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1 IrwinsJournal.com Presents: The Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report Issue #230 February, 2016 (Not affiliated with Micro-Trains Line, Inc.) Copyright 2016, George J. Irwin. Reproduction prohibited. Please see legal notice at the end of this document. Hello again everyone! Well, it s Leap Year, which means everybody gets an extra day in this Still Shortest Month and most of us get to work that extra day, too Here at UMTRR HQ, we re no exception, although the work of the news and views is mostly more like play. Let s begin our look behind the red and yellow sign with the start of the latest Micro-Trains series of cars N SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $27.95 Reporting Marks: DVS Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcar, Delta Valley and Southern. #1 in the MTL Per Diem Boxcar Series. Red with mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left. Black and white herald on left. Double panel consolidated stencils and yellow on black U-1 wheel inspection dot at lower right. Approximate Time Period: 1979 ( new date on car) to early Looking suspiciously like the New York Central s Cigar Band herald (and at least one image sharer on RRPictureArchives.net agrees with me there!), the monogram of the Delta Valley and Southern Railway Company also reads Since 1934 and Wilson, Arkansas. It s been a bit of a detective search to put together the story of this shortline, and even with my research I m not sure of the ending. What does appear to be accurate is that the DV&S was an early version of what we would now call a spin-off shortline, in this case out of the St. Louis-San Francisco or Frisco. The original route was about 18 miles but in 1947 it was cut back to just two miles, running from a connection with the Frisco at Delpro, near Wilson. The other end of the line is described as Elkins, but if that s true, it s a different one from the Elkins, Arkansas that I see which is all the way over at the other end of the state. The BNSF website still lists the DV&S as a shortline connection and notes that Delpro is 38 miles north of Memphis. Today the DVS primarily ships outbound cottonseed. One of the features of the diminutive line is, or was, its small switcher, Number 50. As of November 2004 it was still operating, and photos of it in action at Delpro are posted on Trainweb.org (full URL ). According to a Facebook page I found (really!) the 50 is, or was, a 45 ton diesel built by General Electric in May It was supposedly listed on the National Register of Historic 1

2 Places is that possible for a moving object? but was also reported as being auctioned by the BNSF in Current whereabouts are apparently unknown. And that led me to the question of whether the DV&S was still in operation. Using the circa photo citation above, I went to Google Maps and located a branch off of the BNSF which crossed US Highway 61 at what Google says is Delpro (but is not even a wide spot in the road ) and led into a small complex labeled as the Gilster-Mary Lee Corporation. The trackage is pretty much for only that complex; some turnouts have been removed leaving orphan spurs, and the whole thing comes to an abrupt end before even reaching the next road (County Road 343/Highway 119, if you re curious). Note that the map view doesn t show this trackage but the earth view does. The site Geoview.info pegs the current length of the DV&S at 1.67 kilometers, or just about a mile. Its highlighted route matches what I found on Google Maps. This is certainly a shortline you can model in its entirety! I don t think there are more than a dozen active turnouts on the whole line, including the BNSF interchange tracks. Meanwhile, the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for October 2014, the latest I have, shows the reporting marks DVS as still belonging to the line, but there s no actual entry in the book otherwise. The bingo for this car, which we ll get to, has a new date in 1979, so it s off to the July 1980 ORER. There we find the series 1001 to 1050, described as Box, Steel, End of Car Cushioning with these key dimensions: inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 6 inches, inside height 11 feet 2 inches, outside length 57 feet 3 inches, extreme height 15 feet 6 inches, door opening 10 feet, capacity 5347 cubic feet or and here s a surprise 62,000 pounds. Is that a mistake? Well, if it is, it s in the April 1981 ORER too. Anyway, car hire, mileage, repair and damage reports, and other information was to be sent to the railroad or to Brae Corporation, Three Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, reinforcing the wording on the actual car, Leased from Brae Corporation. In the April 1984 Equipment Register, the capacity has been revised to a more standard 154,000 pounds, and the description has been revised to Box, Steel, End of Car Cushioning, Nailable Steel Floor, 72 Individual Lading Anchors, Continuous At Door Posts. The same 50 cars are in service. However, they are all gone sometime between the January and April 1985 editions of the ORER, and how s that for narrowing down the ATP as closely as possible because that s two consecutive issues of the Equipment Register! The bingo for this car is over on RRPictureArchives.net. Its photo was taken in Rock Springs, Wyoming, in July 1980, about a year after the car s construction. I note that the capacity is listed as 154,000 pounds, so that ORER entry was in fact incorrect. We already know that the real car was of 5347 cubic foot capacity which is a bit larger than the 5077 cubic foot car that is the basis for the MTL 025 body style, though both are FMC prototypes. Other than that, there are just minor differences between the actual boxcar and the model. 2

