Issue #169 January, 2011

Transcription

1 IrwinsJournal.com Presents: The Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report Issue #169 January, 2011 (Not affiliated with Micro-Trains Line, Inc.) Copyright 2011, George J. Irwin. Please see legal notice at the end of this document. Hello again everyone! If you have been waiting for heavyweight passenger cars painted for the Pennsylvania Railroad, it s your month, as we start to see releases from behind the red and yellow sign in that decoration. If you ve been waiting for the next series of Special Edition cars for a certain circus, we ve got that too. And if you ve been wondering about that NFL-like Upon further review comment in the December UMTRR Update regarding the Southern Pacific/Texas and New Orleans caboose, we have that as well. Hmm, does that go in Incremental Information or Oops Patrol? And what s up with the Presidential Trivia question this month? We ll all find out together N SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $22.95 Reporting Marks: BCOL Foot Steel Boxcar, Combination Plug and Sliding Door, British Columbia Railway. Green with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left roadname on right. Orange, white and green herald left of roadname. Approximate Time Period: early 1970s to late 1980s. A quick lookup in Ian Cranstone s Canadian Freight Cars site ( ) reminded me that this car comes from the same number series as the Pacific Great Eastern release on this body style, done by Micro-Trains back in September They are, in fact, the same series of cars, built by National Steel Car in October 1962 and numbered 4900 to Pacific Great Eastern became British Columbia Railway in 1972; any time after that, the cars in this group could have been repainted from PGE to BCOL. That s a good enough start for the Approximate Time Period. I think MTL is reading Cranstone s website too, as they pick up the end of service of 1988 for this group, although there is one thing we ll need to consider. Can you guess? We ll grab a representative copy of the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for the ATP. How about April 1981, where there remained a healthy quantity of 47 cars in service out of the original 50. They were described as Box, Steel, Staggered Doors, One Slide Door and One Plug Door Per Side with an AAR Classification of XM (your basic boxcar). The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 44 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 14 feet, and capacity 3900 cubic feet or 127,000 pounds. These cars could have been marked PGE or BCOL. I expect that the PGE version from MTL could easily co-exist with this new release on your model pike.

2 The July 1987 ORER showed 42 cars still in service of the original 50, so the dropoff to zero must have been fairly rapid. But it was, as the series is in fact gone by the July 1989 ORER which is the next in line in my accumulation. The only reference photo I could find is a bit of a stand in (and I guess turnabout is fair play since I use the phrase stand in at times to refer to MTL releases). The book Classic Freight Cars Volume 7 has a 1966 shot of one of this series of cars in Pacific Great Eastern paint. From it we can observe a door thing as the sliding door is eight feet wide versus a six foot door on the MTL model. The side sills are a bit different as well and the sides themselves are riveted. Though I d certainly rather have a more recent photo, I don t think the cars in British Columbia Railway paint would be materially different, with one exception: the roofwalk. Was that your guess? By 1978 when the BCOL 4947 was serviced according to Micro-Trains car copy, I think the running board would have been removed and the ladders possibly cut down. We can t know for sure without a reference photo, but we do know that MTL doesn t have a body style with a combination plug and sliding door and without a roofwalk and , $21.90 each Reporting Marks: BNSF and BNSF Foot Steel Flat Car, Straight Sides, Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Green with white lettering including reporting marks on right. Simulated generator load included (different between the 121 and 122 releases). Approximate Time Period: about 2008 to present. We get a bingo on BNSF on RRPictureArchives.net hurray. It was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania in July 2009, being used as an idler car between two overlength loads of utility poles that were being carried by two other flat cars. Now that deployment would make sense, even in the present, for a basic straight side flat car that is only fifty feet long. That s assuming that it s only fifty feet long. Okay, so I really need a more recent edition of the ORER now. The latest one I have is October 2007, and, well, the number series isn t listed it s too new! In its car copy, MTL says that these cars were painted for the Burlington Northern before being renumbered in The closest numbered cars to these are flat cars of 53 feet 6 inch inside length and 59 feet outside length. So, back to the photo, I guess. It s true that the prototype cars are of steel construction with wood floors. But to my eyes they look heftier than the MTL 044 body style, like something that was constructed in the later part of the 20 th Century, not the early to middle part of it. The MTL car looks more like it should have been painted for the Burlington, not the

3 Burlington Northern, much less the BNSF. It looks like the real has a brake lever, not a side mounted brake wheel. The paint job is pretty close including the conspicuity stripes. A somewhat less useful picture is a bingo on the other road number MTL used, also on RRPictureArchives.net. The primary subject of this April 2009 image is a Trailer Train flat car, LTTX , with another load of utility poles, with BNSF used as an idler car at the end where the poles stick out. Maybe the sole purpose of these BNSF flat cars is to add space for overlength loads. And maybe not: they re still classified as FM which is the AAR Designation for general service flat cars. That means they certainly could be used for carriage of the generator loads that MTL supplies with the cars. You ll still want to consider proper tiedown of these items for more realism , $24.40 Reporting Marks: SOO LINE (will be SOO in website listings). Three Bay Evans Covered Hopper, Soo Line Colormark. Aluminum with black lettering including reporting marks on left. Blue roadname across top of side. Blue and yellow wheat stalk device on right. Colormark legend at top left. Approximate Time Period: 1967 (build date given by MTL) to early decade of the 2000s. The Colormark methodology literally, marking cars by color depending on their use was in place on the Soo Line from approximately 1963 to So these cars, built in 1967, fit right in. I can t tell you which color meant what, though. That wheat stalk is probably a hint in this case, and this was not the only series that carried it. Micro-Trains gives 1967 as the build date of the car, and the New date on the car is We ll begin our look through the ORER Accumulation with the April 1970 edition. The series to 71449, odd numbers only, stood at 494 of the possible 500 cars as of that issue. They were described as Covered Hopper, Triple Hoppers with an inside length of 54 feet 2 inches, outside length of 57 feet 11 inches, extreme height of 15 feet 11 inches, and capacity of 4750 cubic feet or a somewhat unusual 209,000 pounds. An end note mentions trough hatches and three center discharge outlets. Eleven years later in April 1981 there were 455 cars remaining, and a bit more than ten years after that in October 1991 there were 418. Fifteen cars in the series made it all the way to the January 2000 ORER, and since we re down to individual car numbers listed I can confirm that the is among that group of survivors. Just don t expect a car built in 1967 to look very good in To illustrate this, Ken Harstine s Boxcars and Freightcars of North America ( ) includes a shot a car from the series that was taken sometime in the 1999 to 2002 range, that is so dirty and rusty that the car number can t be completely made out; it s 70xx5 in the caption. Though the car was built by Transco, not Evans, the familiar rib pattern is there. For a

