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Mike VanaParticipant
I hear there’s a really good book out on the Missouri-Illinois…
Mike VanaParticipantThe best explanation I heard was the official standard for the numerals and MISSOURI PACIFIC LINES lettering was “aluminum leaf” until the second world war intervened and it was impossible to obtain. This was actually thin aluminum sandwiched between layers of varnish. Ancillary lettering was stenciled “imitation aluminum” paint actually was a non-metallic light gray. Items like aluminum and brass were essential to the war effort and even the 2200 class engines originally had steel bell rather than brass.
What I’m unclear on is if they returned to the aluminum leaf after the war years or kept on using the paint. Maybe it was “aluminum leaf if you can find it and have a skilled person to apply it” and it could be Sedalia did its thing while Texas marched to the beat of a different drum.
Mike VanaParticipantProbably was moving wood chips to a paper mill until they figured out hoppers were a better choice of car.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantFor the sixties to early seventies vermillion red I have used Scalecoat I Daylight Red. I’ve often wondered with all the Great Northern people who moved over with Jenks decided that Vermillion Red was the only proper color for cabooses. Thank goodness it was before Big Sky Blue.
I think Jerry Michels even saw mid seventies memos chastising someone at Sedalia for the orange cabooses. So they adopted a real red like Kevin posted.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantLooks like I repeated my earlier post by mistake.
Here’s a photo of a container on a 50′ flatcar– don’t know who took it.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantAbout 15 years ago, Interurban Films (now defunct?) had a color VHS tape on the MoPac container operations circa 1956.. MoPac was really ahead of the curve with the idea of using unmodified gons and containers. The formation of Trailer Train orphaned this idea and others.
I think Dick Ryker did a PowerPoint talk at Naperville maybe ten years ago on this operation and also brought up McLeans “container on ship” concept.
The scuttlebutt that I heard is that the Pennsy invested a lot of money in their TrucTrain concept and was able to get a massive influx of cash from Trailer Train when it was formed since the number of specialty flatcars PRR contributed to TTX was more than all the other companies’ TOFC flatcars combined. TTX even standardized on the PRR hitch and tie down concepts. The PRR was ALWAYS looking for other people’s money from the late 50s until the Penn Central Merger and some even say Amtrak circa 1971 injected more money into buying decrepit PC equipment to prevent their bankruptcy the but that’s another discussion.
New York Central had tunnel issues so they worked with the FlexiVan concept also favored by Santa Fe and had a lot of mail contracts which kept it afloat. One has to think PRR wanted to leave the NYC out in the cold up until the merger.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantAbout 15 years ago, Interurban Films (now defunct?) had a color VHS tape on the MoPac container operations circa 1956.. MoPac was really ahead of the curve with the idea of using unmodified gons and containers. The formation of Trailer Train orphaned this idea and others.
I think Dick Ryker did a PowerPoint talk at Naperville maybe ten years ago on this operation and also brought up McLeans “container on ship” concept.
The scuttlebutt that I heard is that the Pennsy invested a lot of money in their TrucTrain concept and was able to get a massive influx of cash from Trailer Train when it was formed since the number of specialty flatcars PRR contributed to TTX was more than all the other companies’ TOFC flatcars combined. TTX even standardized on the PRR hitch and tie down concepts. The PRR was ALWAYS looking for other people’s money from the late 50s until the Penn Central Merger and some even say Amtrak circa 1971 injected more money into buying decrepit PC equipment to prevent their bankruptcy the but that’s another discussion.
New York Central had tunnel issues so they worked with the FlexiVan concept also favored by Santa Fe and had a lot of mail contracts which kept it afloat. One has to think PRR wanted to leave the NYC out in the cold up until the merger.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipant@cduckworth wrote:
Can a SME list what HO railcars models are good for moving a container? Sunshine Models did a couple gons and F&C has a panel gon. Who makes a flatcar that’s appropriate for these? Am sure these ran down the Bagnell Branch
I believe these only moved in local service. Were the T&P container facilities built to handle MP containers and vice versa?
The MoPac had some 50 flatcars that had an odd number of stake pockets (same as the Athearn car) but the side sill was tapered wrong that show up in some photos. Maybe the F&C gons are better.