3 and , $35.80 each Reporting Marks: BNSF and Foot General Service Tank Cars, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). Black with white lettering including Cooper Black reporting marks on left and circle cross herald on right. Tank car qualification stencil on far right. Yellow vertical conspicuity stripes along middle of sides car. Approximate Time Period: around the mid-decade of the 2000s into the 2010s. Unofficial photo shown in place of the MTL artwork; official actual photos will be posted to the UMTRR website when I can obtain them. Though the BNSF merger took place in 1995, the conspicuity stripes again drive the Approximate Time Period. With that note, we ll turn it over to our friend and frequent contributor The Masked Railroader. These cars are AAR Type T107 and BNSF Car Type T6H. Their exterior length is 62 feet 4 inches, and they have a 26,026 gallon capacity, light weight of 64,400 pounds and load limit of 198,600 pounds. They fall into Plate B dimensions. Series BNSF was formerly BN built in 1975 by American Car and Foundry (not sure how Micro-Trains got the 1983 date). An additional five cars were built at the same time and numbered Fort Worth & Denver FWD , which were officially renumbered to BN after the FWD was absorbed, then later to BNSF Many former ATSF and BN car series appear on the BNSF roster ahead of and behind the BNSF series in focus. For example, additional gallon 62 foot BN cars were built in 1980, 1992 and 1994, and the former gallon 61' ATSF cars which appear in the series prior were built in BNSF , formerly BN , was still active in 2013, and BNSF , formerly BN was also still active in These cars are good for 40 or 50 years. I find conflicting references as to when the Federal Railway Administration switched from 40-year to 50-year limits on cars for interchange service: 1974 or Since these cars were built in they may be turning into pumpkins (moan...bad, bad pun) soon. The 56 foot tank cars on which the Micro-Trains model is based is true, they were general service. However, these BNSF cars were typically in dedicated fuel oil service. These cars loaded with fuel oil were in a wide variety of trains, for example, between the Magellan Pipeline Terminal in Des Moines, Iowa and Alliance, Nebraska. Visually, the 56 foot Micro- Trains models are a stand-in for the 62 foot BNSF cars which are noticeably longer and skinnier than the MTL model. Thanks, and who was that Masked Man? Meanwhile, though there are a number of photos of these cars in the later BNSF swoosh scheme, I found just one example in the circle cross scheme MTL used for this release. That would be of BNSF , taken in January 2007 in Havre, Montana. The tank qualification stencil and conspicuity stripes are in place and the lettering aligns with the MTL artwork. 3

4 , $ Foot Double Plug Door Boxcar, Seaboard. Green with aluminum roof. Yellow lettering including large roadname and reporting marks on left. Yellow and red circular Through the Heart of the South herald on right. Long wheelbase version of this body style. Approximate Time Period: 1965 (build date) to no later than The 60 Foot Boxcars section of the Seaboard Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment consists of exactly one photo but it s of the car MTL modeled so we re in luck. One of a series of twenty-five numbered to 60024, these cars were constructed by Thrall in The bingo image was taken in August of that year as it clanked across the double track by double track diamonds at Tower 55 in Fort Worth, Texas. The MTL 120 body style is technically from a Greenville design, so there are a couple of minor differences, most notable for me the shape of the side sills. On balance, though, the look and feel is there. It s noted in the caption for the Color Guide photo that these cars carried large rolls of kraft paper, not the auto parts which were the typical lading for boxcars of this type. The ORER for January 1967 has the group described as Box, Plug Doors that feature still uncommon enough to rate inclusion and these dimensions: inside length 60 feet 9 inches, inside width 9 feet 4 inches, inside height 11 feet 2 inches, outside length 68 feet 8 inches, extreme height 15 feet 4 inches, door opening 16 feet wide by 10 feet 9 inches high, and capacity 6316 cubic feet or 180,000 pounds. An end note calls out lading belt rails, strap anchors, nailable steel floor and 20 inch travel cushion underframe. After that, lookups in the Equipment Register for this railroad usually become problematic. As you might recall, when the Seaboard and the Atlantic Coast Line merged into the Seaboard Coast Line in July 1967, there was a handy renumbering guide included, but the SAL and ACL rosters were blanked out in terms of car count. This time, though, we catch a break: according to the October 1969 ORER, 24 of the 25 cars were already restenciled from SAL to over to SCL to The SAL listing has been removed as well, indicating to me that the entire group of cars extant at the time had been relettered. This was, at least at first, probably nothing more than a change of reporting marks with the rest of the Seaboard Green Hornet scheme left intact but it does mean quite the short ATP. I didn t have any luck locating post-sal shots of these cars online or in print, not terribly surprising since there weren t that many and they may have been in captive service as well. The last ORER in which I see them, though clearly not in the as delivered scheme, is the July 1989 issue. It s possible these could have been moved to the Seaboard System s SBD reporting marks, or even the CSXT stenciling, but I m going to call that out of scope of this commentary. 4