4 better and much cleaner example of the paint scheme, although on the adjacent series of Soo Line cars, head to the Canadian Freight Car Gallery ( no www ) for a look at road number This is a Magor covered hopper that is of a somewhat different design, but the paint scheme is the same , $20.65 Road Number: 6513 (will be PRR 6513 in website listings). Railway Post Office Car, Pennsylvania Railroad. Tuscan red sides and ends. Black roof, underbody and trucks. Buff color lettering including roadname extended across center of letterboard. United States Mail / Railway Post Office and road number at bottom center. Approximate Time Period: probably 1940s to mid-1960s, but see text. We ll get the see text part out of the way, since it s the main point here: this car, while nice looking and well painted in a PRR paint scheme, is a stand in for the M70 class of what the railroad called Mail cars. According to diagrams on Rob s Pennsy Page, as built the M70 was over 74 feet long. The M70ba Railway Post Office car to which it was rebuilt was that same length and had a very different window arrangement. The MTL body style is of a sixty foot car so it s not just a case of rearranging the windows. I suppose it is a case of providing an RPO car in Pennsylvania Railroad paint for those who want well, an N Scale RPO in Pennsylvania Railroad paint. And there are some of those folks out there. A photo of sister car 6511 appears in Morning Sun s PRR Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Volume 1 though it s not labeled that way), Page 8. It s in a later paint scheme without the roadname and with PRR keystone heralds at each end. The photo is from 1971 which is post-penn Central merger, but even so that helps us a little with the Approximate Time Period. It s also mentioned that only ten of this class were left as of the merger date. Not surprising considering the cutback in Railway Post Office service that was taking place during the 1950s and 1960s. (The last RPO route on rails, from New York to Washington, was discontinued on June 30, 1977.) The start of the ATP is a bit more of a guess. MTL lettered this car in the same buff shade of yellow that it used for the Pullman. The transition of lettering across the letterboard from Pullman to Pennsylvania which occurred with the divestiture of Pullman equipment to the railroads doesn t apply since the PRR always owned the RPOs directly. I ll go with a probably on this one, but subject to a large grain of salt , $24.30

5 Car Name: Villa Royal. Pullman Heavyweight Sleeper, Pennsylvania Railroad. Tuscan red sides and ends. Black roof, underbody and trucks. Buff lettering including roadname extended across center of letterboard and car name at bottom center. Approximate Time Period: after 1948 to April The first of what will be at least four releases of the Pullman in Pennsylvania Railroad paint (counting the three cars in the Runner Pack, below) is a bit lesser of a match to the prototype than we d like. Information in Tom Madden s Pullman Project database confirms some of MTL s car copy: the car was originally built as the El Monte to Plan 2585 and placed in service in In 1931 it was rebuilt to the Villa Royal. However, that car used Plan 3411A. That s not quite the same as the Plan 3585 that s the basis for the MTL model. I ve seen one reference to this being a 10-3 car instead of a car; that is, remove the drawing room and substitute another compartment while keeping the ten sections. A 1962 photo of the car in Morning Sun s PRR Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume 2, Page 24, shows a difference in window arrangement versus the model as well, at least on the side that we can see. This is even though the caption states that the car is a rebuilt from a Perhaps we have some misinformation here. Anyway, it s noted that in April 1963 the Pennsy withdrew this car from Pullman service and rebuilt it again, to become work-equipment car with number The Pullman Project database confirms the withdrawal from service date so I can be very specific on the end of the Approximate Time Period. I ve picked the start of the ATP based on the paint scheme with the large roadname on the letterboard, following the sale of the Pullman cars to the Pennsylvania Railroad. N SCALE REPRINTS: , $15.95 Reporting Marks: USLX Foot Steel Box Car, Double Plug Door, Evans Leasing / Tropicana Orange Juice. Green with white lettering including reporting marks on left. White Tropicana on left and white and orange 100% Pure Orange Juice lettering on right. Approximate Time Period: 1974 to 1981 at most, see text. Previous Releases (as catalog 75040): Road Number 13085, August 1996; Road Number 13087, December Paint scheme was also released on Catalog (with a roofwalk) and Road Number in November Back in 2002 when the most recent reprint of this car appeared, I did a quick rundown of the history of the company now known as Tropicana. It began in 1947 as an effort by one man, Anthony Rossi, to improve the quality of the fruit boxes he sold to New York department stores. Rossi moved to the source-- Florida-- and did so. But when he observed that a lot of smaller fruit wasn t being picked to go in these boxes, and could be turned into juice instead,

