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1 IrwinsJournal.com Presents: The Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report Issue #181 January, 2012 (Not affiliated with Micro-Trains Line, Inc.) Copyright 2012, George J. Irwin. Please see legal notice at the end of this document. Hello again everyone! Well, there s big news from the Research Division: something under the Christmas Tree for me that will be quite useful for these bytes, and may very well elicit a finally! from the UMTRR Gang. It is a copy of the Official Railway Equipment Register for January Yes, no longer must we guess on The Present from almost four years ago, but from a much more comfortable beginning of last year. It wasn t so much Santa Claus as it was that Internet Auction Community (and a lack of other serious bidders), and it was a present from me to me, but the net is we re more up to date. Now, will we actually get to use it this month? Ah, to find out, we ll need to take our first look behind the red and yellow sign for this new year. N SCALE NEW RELEASES: Note: Also see the pre-order announcement of the first Meat Packer Series wood refrigerator car immediately following the review of the current (January) new releases , $19.30 Reporting Marks: PRR Foot Steel Boxcar, Plug Door, Pennsylvania Railroad. Brown with mostly white lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left. Black and white shadow keystone herald on right. Yellow Insulated / DF on door. Approximate Time Period: 1959 (build date) to late 1970s. We re able to leverage the July 2011 edition of the UMTRR in which MTL s Z Scale version of this car was reviewed, right down to the same number. This car represents the Pennsylvania Railroad s X53 series of insulated boxcars. Page 51 of Morning Sun s Pennsylvania Railroad Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Volume 2, includes a straight on shot of sister car PRR caught in November The paint is already wearing out, with the yellow Insulated and DF legends turned nearly white. It s noted in the MSCG that 300 cars numbered to were built at the Pennsy s Samuel Rea Shops as part of the road s 1959 program to update its freight car fleet. These cars were generally used for handling food products and in addition to their insulation, were equipped for application of heaters and featured 8 foot 2 inch wide sliding flush doors and nine belt-rail DF loaders. The cars had riveted sides and a straight sill, which differ from the MTL body style. I ll fill in the rest of the vital statistics from the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for January 1964: inside length 50 feet even, inside width 9 feet 1 inch, inside height 9 feet 7 inches, outside length 51 feet 11 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, capacity 4401 cubic feet or 125,000 pounds. The cars were described as Box, Steel although they did get the AAR 1

2 Designation RBL, the usual for insulated boxcars. The end note calls out use of a floor on cars numbered to consisting of 2 3/8 inch yellow pine covered with 1/8 inch diamond plate, and the use in cars to of a Doweloc floor whatever that is. Anyway, all 300 cars were in service at the time. Of those, 289 were in service in the PRR series as of the April 1970 ORER listing for the Penn Central, and skipping to Conrail in the April 1976 Equipment Register, there were a bunch of subsets of the group which total, if my addition is correct, to 110 cars. Only six cars were left in PRR markings in the April 1981 ORER, which is where I stopped looking, but the X53s continued service in either Penn Central or Conrail paint or both. For example, the Conrail Historical Society website (thecrhs.org, no www ) has a shot of CR in painted out Penn Central green with CR reporting marks. It looks like the PC renumbered the X53s into three groups starting at and going to , and Conrail kept at least some of these numbers. Don t forget to remove the roofwalk! , $28.50 Reporting Marks: URTX Foot Steel Ice Refrigerator Car, Raskin Packing Company / Union Refrigerator Transit. White and green sides, white roof, black ends. White reporting marks on left, black and white legend including company name and location on right. Multicolor Raskin Packing logo on left. Approximate Time Period: 1962 to early 1970s. New release, but originally done with an unprototypical legend for the N Scale Collector (NSC ID 98-56) with road number as part of the NSC s Meat Packing Set #1 in 1998 (NSC ID 98-61). Note: This item is reported to already be sold out and discontinued. Morning Sun s Refrigerator Car Color Guide by Gene Green, Page 113, provides a bingo on this car as found in Sioux City Iowa in In the caption it s noted that the car was built in 1954 by General American. It was painted in this scheme in 1962, which provides the start of our ATP. The 059 body style is not a match for this car, given the horizontal row of rivets which give away the multipanel construction of the sides. This wouldn t be particularly noticeable with this scheme, as the line between colors is also where the horizontal rivet line would be, were it actually there. I note as I ve done before-- that there is currently no widely available N Scale model of this General American prototype. But the MTL model is at least relatively close compared to other offerings with Raskin Packing paint and lettering. And I think I d better stop right there on that. However! The Color Guide calls out the colors of this car as cream and green, not white and green, and from the photo it certainly seems like the color at the top half of the side is something other than pure white. On the other hand, a nearly full page photo of URTX in the same paint scheme is in the book Classic Freight Cars Volume 5 and in that shot it looks more like the color could be a dirty and weathered white instead of an originally cream color. The reporting marks and dimensional data on the in Classic Freight Cars appear to be about equally weathered and creamy, while the shot of the in the Refrigerator Car Color Guide shows the reporting marks and Sioux City, Iowa legend, 2