5 , $34.90 Road Number: 7774 (will be CN 7774 in website listings). Heavyweight Railway Post Office Car, Canadian National. Black and green sides separated and bounded by yellow horizontal stripes (top, below center and bottom) with black roof, ends and underframe. Yellow lettering including roadname centered on letterboard, Mail & Express plus road number at bottom center and multi-color maple leaf heralds at bottom left and right. Approximate Time Period: 1954 to 1961 for this particular car, see below. I suppose the first question to address is, It s Canada eh? Did they have Railway Post Office service? And the answer is, Yes. According to John Riddell, writing in the Canadian National Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume One, it was called the Railway Mail Service and was operated by the country s Post Office Department between 1854 and It peaked at 192 routes in 1950 and declined quickly after that with the last run being on routes in the provinces of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. Also in that Color Guide, we learn that the CN had a large series of MB class cars numbered 7500 to 7854, which were built by CN predecessor Grand Trunk in There s a photo of what might be sister car 7770 in the Color Guide, and it would definitely count the MTL car as a stand in. But not so fast on that one, George, since there is a bingo on the 7774 in the Canadian Freight Railcar Gallery ( freight.railfan.ca ). It is still a stand in, but it is in the scheme that MTL has been using for its CN heavyweight releases. The photo was taken in Allandale, Ontario (near Barrie), in June 1973, after the Railway Mail Service ceased in Canada , $29.95 Road Number: 733 (will be B&O 733 in website listings). 70 Foot Heavyweight Horse Car, Baltimore and Ohio. Blue and gray sides; black ends, roof, underframe and details. Gold striping. Gold lettering including roadname in letterboard (split by middle door) and road number at bottom center. Approximate Time Period: early 1950s as painted, but see text. Doing a web search on the phrase B&O horse car returns not a reference to a piece of heavyweight passenger equipment, but a horse-drawn car which resides in the Baltimore and Ohio Museum. Not exactly. The closest I could get for images and even this isn t very close is a pair of photos of what happened to B&O 733 after it was taken out of regular service; that is, it became maintenance of way car B&O X4037. A color image from overhead of X4037 at Butler, Pennsylvania as of 1980 and an unspecified undated oblique black and white shot of X4037 over on the site northeast.railfan.net both illustrate the aftermath of the use of the 733 as a horse and express car. Both of these images are cited by Jerry LaBoda on his invaluable site Passcarphotos.info. 5

6 Neither shows the car in the Tri-Color scheme. The car had (I assume it s been scrapped by now) what looks to me like a variation on the clerestory roofline. In short, it s not a whole lot like the MTL 149 body style, so we ll call this a for completeness offering. What I d like to know is when the 733 was converted to MOW service, which would help with the Approximate Time Period end. No such luck so we ll need to do an at least. I did come across a data point in a back issue of the e-zine B&O Modeler: ten cars in the B&O s Baggage Car class B-27 were converted in 1945 from class C-9 horse-express cars. I found a photo of an HO Scale model (!) of a B-27, which, interestingly enough, carries the tri-color paint and the same road number 733 that is on the Micro-Trains release. It was constructed using a combination of parts from Bethlehem Car Works and LTD Series. (An article on the actual building of this car 404 s out no longer available online.) The Official Register of Passenger Equipment for March 1943 shows a set of ten Horse, Express, Steel cars numbered 730 to 739. They were 73 feet 6 inches long. The same publication for January 1953 has the description changed to Baggage, Steel with inside length of 72 feet 7 inches and length over buffers of 76 feet 10 inches. So the road number is on target, however, the car itself is a stand-in. I doubt that we ll see an accurate model of this particular item in something other than an ambitious 3-D printing exercise, however. The following is in pre-order at present and are NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is as noted below. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February 29. Scheduled Delivery July 2016: , $ ATSF (Santa Fe) Five-Pack. Will consist of five 020 series single door boxcars, each in mineral red (boxcar red) paint with black roof and white lettering including reporting marks, name train slogan on Side A and Ship Santa Fe all the way slogan plus straight line map on Side B. Each car also has a black and white circle-cross square herald above the reporting marks on left on both sides of the car. Approximate Time Period: 1941 (build date) into the 1950s. MTL artwork shown; actual release may differ. I can sort of kind of borrow from the pre-order and post-release coverage of the Z Scale ATSF Five Pack which was issued in March The road numbers are different, but they are in the same groups of cars which are known to have the different slogans. So let s start there: 6

7 ATSF , The Scout. Known prototype car numbers that had this slogan were to and to ATSF , Grand Canyon Line. Known prototype cars that had this slogan were to and to ATSF , El Capitan. Known prototype cars that had this slogan were to and to ATSF , Super Chief. Known prototype cars that had this slogan were to and to ATSF , The Chief. Known prototype cars that had this slogan were to and to These were all BX-37 cars built by Pullman-Standard in The Santa Fe had over 5000 of them, numbered to (not consecutive, broken up by some BX-43s built in 1944 by General American). These cars are too old to be true PS-1s which are the basis for the MTL 020 body style, so I would expect some differences. When built, these cars had black car cement applied to the roof, so I think we ll see a black roof on these models. (The running boards were mineral brown, matching the rest of the carbody.) Also when built, the standard for the B side of these cars was the straight line map with slogan, which replaced the curved line map beginning in 1940 according to information I found online. The maps were supplanted by the Ship and Travel Santa Fe slogan beginning in 1947, but as noted previously the railroad wasn t in a hurry to repaint its boxcars. So you re good at least into the 1950s with this paint scheme. Since I am not as well versed in the various versions of the famous map as I should be, I double-checked and over on the ATSF YahooGroup I found from well-known Santa Fe expert J. Stephen Sandifer this confirmation: [The] straight line map with ship was the most common map from late 1940 to April, Ship and Travel became the standard in March, 1947, though the maps lasted for years until repainted. OK, I feel better now We ll do one ORER check for this five-pack; how about the January 1943 edition. These cars had an inside length of 10 feet 6 inches, inside width of 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 4 inches, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 14 feet 11 inches, door opening 6 feet and capacity 3837 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. 7