6 things really got going. Fruit Industries Incorporated changed direction, and with a series of technological innovations, Tropicana became the leader in the sale of fresh orange juice to American homes. In 1951 the Tropic-Ana character was introduced, and six years later the company name changed to Tropicana Products. Just in time to christen the world's first and only orange juice tank ship, the S.S. Tropicana. (The S.S. Fruit Industries just doesn't roll off the tongue.) The company went public in 1959 and remained independent until the game of who owns this? started in 1978 when Beatrice Foods bought Tropicana in a friendly takeover. The firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts took over Beatrice in you do remember junk bonds, don t you?-- and Seagram s, the maker of beverages of an entirely different sort, purchased it in There was one more change in August of 1998, when Pepsico-- yep, that one-- acquired Tropicana from Seagrams as a further expansion of its beverage business. That put Pepsi in direct competition with Coca-Cola in another battlefield as Coca- Cola owned, and owns, the Minute Maid line of juices. Besides juice, what Tropicana is probably best known for, at least as far as model railroaders are concerned, are the juice trains. Starting in 1970, Tropicana Orange Juice was being shipped north from Florida to Kearny, New Jersey in insulated boxcars. On June 7, 1971 the great white train consisting of only Tropicana insulated boxcars began operation. This was the first-ever food unit train, doing for juice what had previously been done for coal and other bulk commodities. The Juice Train continues today, though Tropicana gave up its Kearny facility for a new, larger one in Jersey City. The previous reprint carries a build date of June 1974, and I can confirm that closest ORER I own dated before then, April 1970, doesn t show these cars in the entry for the United States Railway Equipment Company. The July 1974 Equipment Register does have the series USLX to 13089, with description Box, Insulated, Dual Air Pack Bulkheads, 29 cars. They had an inside length of 52 feet 5 inches and outside length of 60 feet, with inside height of 9 feet 1 inch, extreme height of 15 feet 1 inch, and capacity 4149 cubic feet or 132,000 pounds. I m not at all sure I buy the given door opening of 26 feet 2 inches though! If true, why, we would certainly have a door thing versus the model. These cars were either short-lived or didn t have these particular road numbers very long. By the time we get to the April 1981 ORER, by which time the United States Railway Equipment Company had become the Evans Railcar Leasing Company, the series is no longer listed. Ken Harstine s Boxcars and Freight Cars of North America site ( ) comes through with a reference photo dated as mid 1970s. USLX clearly doesn t have a 26 foot door opening, but it also has short side ladders whereas the MTL 075 body style has full ladders. We already know that the MTL body is less long compared to the actual Evans double plug door cars. But the good news is that we can confirm the paint scheme. However, another reference photo I found on Fallen Flags for the series of cars dates to 1978, and the USLX is painted for States Veneer, not Tropicana. There are several possible interpretations of this. First, it s possible Tropicana never leased all of these cars. Second, it s possible that Tropicana gave up the lease on them by In the absence of other information, I ll go with the latter and further suggest that the USLX cars did not see regular service on the Juice Trains. I think we have a pretty short ATP here, but one that I

7 expect will be cheerfully violated by accumulators who will invoke Rule #1. (It s your railroad.) , $23.20 Reporting Marks: CR Foot Excess Height Boxcar, Double Plug Door, Waffle Sides, Conrail. Brown with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left and roadname and herald on right. Approximate Time Period: 1978 (build year) to present. Previous Release (as Catalog ): Road Number , June Back in 1978 when this car was constructed, Conrail had a pretty motley collection of equipment, some still lettered for the predecessors of the merged roads it had absorbed; and it needed new rolling stock just to be able to retain the business it had without getting socked with the per diem charges that come from using other roads cars. This group of boxcars numbered to was part of the revitalization effort, and there would be more to come, nostalgic or not. The ORER from April 1981 describes this group as Box, Steel, Cushion Underframe, Plug Doors, Belt Rails to Accept PDQ Pallets, Rub Rails, Assigned Service B63B. The inside length was 60 feet 9 inches, inside width 9 feet 1 inch, inside height 13 feet 2 inches, outside length 67 feet 9 inches, extreme height 17 feet, door opening 16 feet, and capacity 7321 cubic feet or 165,000 pounds. The cars are shown as exceeding Plate F dimensions. The count is already down one to 29. In the October 1996 Equipment Register there were 27 remaining. In 1999 Conrail was split up between Norfolk Southern and CSX, but the good news for our continued tracking of the cars is that the series went to NS and there were 20 of the original 30 cars still shown lettered CR to Our friend Joe Shaw has a page covering the Conrail B63B cars on his website (at the URL ). Joe notes that Berwick Forge and Fabricating built two groups of cars for Conrail which differed in internal equipment and side sill arrangement and were in adjoining series, and He adds that the April 2001 ORER shows identical critical dimensions for both series. Joe has photos of CR from July I think he once told me that these cars were fairly frequent visitors to his area of Virginia and the number of images he has is proof! Wrapping up the lookups of the series in which we re interested, I can take us to the January 2007 ORER where there are still 13 of the original 30 cars shown in service. And yes, I really do need a newer edition of the Equipment Register! But I can be fairly confident of a to present ATP given the image of the exact car number CR that MTL reprinted, found as of April 2008 at Laporte, Indiana and available on RRPictureArchives.net. The car looks to be in pretty good shape and has had conspicuity stripes added.

