[Ray Swanson]

Thanks, Charlie. It was your question about the prototype cars that resulted in the photos being posted, so thanks for that, too. I had a really hard time finding any prototype images until I saw your thread.

I wish the decoration on the Walthers cars was a bit cleaner, but hopefully some weathering can disguise the rough areas. Despite the inconsistent printing quality on the car, the lettering does appear to be pretty accurate.

[Ray Swanson]

Nate, those are outlet gates from an undecorated Atlas ACF 4650. It comes with gravity and gravity-pneumatic outlet gates. I used some of the extra gravity-pneumatic outlet gates on some PS 3148 conversions.

[Ray Swanson]

Here are the undecorated Intermountain cars I assembled, painted and lettered for MP. I don’t know whose trucks I used; I tossed out the Intermountain trucks that came with the kits. Their old equalizing truck wasn’t bad, but the once piece truck that replaced it is awful.

I’m not a fan of Tru-Color paint having had some bad experiences painting other models, so I used a ScaleTrains Airslide hopper as a reference to mix the color using Model Master enamels since it was matched to the correct color (I learned that here in another thread). I used Microscale MC-4272 decals to letter the cars. Solvaset got a few of the labels so I’ll have to get another set to fill in and replace the missing and distorted decals:

https://pbase.com/mecrharris/image/171736882

https://pbase.com/mecrharris/image/171736883

As far as I can tell, this series of cars is a decent match for the Intermountain model. I have loads of the Athearn cars which should be a minority relative to these cars, so as I find more of these undecorated kits for cheap I’ll probably build some more.

I could really use one of these cars, but I don’t know enough about the prototype to know what to start with:

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=183804

[Ray Swanson]

I can’t wait to see you guys there!

[Ray Swanson]

Thank you, Nate.

[Ray Swanson]

I’ll be painting a couple of these Intermountain models in either MP 705500-705999 or 706800-706999 as delivered. These cars were delivered in what looks like a very light gray, almost white. Is there a good starting point for that color? Maybe match the paint on an existing model?

[Ray Swanson]

I bought some Walthers 4 door cars lettered for Milwaukee Road and removed the lettering thinking I could save the paint. I was able to keep the aluminum paint on the doors but I had to repaint the rest of the body. I ended up using MP initials on these though TP might have worked. One of the number jumbles on the Oddballs set used KO&G.

Here are the cars after repainting and applying the Oddballs decals:

[Ray Swanson]

That’s excellent information. Thanks!

[Ray Swanson]

Thanks, Nate!

[Ray Swanson]

Thanks, Ted. I’ll look up those codes if I can.

[Ray Swanson]

Thanks Charlie. That sounds very much like what I deal with at BNSF.

We had a car turn up lost (whoops!) and one of the yardmasters was showing me all the different reasons the work hadn’t been done/car hadn’t been delivered while the search was on. Management was having to get pretty creative for awhile according to the list of delay reasons. Not sure if they ever found that car.

[Ray Swanson]

@dhuelsing wrote:

Some of this material is covered in the MPHS 5 DVD set

http://www.mopac.org/store/cd-s-dvd-s/item/41-mphs-5-dvd-collectors-set

Thank you! Bookmarked for after Christmas…

[Ray Swanson]

I like your example, Ted. It’s similar to what I’m used to seeing on BNSF’s TSS, although the information is presented in a different way.

I’m pretty sure that the station code for Fort Worth is still the same; I seem to recall having TP250 on my UP track warrants. I’ve worked as an engineer on that MP to FW&D transfer job many times in its modern UP to BNSF form working as the YA110J (inbound) and YFW63 (outbound), so I’ve seen many wheel reports but never this side of things.

The car kind and STCC load kind are interesting. BNSF uses a different car kind code, and places the L/E information after the car kind, but I’m assuming the STCC code and descriptor are universal. Is there a master list of car kinds and STCC codes available for browsing?

Thanks very much for the breakdown on the trip plan!

[Ray Swanson]

That’s some great information. Amazing that it’s been around so long.

So, if you don’t mind, indulge me in a little scenario: a customer releases a car in zone 3, and the 64 job works zone 3, would the car automatically be assigned to the next day’s work on the 64 job? Was car routing to its destination also automated once the 64 job brought the car to the yard?

[Ray Swanson]

Far out! I would definitely be interested in acquiring a copy in whatever format you wish to offer.

Would you know if UP still uses this system today? We (BNSF) spot a couple legacy industries on former BN track that’s now UP track and a dispatcher asked us for the track ID. I don’t remember the term used, but we figured it was similar to the CLIC system we use.

[Author]

Posts