8 N SCALE REPRINTS: and , $29.95 each. Reporting Marks: ONT 7412 and Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcars, Plug Door, Ontario Northland. Dark blue sides, aluminum roof, yellow ends and side grab irons. Yellow roadname left of door; yellow chevron device on right. White reporting marks on left. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on far right. Approximate Time Period: 1990 (build date) to present. Previous Releases (as catalog number 27040): Road Number 7600, May 1984; Road Number 7629, June 1988; Road Number 7409, April There have been plenty of changes to the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission since the last run of this particular car. I noted back in April 2000 that the railroad was just part of the story of this Crown Agency of the Province, and that telecommunications was a key part of that story. That went all the way back to telegraph lines along the then- Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, which became the Ontario Northland in At the time, Ontario Northland Telephone, later called Ontera, was part of the agency. But an attempt at divestiture by the Government of Ontario resulted only in that operation being sold to Bell Alliant in The railroad and the ONTC s bus lines didn t come along for the ride, so to speak (sorry). In January 2015 the publication Northern Ontario Business published an article on how the ONTC intended to invest in and revitalize its rail operations, including a new emphasis on repair capabilities for third parties at its large North Bay shops. That includes handling work for other Canadian Government operations. And in service for that railroad line, we find this series of AAR Class XP boxcars from 7400 to 7449 listed in the October 1991 ORER. Inside length was given as 50 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 6 inches, inside height 11 feet. With those extended couplers, the outside length went to 58 feet 8 inches; the extreme height was 15 feet 6 inches, door opening 10 feet and capacity 5227 cubic feet and either 194,000 or 195,000 pounds. While that description was simply Box, Steel, the October 1996 ORER listed Box, Steel, End of Car Cushioning, Plug Doors, Steel Lining, Lading Strap Anchors for 45 cars and adds Hardwood Floors (Newsprint) for five more. Not like you d be able to tell from the outside! Jumping all the way to the October 2014 ORER, 41 of the original 50 cars remain in service. I think that will do for a to present Approximate Time Period. I get to use for the first time the Morning Sun publication Canadian Railways Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume One by John Riddell. (Volume Two has also made it into the Research Accumulation.) On Page 59 of that book is a photo of ONT 7438 taken in July The car, which was built by National Steel Car, isn t an exact match for the 027 body style, principally because of a difference in the ends and also given the use of 8

9 short ladders on the prototype versus grab irons on the car. The sides and plug door are fairly close, however, closer than I would have thought considering a completely different manufacturer of the real cars (the MTL model is based on an FMC 5077 cubic foot model). If you re checking online, there s a generous number of photos of the ONT 7400 series cars over on George Elwood s Fallen Flags site ( ), including a 2013 shot of the 7406 with, unfortunately, the required attributes needed to become an MTL Weathered/ Graffiti Release , $21.95 Reporting Marks: LV Foot Boxcar, Wood Double Sheathed, 1½ Doors, Vertical Brake Staff, Lehigh Valley. Boxcar red with white lettering including reporting marks on left and roadname on right. White on black flag herald on left above reporting marks. Approximate Time Period: 1916 (build date on car) through mid- 1920s at most. Previous Releases: As Catalog Number 41020, Road Number 79003, December This is one of the releases which switched body styles when the 41/041 tooling was introduced. The first two runs of Lehigh Valley double sheathed boxcars, with road numbers to 79006, were done on the body style which has a horizontal brake wheel. The data I found when researching the December 2000 run of this car showed the prototype with steel ends, which are also present on the model. Did I properly cite that information in my notes? No so I have no idea where I got it. No need to check any Color Guides for this one either it won t be there. I also reported on a surprising finding in the April 1928 ORER, which I ll come back to since there have been Equipment Registers added to the UMTRR Research Accumulation. The build date on the car is October 1916, and we get a lot closer than before with the October 1919 ORER. This was during the time in which the United States Railroad Administration controlled the railroads, and so the header for the LV s registration notes a Federal Manager and his assistants in place of a President, located in New York. The listing in which this car appears is described as Box, Automobile, Steel Underframe and Steel Ends, with 499 cars in the group numbered to The inside length was 40 feet, inside width 8 feet 7 inches, inside height 8 feet 1¼ inches, outside length 41 feet 6¾ inches, extreme height 13 feet 7½ inches, door opening 10 feet (reflecting the 1½ door configuration), and capacity 2783 cubic feet or 80,000 pounds. As of the August 1924 ORER the car count was at 497. And then, the surprise: the April 1928 ORER listing has just five cars left in the series! The cars are gone completely from the February 1931 Register. In its place, though, is a group numbered 9000 to 9499 with 423 cars and the same dimensions (now rounded off to whole inches) except for the door opening, which is down to six feet, and the description which has changed to Box, Steel Underframe, Steel Ends. In other words, the word Automobile is gone. This strongly suggests to me that the cars were bumped out of 9