8 N SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following items were announced as an off-cycle release via the Micro-Trains website on December 14 and via the Micro-Trains E-Line on December , $24.70 Reporting Marks: TCX Foot Single Dome Tank Car, Texaco. Black with white lettering including company name and reporting marks on left and TEXACO brand name on right. Moderate weathering applied particularly simulated rust on top of tank. Approximate Time Period: 1929 (build date on car) to as late as the 1950 s. Previous Releases: Road Numbers 8246 and 8268, May Except to note that this is a new road number, I ve already discussed as much as I can about this particular car twice during 2010; first with the pre-review of Z Scale Runner Pack #20 in March and second with the virtual two pack in N Scale released in May. Nothing new has been received at UMTRR HQ since then, so I ll refer you to those back issues of the column , $29.95 Reporting Marks: CN (note road number obscured on side shown on MTL website). 3 Bay ACF Center Flow Covered Hopper, Trough Hatches, Canadian National. Gray with mostly black lettering including roadname (one side English Canadian and one side French Canadien ) and reporting marks on left and large wet noodle herald on right. White simulated reflective stripes along bottom sill. Light to moderate weathering applied and large multicolor graffiti JAMA across bottom of one side. Approximate Time Period: mid-1990 s (1995 build date) to present. Previous Releases: Road Number , May 2005; Road Number , June Like the Texaco tank car above, this is also a new road number brought directly to weathering. However, the image shown on the MTL website shows the side with graffiti covering that road number! A quick call to Micro-Trains got it. As noted in the June 2010 UMTRR, this series of cars CN to was built in 1995 and 1996 by the Trenton Works and the MTL model won t be an exact match. Prototype photos abound online. Though I didn t get a bingo on the , I did see other cars in the group that weren t, er, clean either. N SCALE RUNNER PACKS:

9 In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #47, Four Union Pacific boxcars, is now available. UMTRR coverage was provided in the July 2010 issue. The following item is in pre-order at present is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is August UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close January 31. Please note that artwork is for representation only and actual models may vary. Scheduled August 2011 Release: Runner Pack #54: , $64.95 Car Names: Lake Maitland, Lake Merritt, Lake Stearns. Quantity three of Pullman Heavyweight Sleepers, Pennsylvania Railroad. Tuscan sides and ends. Black roof, underframe and details. Buff color lettering including roadname extended across top center, Pullman at top left and top right, and car name at bottom center. Single buff stripe above windows and double buff stripe below windows. Approximate Time Period: after 1948 to mid-1960s. Previous Release: Villa Royal, January 2011 (it will be a Previous Release by August!). Photos of all three cars selected for this Runner Pack are in Morning Sun's PRR Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Volume 1 though it s not labeled that way). Lake Maitland, Lake Stearns and Lake Merritt were all captured on film in Dallas or Fort Worth in 1963 and 1964 and appear on Pages 24 and 25 of that book. They are also all called out as Pullmans. A reference list of all PRR Owned Pullman Heavyweight Parlor and Sleeping Cars compiled by D. Garrett Spear appears on Rob s Pennsy Page ( no www ) and confirms the use of the 3585 plan for these three cars. And if you want to get technical, the cars had road numbers as well: Lake Maitland was 8665, Lake Merritt was 8666 and Lake Stearns was According to Tom Madden s Pullman Project database, these cars were repainted from Pullman Standard paint to the PRR paint scheme in April 1951, October 1949 and June 1950 respectively. This would have been after the sale of the cars from Pullman to the Pennsy as part of the 1948 divestiture. So I suppose I could say after 1948 for the start of the Approximate Time Period. I will go with mid-1960s for the end of the ATP though the actual Withdrawn From Service dates listed in the Pullman Project database vary (February 1964, March 1965 and February 1964 respectively). The caption accompanying another photo of the Lake Maitland in the Morning Sun PRR Color Guide Volume 2, Page 24, notes that that car was transferred to work equipment and remarked to PRR

10 A more interesting question that has come up online is whether three of this style of Pullman would be found together on a Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train. I can t say that definitively and will need to leave that exercise to the reader. I did make a cursory review of a single internal PRR document called List of Pullman Sleeping and Parlor Cars from June 1941, available on Rob s Pennsy Page as a PDF file, which lists by destination and train number the equipment available. I did not see any examples in which there was more than one car called out. In addition to the one I quickly checked, there are many other documents available, not the least of which are those good old copies of The Official Guide to the Railways. Will any of this information affect sales of this Runner Pack? At most, probably only at the margins. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: Announcements for another item. In addition to the below, please see MTL , $ Foot Despatch Stock Car, Ringling Brothers Big Top Extravaganza Car #1, The Great Gargantua. Reporting Marks RBBX Orange and red sides, red roof, ends and door. Multicolor placard with depiction of gorilla on left. Multicolor placard with wording Ringling Bros. The Great Gargantua The World s Most Terrifying Creature! on right. I was, frankly, debating how much of an effort I was going to put into the reviews of this latest Special Edition Series. For one thing, the price point is pretty steep at $34.95 each, probably resulting in a niche inside a niche market for MTL on this new set of releases. But as it turns out, there is a story to tell. The Great Gargantua was an actual circus animal. He is credited as saving the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus as it, like many other entertainment companies, struggled with the effects of the Great Depression. Originally named Buddy, the animal was captured in the then Belgian Congo in 1929 and presented as a gift to a freighter captain. Originally friendly, he became aggressive and less controllable after a sailor threw nitric acid in his face after a dispute with that the freighter captain. Buddy was then given to Gertrude Lintz of Brooklyn, New York, who worked with sick animals. Lintz s husband helped repair the damage caused by the attack. Lintz kept Buddy for a while but also could not completely control the situation well, we are talking about a wild animal here. Buddy was sold to John Ringling in 1937 and was renamed Gargantua at Ringling s wife s suggestion for a much more fearsome sounding name. The scarring from the nitric acid attack made the animal look more menacing. A special cage was built for him and he debuted in the circus in April He was an instant hit and became a star attraction of the show. Gargantua was given a mate in 1941 but wasn t particularly interested in her. He died in November 1949 of double pneumonia.

