hangers on one end only.
RG7
Just to remind us what we’re talking about, here is the car in question. Believe it or not, these cars weren’t always rusty red on some dead-end siding.
RG7
[attachment=0:315yfg4n]47-13 May 70.jpg[/attachment:315yfg4n]
Bill, you should see what else lurks in the background of those photos, especially ones he took around the Fort Worth depot area. A couple of them are probably the same cars that ended up in the RpCyc on late Pullman cars.
I must have picked up this CD at an MPHS meet. It’s all Dick Kuelbs photos, organized by Pat Coughlin. There’s an email on the cover, [email protected].
RG7
So I see. I’m reposting it as a smaller jpg.
[attachment=0:3oakw918]165-31 crop Jan 74.jpg[/attachment:3oakw918]
If you’d like the original tif, I can send it to you.
RG7
As close as I can recall, the buzzsaw used on vehicles was about 12″ diameter.
Ron Merrick
Following up on this thread, is there a drawing showing the height of the reporting marks and numbers for the T&P 1940s to 1961 stencil layout? This would apply to boxcars, gons and other cars where there wasn’t a physical size restriction.
I can estimate the size, but a drawing would be better. Or, if there is a car in Texas that still exists with this lettering, I could go measure it.
RG7
Here’s the one I’m specifically looking at. [attachment=0:1lj16o4j]img350.jpg[/attachment:1lj16o4j]
This one is smaller than the size applied to house cars. You can see that size on the Branchline HO boxcars and RBL models. The stenciling applied to flatcars might be 9″ or a little more.
Ron Merrick
December 28, 2017 at 7:36 pm in reply to: New book for com store MISSOURI PACIFIC THROUGH PASSENGER SERVICE In Color by Greg Stout MP C&EI #8583I’ll second the comments on this book. It has many photos I had never seen before, and especially important coverage on the Texas service. I’ll agree that the term ‘THROUGH’ in the title is somewhat misleading in the context in which railroaders use it, meaning a train or car that passes from one line to another. Nevertheless, I’m happy to have it and will undoubtedly be referring to it at times in the future.
Not answering any questions posed here, but I will note I saw the CEI 934B, 935B and 936B over a period of a month or so in Oct. 71, one at a time, in Wichita in freight service, all still having the steam boilers but all freshly painted.
RG7
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