10 automobile service (perhaps by cars like the MTL s catalog number 78040?) and their small auxiliary doors or half doors were removed. The net of it is that the ATP is short. It s noted on the website of the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society that during 1933 and 1934, most of the 9000 to 9499 series was rebuilt and regained the road numbers to how about that? And how about this: these were among the LV s famous, or perhaps infamous, wrong way boxcars, the single doors opening to the left instead of the right. Check out the rest of that story at railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/models/binder1.pdf (a PDF document with photos). N SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following was announced mid-month via the Micro- Trains website, the MTL Facebook page, and via the Micro-Trains E-Line, all on or about February , $29.95 Reporting Marks: EL Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Door, No Roofwalk, Short Ladders, Erie Lackawanna. Express boxcar passenger scheme as base. Gray sides split by horizontal maroon band with yellow stripes. Maroon lettering including roadname along top and road number at bottom left. Black Keep Off Roof warning in yellow box at bottom right. Gray roof, maroon ends. White restenciled reporting marks on boxcar red patch panel and white dimensional data on boxcar red patch panel on right. Light to moderate weathering. Approximate Time Period: 1969 (based on service date) to no later than 1972 as shown, or through the 1970s otherwise (see text). Previous Release (in unweathered form): Technically none, but Catalog , Road Number 136, September 2015 is in the same base paint scheme on a different body style. When the official express boxcar scheme was released on this car last September, I related that in the EL Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment it was stated that after their use in passenger trains concluded, the cars that remained finished their lives in the series. So this is a sequel, if you will, to MTL s September release, which I believe starts in January 1969 which is the service date on the car the patch of paint is the giveaway there. On its website MTL provided a prototype photo which shows, among other things, a rather sloppy looking restencil of the reporting marks not nearly as straight as what Micro-Trains depicts on the car. The ORER for April 1970 shows 82 of these cars numbered to 50488, in a mix of sixand eight-foot door openings. This might or might not be exclusively the former express boxcars, which were built in 1950 and were numbered to and to 10092, and built in 1957 and numbered from to The was among the cars with the six foot door opening, as the prototype photo shows also at least in the April 1970 ORER, that is. By the October 1972 Equipment Register, the door opening had been changed to eight feet according to the end note accompanying the listing. And how s that for a short strictly 10

11 speaking Approximate Time Period? My UMTRR website feature Door Thing shows how to exchange doors to the eight foot version, should you desire to extend that ATP. I doubt that the Erie Lackawanna cared much about what color door they used so I don t think you need to either. Any old door will do. The April 1976 ORER shows that 56 of these cars were transferred from the Erie Lackawanna to Conrail. It s debatable whether they were ever transitioned out of the express boxcar paint, although it s certainly possible that they were when the door width was changed. By April 1981 s Register only the EL remained in service , $45.95 Reporting Marks: ETTX Foot Tri-Level Closed Autorack, Trailer Train/Ferromex. Flat car is yellow with white reporting marks on black panel on left and all other lettering obscured by graffiti on one side; black lettering on other side. Rack is yellow with aluminum protective panels and roof and mostly black lettering including roadname on one protective panel on left. Graffiti on bottom of one side I Only Love You Cuz I Hate You. Approximate Time Period: within a year or so of the present. Previous Releases (in unweathered form): None, though MTL has done two TTX/Ferromex autoracks with TTGX reporting marks in October 2008 ( x). Well, how s that for a mixed graffiti message during this Valentine s Day month and that s enough said about that. There s also usually not a lot to say about individual autoracks either, particularly since the rack and flat car are not permanently attached to each other. For the record, ETTX lands in a 375 car series numbered to in the October 2014 ORER, with typical dimensions: 89 foot 4 inch inside length, 93 foot 10 inch outside length, 19 foot extreme height, and gross rail weight of 185,000 pounds. And that s it! That series is not in the April 2013 Register, so it s a relatively new set of cars. Which means relatively new, ahem, additional decoration as well. I was thrown off a bit in terms of my initial ATP estimate by the prototype photo supplied by MTL. You ll note that the car that s depicted this month is coupled to a Providence and Worcester autorack similar to that released by MTL in December But the image shows neither of these cars with conspicuity stripes, which would have led me to believe that the appearance of the graffiti was earlier than it actually could have been given the newness of the car itself. If that all makes sense I guess it does about as much as I only love you because I hate you In addition to the above, the UP/SP Weathered Train Set ( , $274.95) is slated to be available mid-month and should be at dealers as you read this. UMTRR coverage was in the September 2015 issue. 11