11 The likeness of The Great Gargantua that appears on the MTL car is derived from a Ringling Brothers advertising poster, as is the verbiage on the right hand side of the car. The World s Most Terrifying Creature! is one of the taglines used to publicize his appearances , $ Foot Boxcar, Plug Door, Without Roofwalk, Full Ladders, Presidential Series #29: Benjamin Harrison (23rd President). Cream sides and ends with green roof and black lettering. Multicolor rendition of the Seal of the President of the United States and dates in office on left. Name of Vice President, home state of president and party affiliation at bottom left. Multicolor portrait of president in front of red, white and blue rendition of American flag in service during presidency on right. You can certainly count Benjamin Harrison among the list of Presidents that I knew just about nothing about prior to starting my research for this Special Edition. Historians have, until recently, been somewhat dismissive about him as well, rating him as no better than mediocre. They point to his aloof manner even his cabinet called him the human iceberg in private and some policy decisions, most notably high tariffs, that led to the Panic of 1893 and the worst depression in American history up to that time. What was being mistaken for aloofness or even arrogance was probably more likely confidence. Benjamin Harrison was born in Ohio on August 20, 1833, the grandson of former president William Henry Harrison and the great-grandson of Colonel Benjamin Harrison of Virginia who signed the Declaration of Independence. From almost the start of his life, he expected to do great things. Harrison grew up relatively comfortably, was a good student, married his college sweetheart, became a lawyer, and moved to Indiana. He joined the newly formed Republican Party and rose through its ranks, working on the John Fremont and Abraham Lincoln campaigns and holding a series of party offices. During the Civil War, Harrison served under General Sherman and was present for the Atlanta campaign. Following the war Harrison returned to politics on a state and then more of a national basis. He became head of the Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention, then served as a Senator from Indiana from 1881 to During his term, the agenda he would advocate as President began to take shape: pensions for Civil War veterans, statehood for Dakota (at the time, thought of as one, not two states), wilderness conservation, and especially protectionist tariffs. When the state legislature (which selected Senators until the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913) shifted from Republican to Democratic control, Harrison lost his Senate seat. Though he had little power base, he decided to run for the Republican nomination for the Presidency in The nominee for the 1884 election, James Blaine (whom you might recall as Blaine of Maine in previous commentaries) could not garner enough support for yet another run and threw his support to Harrison. Harrison won nomination on the eighth

12 ballot. The personal campaign between incumbent Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison was, to put it mildly, low-key; Harrison stayed at home in Indianapolis and Cleveland made exactly one appearance. The parties themselves campaigned for their nominees much more forcefully. The key issue in the election was tariffs. Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, making Benjamin Harrison the 23 rd President. Republicans also had control of the Senate and the House of Representatives. During Harrison s term, the high tariffs proposed were enacted, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was signed into law, and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which required the Treasury to buy up silver was passed. This was a trade-off to get the Western states to agree to the tariffs, but it had a number of unintended consequences including a drop in the price of silver resulting from increased production. Six states, all in the West, were added during Harrison s term, a quantity of admissions greater than under any other President: North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming. On the foreign affairs front, Harrison laid the groundwork for the big stick policy of Teddy Roosevelt, for example advocating what became the Panama Canal and the annexation of Hawaii (neither of which happened during Harrison s term). However, while all of this was going on, Harrison s apparently cold demeanor and a falling out with James Blaine set the stage for a historic reversal of fortune in We ll cover that when we discuss Grover Cleveland s second term, whenever that is. Following his presidency, Harrison took on an elder statesman role and wrote books until his death from pneumonia on March 13, The Miller Center notes that when compared with the Roosevelts, Wilson, and Truman activist Presidents of the twentieth century, men who fought wars, managed empires, and confronted economic depressions Harrison's ranking looks average. Few historians today, however, would judge him as mediocre or insignificant. Now, to the trivia question and what kind of a question is this? On Lincoln s return trip to Coles County in 1861, he missed his rail connection at Mattoon, so the President-elect rode part of the way in which piece of the freight train consist? What? The answer to that isn t a President er, right? Well, I would have guessed this anyway, but a website called The Historical Marker Database transcribes a particular marker we need entitled Lincoln s Last Visit / The Debaters in Mattoon. That would be Mattoon, Illinois, in Coles County, in January It s noted that the last leg of Lincoln s trip, Lincoln rode in a caboose. Hopefully there s still enough time to get those entries into mtl@micro-trains.com, and good luck!

13 Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE): , $21.80 Reporting Marks: CONX 35 Single Dome Tank Car, Conoco (Continental Oil Company). Black with white lettering including reporting marks on left and large CONOCO across side. Approximate Time Period: mid-1930s to early 1940s. Officially a new release, but issued with Road Number 44 as a Special Run designed by Manfred Curbach and sold through Tex-N-Rails in September 2003, NSC # Is it really a new body style as advertised in the Micro-News for January? No, and no. But hey, a just about anything new will most likely be welcome in Nn3, even if what it s really just a repurposed Z Scale item. Which, basically, it is. The September / October and November / December 2003 issues of The N Scale Collector (see, those back issues do come in handy sometimes!) contained identical advertisements for new body style Conoco Nn3 32 foot tank cars in three paint schemes: white on black with large CONOCO like this release, white on black without the CONOCO, and green on silver with large CONOCO. It s noted in the ad that these were used in the area of the Denver and Rio Grande Western, the Rio Grande Southern and the Colorado and Southern. In the case of the C&S and the D&RGW, that would be the three-foot gauge portions of the railroads. Each Special Run car cost $24.95 plus shipping at the time, again underscoring how Special Runs are usually more expensive than their Regular Run counterparts since this release from more than seven years later has a sticker price that s about thirteen percent less than the special run carried. I don t think there s any worries about the fate of the Special Run Conoco cars though as they re long ago sold out and were made in very limited quantities. Meanwhile, I would not be at all surprised to see the other two Conoco paint schemes released by Micro-Trains in short order. At the time of the Special Run, it was confirmed to me that this new body style Nn3 car was simply the Micro-Trains Z Scale tank car bodies with lettering appropriate for narrow gauge N Scale. Going back farther in model rolling stock history though, this body style was originally tooled by Nelson Gray and sold to Micro-Trains when Gray retired. It s noted on the YahooGroup Nn3 that N Scale narrow gauge trucks are not identical to Z Scale trucks. We should also note that a 39 foot long Z Scale tank car would scale out to something like 28 feet long in N Scale just because the rails are closer together doesn t mean that the scale proportions change. That may be fairly close to the actual size of the prototype Conoco tank cars, though. I am hardly an expert here but by pulling together various bits of information around the web including the YahooGroup HOn3, it looks like what we have in the MTL model is a stand in for the wide frame Conoco tank cars that were in use on the narrow