TP also had their own Swamp Holly Orange smooth side containers and I’ve seen photos of the MoPac containers being unloaded near the large T&P warehouse in Fort Worth circa 1959. I also remember a mention in a Railway Age article that B&O was accepting MoPac containers and vice versa about 1958 but that was the only off line use I know of. PRR and Trailer Train pretty much ran nationwide.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantIt looks like the second GSC car (40’) is still in black.
Oddly enough the Athearn 40’ pulpwood car was copied from a MoPac home built car but I’ve always suspected it is oversized so they could use their 40’ flatcar underframe. I also have another MoPac prototype in resin by Sunshine models from the era of homebuilt cars.
Mike Adams (At the time an assistant trainmaster) loved to tell how he and a crew dropped off an empty pulpwood rack somewhere in Arkansas to a public team track and two different loggers with fully loaded trucks faced off over who had ordered the car. Both were waiting and had ordered a 40’ car.
As the local headed back to Gurdon Mike wondered if they decided the standoff over fisticuffs or if tire irons Had to be used.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantThat’s great news!
Gene showed several of us the “beta version” of the container earlier and this fills a void in our needs from 1956-1962 or so. I understand Baltimore and Ohio also went for the same “Demounrable” concept as Mopac but the Pennsy and affiliates (N&W for example) started Trailer Train and were adamant that all use their standards. New York Central was going full steam ahead with Flexi-Van at that time.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantI think it was 1967 for freight cars; 1962 was locomotives and passenger cars.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantPerhaps they were power short and needed 1723 on the road. It is a little more involved and time intensive to apply these decals than on one of our scale models.
I think 1872 had the end chevrons at too flat of an angle in its 1962 version, ran for a period after 1974 with the wide sill stripes and screaming eagle medallions and no end chevrons only to get the wide version at the same wrong angle as before.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipantSome of you already know this, but I’m currently teaching biology at the University of North Texas in Denton which has a noted jazz program.
The musicologists have been tracing the origins of boogie-woogie piano to the areas around Marshall and Shreveport. The current belief is it began camps for track workers and loggers with individuals who would get off a train, entertain the workers, and get back on the train very quickly (presumably after absconding with the money from a rigged dice or Faro game) to another location.
The left hand piano patterns were always referred to as “Tee Pee Stops” by the musicians with names like “Fast Texas” or “Fast Western” from the old Texas Western (before it became the T&P) or “The Marshall” or “The Fannin street” from a street in Shreveport notorious for its bars and “sportin’ women” in the 1890s. Someone finally figured out “Tee Pee stops” referred to stations on the T&P railroad and many of these patterns got more elaborate as one gets farther from Marshall. There is even a “Big Sandy” pattern invented in “Big Sand Switch” which was what the locals always called the town anyway.
So a case can be made the T&P began boogie woogie.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipant@Patrick wrote:
My friend in England asked the following:
“I assume real T&P locos did not have graphite boilers in regular service, but they may have had red lead paint on their cab roofs????? Do you know how the T&P painted their engines in the heyday of small steam?”
He is trying to model a couple of small TP steamers. Can anyone help him?
TP steam did in later years have a heat resistant silver paint—- to replace the earlier graphite and oil— on the smokebox and firebox. This got grimy and dark in service but they did keep the other areas wiped down and kept clean even if there was no Russia Iron paint. A gray can even be used here.
Graphite and oil was used since pre WW2 paints did not do well with heat. The red paint on the roof of the cab was originally red lead primer that was unpainted since it would react with real paint but usually became sooty over time.
Jim Ogden
Mike VanaParticipant@Patrick wrote:
Laff no. 2, or maybe a mystery, how Tyco came up with NOT&M for a toy train set “cattle car.”
Maybe a grey builders photo with black letters? Still MoPac was orange to Tyco but Santa Fe stock cars were teal green— I don’t think they knew about boxcar red. So I took a rattle can of rust colored primer to mine in 1968 since it seemed unnatural plus walthers decals. It looked like something worthy of a 7 year old. What is solvaset anyway?
I think the Mantua Heavy is a scaled up narrow gauge car that can be a stand in
Jim Ogden
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