12 Images and individual catalog numbers of the actual product weren t available at press time but will be added to the UMTRR website when I can obtain them. N SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #113 ( , $109.95), four Southern Pacific drop bottom gondolas with wood loads, is now available. UMTRR coverage was in the September 2015 issue. The individual catalog numbers and road numbers for these items are as follows: , ; , ; , ; , These are the third through sixth road numbers for this car. The following is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is as noted below. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February 29. Scheduled July 2016 Release: , $ Reporting Marks: B&O , , , Quantity four of Two Bay Open Hoppers, Rib Sides, Peaked Ends, Baltimore and Ohio. Black with white lettering including reporting marks on left and small capitol dome herald on right. Approximate Time Period: 1960s (1968 service date shown on car artwork) to early 1980s. Previous Releases: None. Individual Catalog Numbers (in the 091 series) for this Runner Pack will be provided upon release. Artwork shown is preliminary and actual product may differ. Before going to the car research, allow me to note that Micro-Trains doubles its quantity of paint schemes on this little-used body style. Though introduced in May 1993, there s only been one other regular run on this car, albeit with twenty road numbers: the Norfolk and Western, in the once-ubiquitous large N&W decoration. The bingo for one of the Runner Pack road numbers, , is on Page 45 of the B&O Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. The car is among those rebuilt by the Chesapeake & Ohio s Raceland (Kentucky) Shops in 1962, from hoppers originally built in 1934 (!). The C&O series was to , but some of these were sold to the B&O, which as you most likely already know was controlled by the C&O. The B&O and C&O 12

13 apparently sold cars back and forth, according to Color Guide author Craig T. Bossler, who noted fluctuating numbers in relevant ORERs. When photographed in Spring 1978, there were still approximately 972 still on the B&O revenue roster. The reporting marks were different (of course!) but the road numbers were shared between the two lines. The stenciling on the car is evidence of this transfer between the two railroads. The B& in the reporting marks is in fact literally stenciled on, with the rest of the lettering is solid without stencil lines. To me that says that the C& was quickly painted out and replaced with the B& to effect the transfer of the car from the C&O to the B&O. The B&O capitol dome herald was added, and it also has stencil lines. The preliminary MTL artwork shows this. However, the real B&O was an eight panel (nine rib) two-bay hopper, while the 091 body style is a five panel (six rib) car. I had thought from the photo that the real and its sister cars would also be longer than the 091 body style, but that s not always what the Equipment Register shows. The January 1967 edition (closest to the reweigh date on the MTL artwork) has 1481 cars in the B&O series to , and the inside length is shown as 33 feet with an outside length of 34 feet, and capacity 1956 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. With a bit of skepticism I checked the Chesapeake & Ohio registration in the same ORER and sure enough, the C&O series to is listed with outside length of 36 feet 6 inches and capacity 2053 cubic feet, with 1128 cars in that group. Well, now, that s confusing Indication of the rebuilding that was noted in the B&O Color Guide is found back in the July 1963 ORER, however. The B&O series is listed at 33 feet long and 1956 cubic feet, just as in the January 1967 Equipment Register. But the C&O series is split between 73 remaining cars of that size and the vast majority, 4106, in the larger size. I think this may be a case of the ORER data having not caught up with reality. OK, then, let s try the ORER for January 1978 to align with the date of the photo of the B&O in the Color Guide. This time, we get these dimensions for the series B&O to : inside length 33 feet, outside length 36 feet, extreme height 11 feet 6 inches, and capacity 100,000 pounds or 1929 cubic feet. Which doesn t match what s stenciled on the car in the photo. Well, at least that s consistent with the C&O number series, which is also down to just ten cars at that time. Meanwhile, the B&O cars are gone from the roster no later than the October 1986 Register. Who would have thought that a plain old black hopper would cause so much trouble for this byte-slinger? N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: , $32.95 Ringling Brothers Heavyweight Series #6, Clarkonians Railway Post Office. Red with aluminum roof. Black underframe and trucks. Yellow lettering 13

14 outlined in black across letterboard: Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey. Multicolor wording at bottom center: The Astounding Clarkonians Multicolor artwork at left and right. No road number. I know that in the N Scale community, there are mixed feelings about this Special Edition series, just as there have been with respect to all previous series. But I can t deny that I have learned quite a bit about the circus since the licensing agreement between MTL and Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, was put in place. So it probably won t surprise you that my question about this release is, Who were the Clarkonians? But it might surprise you to know that a Wikipedia page is not the first reference cited in a web search in fact, there is no citation for them on that site at all! (And I thought only the UMTRR didn t have one ) Fortunately, there are plenty of other references available to tell us that the Clarkonians were a trapeze act, and among the most famous of them at that. Among other innovations was The Marvelous Mid-Air Pirouette or Twisting Double Somersault that s advertised on the MTL car. I came across the poster that was the inspiration for the artwork during my travels online; it s not dated but it does refer only to the Barnum and Bailey Circus, which would place it before the Combined Shows of That makes sense considering the data point I found in the book Circus Queen and Tinker Bell: The Memoir of Tiny Kline (excerpt on Google Books)- to be specific, it s a footnote (!): Ernie Clarke was born in England and was a sixth-generation circus performer. He and his brothers Charles and Percy became successful circus performers. Called the Clarkonians, the troupe joined Barnum and Bailey in 1903 [and] enjoyed a long and successful thirty-plusyear circus career. There were definitely Clarkonians active in 1940, as they appeared as themselves in the motion picture short Circus Co-Ed which was released that year. The following is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is as noted below. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February 29. Scheduled May 2016 Release: , $ Ringling Brothers Powered FT-A Diesel. Companion diesel to the Ringling Brothers Heavyweight Series. Red with aluminum roof and black trucks and underframe. Multicolor graphics across sides consisting of map and posters representing circus performance cities. Red lettering Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey in red with black outline. Artwork shown is preliminary and actual product may differ. Well, this is a surprise! After the companion diesel for the Civil War Boxcar Series turned out to be only an FT-A shell with no chassis, I thought for sure we d seen the end of this locomotive. Not just yet! And yes, it s a Special Edition, as the real circus trains use power provided by the railroads on which they travel. 14