14 gauge lines of Colorado. The real one were 6800 gallon cars with an inside diameter of 76 inches and a dome height of 28 inches. These cars were apparently utilized for inbound shipments of product to bulk oil distributors. The ORER for April 1928 shows 1098 cars in the registration for the Continental Oil Company, including a series of 60,000 pounds capacity cars numbered 21 to 40 inclusive. There s no mention of whether these cars were in use on narrow gauge railroads. But again working with information from the HOn3 group, it looks like these cars were built in 1925 and were in the black and white paint scheme MTL depicts by Apparently these cars were scrapped or sold in I ll call the Approximate Time Period based on this information; reinforcing this, the January 1943 ORER shows the group of Conoco tank cars numbered 21 to 46 and the January 1945 ORER does not. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES: and , $22.60 each. Reporting Marks: GN and GN Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, No Roofwalk, Short Ladders, Great Northern. Green with white lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left and outline goat herald on right. Approximate Time Period: late 1960s (based on paint scheme) to early 1980s. We sort of have an online reference photo for this car, although it s not as good as I d prefer. The only Great Northern boxcar in this paint scheme that I could find is on RailcarPhotos.com and it s a circa 1974 photo of GN That car is not from the same series but it is a boxcar with roofwalk removed, shortened ladders and a six foot door. Most importantly, it s in Glacier Green with the final version of the GN herald. At least we can confirm that this paint scheme existed! I could locate photos of other cars in the actual number series that MTL used, but they were in a variety of other paint schemes that predate this one. The ORER for January 1967 is as close as I can get to the introduction of the Great Northern s new image and final paint scheme, and therein we find the series GN to It s your basic Box, All Steel and AAR Designation XM with inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet even, outside length 41 feet 9 inches, extreme height 14 feet 7 inches, door opening 6 feet, and capacity 3715 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. There were 459 cars in the series at the time out of a possible 475. You might already see from the dimensions that this isn t an exact match for the MTL body style; Micro- Trains notes in its car copy that the cars were built by Pressed Steel Car in 1948, which means they are not PS-1 boxcars and the body style is not an exact match. The rest of my ORER lookups are for these cars under the Burlington Northern registration but still in the Great Northern series. In April 1970 there were 438 cars in the group, 333 in

15 April 1975 and just 36 in April 1981 which is where I stopped looking. Remember, though, not all of the cars in the series would have been repainted into this version of the GN s decoration, which could affect the length of the Approximate Time Period , $ Reporting Marks: NIRX Foot Plug Door Boxcar, Trona Chemicals (Kerr-McGee). Gray sides and roof, blue ends and side sill. Black lettering including reporting marks on left. Red, white and blue Kerr-McGee and Trona Chemicals logos left of center. Blue and white North American logo on right. Approximate Time Period: early 1970s to mid 1980s at most. Trona, the chemical, is a carbonite mineral used as the primary source of sodium carbonate, also known as soda ash, in the United States. Soda ash is a key ingredient in the making of some types of glass. And here s your useless trivia for this issue: sodium carbonate is also an ingredient in kansui, which gives ramen noodles their flavor and texture. I wouldn t know this personally; as I was never quite that starving of a college student. I ll thought I d go with the late 1960s as the start of the Approximate Time Period for this car since Kerr-McGee bought the American Potash and Chemical Company in So the use of the Trona Chemicals trademark couldn t have been any earlier than that. Right? Well, not quite so fast, as I uncovered an 1956 advertisement for American Potash that used a different Trona trademark. On the other hand, the use of the Kerr-McGee and Trona logos together wouldn t have occurred until after the corporate merger. Ah, yes, I m still OK. In terms of an image of the prototype, can we settle for NIRX 14018, just one number away, as found on George Elwood s Fallen Flags website ( ) in a photo from August 1971? We see from the photo that the prototype car has riveted sides and details differ from the 507 body style. There is a full side ladder on the right and there s a short ladder on the left (not stirrups as on the MTL model). But here s the most important observation: there s no roofwalk and there is a warning Keep Off Roof No Running Board at the bottom right of the side of the car pictured. However, I m not sure in this case that a single photo of a sister car is enough to state definitively that the model should not have a roofwalk. Maybe the ORER Accumulation helps out here. These cars are not in the April 1970 Equipment Register but they do show up in the July 1974 ORER. (Which is a contradiction of the service date of June 1968 that MTL gives, I know.) Under the registration for the North American Car Company in that issue, the series NIRX to is listed as AAR Classification RBL which technically makes them Refrigerator cars but that was common for plug door boxcars. The inside length was 50 feet 1 inch, inside width 9 feet 3 inches,

16 inside height 9 feet 10 inches, outside length 57 feet 8 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 10 feet (a door thing versus the MTL model but harder to notice with a plug door car) and capacity 4618 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. An appearance date between 1970 and 1974 certainly does suggest that the cars shouldn t have roofwalks since, at least in theory, most cars with roofwalks were banned from interchange service as of In the April 1981 ORER there were 24 of the possible 25 cars and the description had become more detailed, reading Refrigerator, Considered Part of Car: Fork Lift Truck Pallets or Platforms or Skids. Before the April 1984 ORER, North American Car Company became part of General Electric Railcar Services, but the reporting marks stayed the same and there were 16 cars remaining in the series. By this point I think the roofwalks would have been gone, but this quickly becomes a moot point as the series is eliminated sometime between the July 1987 ORER and the July 1989 ORER. I wonder whether this whole set of 25 cars was leased, at least initially to Kerr-McGee. This certainly seems plausible to me given both the relatively small quantity of cars and the fact that there is photo evidence that the company leased other boxcars from North American Car Company as well. Whether the ATP for the boxcars is the same as the ATP for the Kerr- McGee lease is another question, which unfortunately our research library cannot answer and , $19.95 each. Reporting Marks: SP and SP Two Bay PS-2 Steel Covered Hoppers, Southern Pacific. Gray with mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left and large roadname in black lettering across car. Approximate Time Period: early 1960s or mid-1970s to late 1990s. While these cars, in the series to , were built in 1957 by Pullman-Standard as noted in the MTL car copy, the as-delivered scheme is not what Micro-Trains chose for their models. That would have been a perhaps more familiar decoration with the SP round herald and a smaller roadname on the right, with lettering color one of black, red or yellow. Kadee did two numbers of that scheme in HO, and the Amarillo Railroad Museum commissioned two additional road numbers. Based on photos on Lee Gautreaux s Railgoat website (at ) the as-delivered paint scheme lasted on at least one car in the group until at least 1996, so there was a co-existence with the later paint scheme that MTL selected. When did that later bold roadname SP lettering appear on these Class H cars? Well, the service date of February 1963 might be a good guess. However, strictly speaking, we also need to consider the double panel consolidated stencils which appeared in the 1970s. A 1985 photo of sister car SP has that bold roadname and double panel consolidated stencils, though not quite in the same place as on the MTL model. A 1981 image of the SP has

17 the same, but the consolidated stencils are in yet another location, and there s yet another place they re put on the SP as found in Er, can you say inconsistency? The SP listing in the January 1964 ORER combines the Class H and H covered hoppers into the group to (The H-70-18s were built by Pullman-Standard in 1958 but for our purposes are basically the same as the H-70-16s.) There were 448 of a possible 450 cars described as Hopper, Covered, All Steel with inside length of 29 feet 3 inches, outside length of 35 feet 3 inches, extreme height of 13 feet 3 inches and capacity of 2003 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. I went next to the April 1975 Equipment Register which should be at or close to the start of the strictly speaking ATP to find 429 cars still in service at the time. The quantity dropped to 290 cars in the January 1985 ORER. After seeing 32 in the April 1999 Equipment Register, just one car remains in the January 2000 issue, these last two being part of the Union Pacific registration with SP reporting marks and , $31.70 each. Reporting Marks: CSXT A and CSXT B. Husky-Stack Well Car, CSX Intermodal. Black with white lettering including reporting marks on left and CSX Intermodal in center. 40 foot container included (American President Lines, aluminum with red logo; or K-Line, red with white lettering and logo, depending on release). Approximate Time Period: 1990s to present at most, but more likely mid-decade of the 2000s. This might be another blame me release if the color is wrong. I had a pretty long conversation with the folks at MTL about this car, namely, is it really black? Images taken in April 2006 are posted on the website RRPictureArchives.net, and the five units of the real CSXT , which is a Maxi-Stack III not a Gunderson Husky-Stack by the way, sure look black to me. Or it s the dirtiest blue I ve ever seen, which means Micro-Trains has done the weathering for you! A shot of one of the five units of CSXT from the same series reveals a well car that looks just as black. But to be fair, there are also images with five-unit cars from the same group in blue and also with the X from CSX Intermodal removed. And just to make things even more confusing, an August 2006 image of the A unit of the , also found on RRPictureArchives, is partially blue, mostly where the lettering isn t, and partially black, mostly where the lettering is, and neatly divided at that with straight lines between the colors as if repainted. If the black is really due to road grime, wouldn t it have been removed where the lettering is and not where it isn t?

18 According to the October 2007 ORER, the latest one I have, the road number MTL chose belongs to the series CSXT to There were 29 five-unit sets listed out of a possible 30. Total length is 304 feet 5 inches! These also appear to be the only well cars that could handle 48 foot containers in the CSX roster-- well, at least in the s. MTL says in its car copy that they don t know exactly when these cars were built but we can narrow it down. In fact, I did previously, in the January 2009 UMTRR when I pre-viewed the CS Intermodal Runner Pack #7 which consisted of other cars from this same series, painted in blue. The ORER for July 1989 does not have this group of cars while the October 1991 ORER does. Dave Ferrari noted to me that he s got a build date of 1990 which aligns with what the ORERs indicate. What does that tell us about the paint scheme? Er, nothing, although Dave also told me that he s been told these were never painted anything but blue. I see I did cite early 1990s to present for the Runner Pack ATP and I think I ll use that range again with an at most caveat. Based on the April 2006 date of the photos that seem to show the prototype as black, I ll give a most likely ATP as a bonus. MTL picked the A and B units for this virtual two pack since they are similarly painted. The other units don t have reporting marks. You could probably get away with grabbing an extra three cars from this release and removing the reporting marks to create a five unit set, if you don t mind that the adjoining units actually share trucks , $ Road Number: 293 (will be preceded with UP in website listings). GP9 Diesel, Union Pacific. Armour yellow with gray band and red stripes. Gray underframe, trucks and details. Red lettering including roadname and road number on long hood, slogan We Can Handle It and road number on cab and small initials and road numbers on ends. White on black numberboards. Approximate Time Period: Early 1970s based on paint scheme to 1980 for this specific unit and late 1970s to early 1980s in general. I ll start with the retirement date of the UP 293 from UtahRails.net since it s the first data point I found. That was August 1980, followed by sale for scrap to Naporano Iron and Metal in Newark, New Jersey in January If you used Newark Airport and took off to the north or landed to the south, or if you traveled the New Jersey Turnpike around Exit 15E, you ve probably seen this last resting place for many a locomotive. Most of the forty-five GP9s numbered from 250 to 294 were sent to various scrappers around the country, though a few found their way to shortlines or were traded in for newer power. The road number 293 was later given to a GP38. That s the end of the Approximate Time Period, how about the beginning? That s going to depend on the slogan on the cab. We Can Handle It debuted on UP diesels in late October 1972, again according to Utahrails.net, replacing the previous Dependable Transportation.