15 The preliminary artwork shows just five of the many cities which have been tour stops for the circus. I wonder if anyone has compiled a list of every locality in which The Greatest Show on Earth has played and how long a list that would be. We can take a much lazier path and check the 2016 schedule that was current at Press Time. The Blue Tour which has the Legends name was visiting Greensboro, Brooklyn, Newark, Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia; then North Charleston, South Carolina and back up to Worcester and Providence. The Red Tour, called Circus Xtreme, had stops in Atlanta and Duluth, Georgia followed by Cincinnati, Richmond, Baltimore, Washington, and Fairfax, Virginia; then Charleston, West Virginia; Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Manchester, New Hampshire; Hartford, Trenton, and Hershey, Pennsylvania; then Lincoln, Nebraska; Las Vegas, New Orleans and Houston. Those last few stops will require rather long train trips in between, but they are some days apart. NARROW GAUGE (Nn3) RELEASES: No releases this month. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $27.95 Reporting Marks: DVS Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcar, Delta Valley and Southern. #1 in the MTL Per Diem Boxcar Series. Red with mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left. Black and white herald on left. Double panel consolidated stencils and yellow on black U-1 wheel inspection dot at lower right. Approximate Time Period: 1979 ( new date on car) to early Please see the coverage of the N Scale release ( ) above and , $29.95 each. Reporting Marks: ONT 7412 and Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcars, Plug Door, Ontario Northland. Dark blue sides, aluminum roof, yellow ends and side grab irons. Yellow roadname left of door; yellow chevron device on right. White reporting marks on left. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on far right. Approximate Time Period: 1990 (build date) to present. Please see the coverage of the N Scale Reprints ( x) above. Well, the Z Scale section has been easy so far, hasn t it? 15

16 and , $25.60 each. Reporting Marks: WP and Two Bay PS-2 Covered Hoppers, Western Pacific. Gray with black lettering including reporting marks on left and roadname on right. Approximate Time Period: 1958 (build date) on 1968 (service date on car) to mid-1980s. Across the three WP books I have, there s only one photo of one of the railroad s PS-2s. It s a 1975 shot of 11330, the highest numbered of the series to 11330, on Page 89 of the Western Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. Given the service date on the MTL cars, I wanted to confirm that the paint scheme depicted was the as delivered version, and it is. These thirty cars were an important enough addition to the WP s fleet that a photo of a string of them appears in the company s 1958 Annual Report. And guess what? Frank Brehm s WP Lives website has that publication in its entirety! ( is the link to the exact page.) The photo is captioned, A five-mile spur track was laid from the main line to the new dolomite plant of the Utah Marblehead Lime Company near Dalle. The ORER for January 1959 shows the series with the usual dimensions for this car type: inside length 29 feet 3 inches, outside length 35 feet 3 inches, extreme height 13 feet 2 inches, and capacity 2003 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. Given the 1975 photo in the Color Guide, I jumped to the April 1976 Equipment Register where 29 of the original 30 cars remained on the roster. The April 1984 ORER shows this group in a combined series to with 24 cars not sure why that happened. That count is down to seven in the April 1985 ORER and zero in the October 1996 Register, so we have a pretty tight end to the Approximate Time Period. In addition to the above, the Baltimore and Ohio Streamlined Passenger Cars are to be released mid-month and should be at dealers as you read this. Initial UMTRR coverage was in the September 2015 issue coinciding with the pre-order announcement. It turns out that my guessing during that pre-review was pretty good! Only the artwork was available at press time ; this will be replaced with the actual images on the UMTRR Website when I can get them. The individual items are as follows: , $32.90 Lightweight Sleeper, Opequon , $32.90 Lightweight Dome Car, Road Number

17 , $32.90 Lightweight Coach, Road Number , $32.90 Lightweight Baggage Car, Road Number 763. Z SCALE REPRINTS: No releases this month. Z SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following was announced mid-month via the Micro- Trains website, the MTL Facebook page, and via the Micro-Trains E-Line, all on or about February , $64.95, Railbox Graffiti Two-Pack. Consists of the following 50 foot exterior post boxcars with single door: , Reporting Marks RBOX Yellow with black door. Black lettering including Railbox logo on left. Small black, red and blue Next Load / Any Road logo on right. Light to moderate weathering. One side has multicolor graffiti covering bottom half of side. Approximate Time Period: At least 2015 based on date of prototype photo , Reporting Marks RBOX Non-graffiti side is yellow with black door. Black lettering including Railbox logo on left. Small black, red and blue Next Load / Any Road logo on right. Graffiti side is white with blue simulated FGE (Fruit Growers Express) Solid Gold scheme, black stenciled reporting marks, and additional multicolor graffiti on left below reporting marks. Approximate Time Period: at least 2010, but could be through at least 2015 based on other prototype photos. Previous Releases (in unweathered form): Technically, Eight Pack #4 ( , individual catalog numbers 510 5x 220), March 2014, though those road numbers are not from the same prototype series. Okay, who s the wise guy? By that I mean the second of the two cars in this two-pack. I mean, everyone knows that the FGE / Fruit Growers Express Solid Gold scheme was placed on mechanical refrigerator cars, not boxcars. Someone had their prototypes all mixed up when they took the time (and 17