19 In fact, the first two locomotives to carry this slogan were GP9s 202 and 206, painted at Council Bluffs, Iowa. I think we can tag early 1970s to start the ATP, allowing time for the fleet to be painted with the new slogan. All we need now is a prototype photo from the time period and we should be good to go. (First, let me point out that a straight search on UP 293 is not going to be very useful the first match was a news story about a high school football player who piled up 293 yards. Quite an achievement, but not quite what we re looking for here.) Checking the site RRPictureArchives.net we have three photos of the locomotive that MTL modeled. The earliest is from June 1975 and shows the Geep with the slogan. There are detail differences including horn placement, the use of a rotating beacon and what I believe is a winterization hatch behind the dynamic brake. And yes, there is a dynamic brake, the first item I check. Also check the black and silver GP9 designation at the very front of the diesel; it s there on the Micro-Trains model as well. (Probably adding a bit to the MSRP, though.) No need to touch up the railings if you want to match this view as they are all gray. The second of the three photos is from 1979, taken at the same spot in Omaha well, actually it looks like the same photo, actually. The third photo shows a much sadder sight, the 293 with the roadname painted out on its way to be scrapped at Naporano, as of yikes! my birthday in February Z SCALE REPRINTS: No releases this month. Z SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following item was announced as an off-cycle release via the Micro-Trains website on December 14 and via the Micro-Trains E- Line on December , $ Burlington Northern Weathered Train Set. Consists of five items listed below, all weathered versions of previously released items / road numbers , SD40-2 Locomotive, Burlington Northern. Road Number Originally released in unweathered form in October Green with black roof, top of short hood, frame and trucks. White lettering including herald and small roadname on cab and large road number at back of long hood. Diagonal stripes on front of short hood and rear of long hood. Approximate Time Period: early 1970s or 1974 (build date for this unit) to late 1980s at least.

20 , 40 Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Door, Canadian National. Reporting Marks: CN Originally released in unweathered form in August Brown with mostly white lettering including roadname (English one side, French one side) and reporting marks on left. Yellow stylized wheat sheaf device left of door. White wet noodle herald on right. Approximate Time Period: 1980 to , 60 Foot Flat Car with Load, Trailer Train. Reporting Marks: MTTX Originally released in unweathered form in November Brown with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left. White Trailer Train logo with yellow TT on right. Includes simulated wood load. Approximate Time Period: 1975 (build date given by MTL) through mid-1990s , Husky-Stack Well Car, Burlington Northern. Includes one container. Reporting Marks: BN Originally released in unweathered form in August Red with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left. Red, white and blue BN herald on right. Includes one 40 foot container (American President Lines). Approximate Time Period: early 1990s (1993 build date given by MTL) to as late as the present , 30 Foot Center Cupola Caboose, Burlington Northern. Reporting Marks: BN Originally released in unweathered form in April Green with yellow ends. Mostly white lettering including herald and roadname in center and road number on right. Approximate Time Period: early 1970s to present, but model is a significant stand in for the prototype car. Just when I thought that Micro-Trains couldn t get any more ambitious than the November 2010 release of the N Scale New York Central Weathered Train Set, they do, with this Z Scale offering! Fortunately, I can be less ambitious, since the components of this BN train have all been previously released. In other words, they are all existing stock that s been weathered and in three cases, graffitied as well check out how much of the caboose is decorated for example. It seems to me that there s enough overlap in the various ATPs of the components to make running this train all together reasonably plausible. The oddest car out, if you will, is the boxcar, since it was intended for use on the CN s light density branch lines that could not handle larger covered hoppers for grain service. The newest car is the BN well car and that might be a little bit of a stretch with the remainder of the consist, but then again, the presence of a single well car in a train is itself more than a little unusual.

21 Z SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #25, four Northern Pacific plug door boxcars, has been released. UMTRR coverage was in the July 2010 issue. The following item is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is July UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of Runner Packs in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close January 31. Scheduled July 2011 Release: Runner Pack #31: , $64.95 Reporting Marks: AT&SF , , , Quantity four of 39 foot single dome tank cars, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Black with white lettering including reporting marks on left. Approximate Time Period: 1942 (based on build date given by MTL, see text) to early 1950s. Previous Release (as catalog 14402, now ): Road Number , March 1985 (with Marklin couplers) and July 1987 (with Magne-Matic Couplers); Road Number , May 1998; Road Number , April 2001 (last two with either Marklin or Magne-Matic Couplers). We cannot simply steal er, leverage the UMTRR coverage from March 2010 of the N Scale Runner Pack of these cars (which was aided considerably by George Hollwedel), since MTL has a slightly different paint scheme on these Z Scale tank cars than what was released in N Scale. How slightly different? Well, about one ampersand and one letter. At least. According to the Micro-News car copy from April 2001, the most recent previous release of this car, these cars were built in July 1942 by General American at its Sharon, Pennsylvania plant as the Santa Fe s class Tk-M. That s the letter difference versus the N Scale cars, which are based on the Tk-L class. The ATSF placed the cars in company service hauling diesel fuel, said MTL. The ORER for January 1943 has two hundred cars numbered to into which the Runner Pack road numbers and the previous runs all fit. The prototype dimensions given in the ORER don t quite fit though: inside length 43 feet 5 inches, outside length (which we ll assume is over the frame) 46 feet 9 inches, extreme height 14 feet 5 inches. That s a bit larger than the MTL 530 body style. I jumped all the way to the April 1970 Equipment Register, where 190 of the original 200 cars remain. But just two cars were left as of the April 1976 ORER.