18 once again, I can t imagine how much time this took!) to cover the entire side of RBOX with this incorrect decoration. Where s the Prototype Police when you need them? MTL supplies a prototype photo from the website RRPictureArchives.net, which is dated July 2010 and is captioned on route to be scrapped. However, there are at least two other images out there, one of which appears to be from April 2012 and another of which was uploaded in So the Approximate Time Period could be as long as then or more, which also says something about the priority of repainting these cars to remove the graffiti. I checked car numbers around the to determine that the prototype is a Pullman- Standard 5277 cubic foot car, Railbox Class XPF20, and thus not a match to the MTL 510 body style. The ends and roof peak are different, but most noticeable is the door which is of a different type. See RBOX 31941, also graffitied but not nearly to the same extent, also pictured as of 2011 on RRPictureArchives.net. Meanwhile, the first car in the two-pack, RBOX 33728, was lensed in January 2015; the prototype photo MTL supplied is also from RRPictureArchives.net. It s an AC&F 5290 cubic foot car, Railbox Class XAF20B. It s far more similar to the MTL 510 body style, which is based on the FMC 5077 cubic foot car (following after the N Scale 25/025 body style). Clearly the is close to the present in terms of the Approximate Time Period, but what about the 31943? The short answer is maybe. The ORER for October 2014 shows a large series, to which includes both road numbers even though they are different capacities. In that registration (and don t forget it s under TTX Company) there are 2969 cars in the main series, plus another 387, 86 and 151 cars in three sub-series, for a total of (reaching for calculator) 3593 cars. That s out of a possible 7500 so it s entirely possible that the has been taken off the roster. The worst case is that Rule #1 applies. Z SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #88 ( , $74.95), four Canadian National 33 Foot Offset Side Two Bay Hoppers with loads, is now available. UMTRR coverage was in the September 2015 issue. The individual catalog and road numbers for these are as follows: , ; , ; , ; , These are the first through fourth road numbers for this car, which hasn t been previously released. I see I made an Oops in the September 2015 UMTRR by leaving out the MSRP The following is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is as noted below. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February

19 Scheduled July 2016 Release: , $ Reporting Marks GVSR , , , Quantity four of Fifty Foot Exterior Post Boxcars, Single Door, Golden West Service. Blue with mostly yellow lettering including reporting marks on left and roadname on right. Red and yellow block herald next to roadname on right. Black and white single panel consolidated stencils on far right. Approximate Time Period: 1990s to mid-decade of the 2000s. Previous Releases: None. Individual Catalog Numbers (in the 510 series) for this Runner Pack will be provided upon release. N Scale release shown for illustration purposes. When this Runner Pack was announced in N Scale in July 2008, with the same road numbers as this forthcoming Z Scale quartet, I completely blew the pre-order coverage. I did make up for that upon the item s release, and most of the information remains relevant. The Approximate Time Period of Golden West Service appeared to be ending then, and I think it s all but over now. While the occasional car painted in that scheme appears from time to time, the reporting marks have been replaced by a set under the control of the Union Pacific, usually SP or SSW. That makes sense since it was the Southern Pacific, while still independent, which instigated this enterprise in the first place. You might already know that the Golden West Service was a joint project of the SP, which provided the cars, Gunderson, and the Greenbrier Companies, which resulted in nine thousand cars totally remanufactured to original or better specifications. That what was announced in a four page brochure advertising Southern Pacific Lines New Golden West Service Railcar Fleet, which was viewable on John Mosbarger s Shasta Route website (unfortunately down at this time since the content was compromised by those who don t respect a webmaster s hard work). Page 3 of this brochure has a photo of a 50 foot, 70 ton boxcar in the same series to that is depicted by MTL. The cars weren t always that nice looking, by the way; you might recall in the early 1990s there were rather beat up boxcars with the SP name painted out and the GVSR reporting marks added under the Hydra-Cushion slogan. John also showed examples of Golden West cars relettered for SP and SSW, dated as early as GVSR is, officially, the reporting mark of the Galveston Railroad, L.P. which was one of the three railroads to which Golden West cars were nominally assigned. (The other two: Coe Rail, CRLE and Ventura County Railway, VCY.) Confirming my point about the Golden West Service fading away, there were just three cars in the series to in the January 2007 ORER. While we re here, let s pick up the vital statistics: inside length 50 feet 7 inches, inside height 10 feet 11 inches, outside length 57 feet 11 inches, extreme height 15 feet 19