3 both on the green portion of the side looking much more whitish than the top portion of the side. I ll lean towards the paint being cream colored, not white, meaning we have a delta on the MTL model, but I could be persuaded that the actual prototype was white. It s a rather wide series, to 62999, that includes the and the for that matter. The ORER for June 1963 shows this group with only fifty cars. The inside length was 33 feet 3 inches, inside width 8 feet, inside height 6 feet 11 inches, outside length 43 feet 3 inches, extreme height 13 feet 8 inches, door opening 4 feet, and lading capacity 1853 cubic feet or 70,000 pounds. The ice capacity was 230 cubic feet or 9500 pounds but these cars didn t use chunk ice. By April 1970 s Equipment Register, the series including these cars was cut back a bit, to to and consisted of just ten cars. The series is gone by the July 1974 ORER. The photo of the in Classic Freight Cars is from April 1970 which aligns nicely with the ORER, and could have been one of the last images taken of these cars. I didn t find anything useful online with respect to the history of Raskin Packing; in fact, nearly all of the search results are references to models of the cars they leased from Union Refrigerator Transit , $25.45 Reporting Marks: BNSF Foot TOFC Flat Car, BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe). Brown with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left. Approximate Time Period: 2006 (build date given by MTL) to present. And here comes our first chance to use the new addition to the UMTRR Research Accumulation. The January 2011 ORER, and yes, I m really happy to write that, has the BNSF series well, it s actually a one car exception to the series to I don t see any difference between the three cars in the main series and the in terms of the dimensions, which are: inside length 84 feet 2 inches, outside length 87 feet 9 inches, extreme width 10 feet 5 inches, and gross rail weight 263,000 pounds. I doubt that the actual combination of car and lading will ever get close to that 263,000 pound figure, but it is rated for that number. The outside length of the prototype car is a bit less than the MTL 071 model. We get a bingo on the on RRPictureArchives.net. I note that the build date MTL gives of July 2006 is later than the given date of March 2006 for the image. While the sides of the car look like your usual TOFC flat, even from the below track level view I can see that the configuration of the floor is different. There is no trailer hitch, and there are what look like seven beams spanning the width of the car perpendicular to the sides. The car has AAR Designation FMS, which translates to specialty ordinary flat car for general service. So it might not be set up to carry trailers at all. I also see that the car is within Plate C dimensions, which is quite the surprise. Perhaps Plate C dimensions have been changed since they were introduced; I d never think that an 87 foot long flat car would have fit within the Plate C specifications. 3

4 and , $20.40 each Reporting Marks: NP and Bay Open Hoppers, Northern Pacific. Black with white lettering including reporting marks on left and large roadname in center. Simulated coal load included. Approximate Time Period: 1969 (build date) to early 1990s. Morning Sun s Northern Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Page 87, includes photos of two of the cars from the prototype series to 73699, although they re not bingos since they are not the same road numbers MTL chose. Certainly good enough though. As MTL notes in its car copy, the prototypes were built by Bethlehem Steel at Johnstown, Pennsylvania in April The paint scheme uses what became Burlington Northern style two-column dimensional data with the reporting marks just above. Like the 108 body style, the real NP hoppers were thirteen rib three-bay cars. However, the NP cars were taller and had a greater capacity than the MTL model, which is more or less based on the H11a class of the Norfolk and Western and the H43 Class of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Let s check that capacity and the other vital statistics in the April 1970 ORER. Within the Burlington Northern registration we have NP to 73699, described as Hopper, 3 Hopper, Self-Clearing, Steel and with 99 of the 100 possible cars in place. It doesn t help our research that the inside height wasn t given, but the extreme height was 13 feet 6 inches. The inside length was 45 feet even and the outside length 48 feet 9 inches. The capacity was 3942 cubic feet or 197,000 pounds. Since one of the photos in the MSCG was from 1989, I know I can jump that far. The July 1989 Equipment Register shows 74 cars in two subsets. But the next ORER I have is from October 1991 and there are just three cars left lettered for the NP. The cars became Burlington Northern series to so while the early 1990s is the end of the Approximate Time Period for the cars in NP paint, it wasn t the end of their service life , $28.50 Road Number: 417 (will be UP 417 in website listings). Paired Window Heavyweight Coach, Union Pacific. Armour Yellow sides, Harbor Mist Gray roof, ends, underframe and trucks (not wheels). Red stripes and top and bottom of sides. Red lettering including roadname in center of letterboard and road number at bottom center. Approximate Time Period: Decade of the 1950s. 4

5 There is a September 1953 photo of the real UP 417 on Page 70 of Morning Sun s Union Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume 2. The photo caption provided Micro-Trains with some of its car copy. Called a chair car by MSCG author Lou Schmitz, the 417 was one of twenty cars built by Pullman in 1922 and rebuilt by Pullman in 1936 with air conditioning, larger rest rooms and fifty seats. The photo shows a good match to the paired window pattern, but different doors, roofline and underframe detail. The car as pictured in the Color Guide also has black trucks; those didn t become aluminum until 1959 according to material I ve read. Does that make for this release being a stand in or not? That s up to you. I think it s fair to say that it s more appropriate than the fill in that MTL s Union Pacific observation car represents! Ignoring the color of the trucks, we know that the Approximate Time Period includes 1953, but how about the rest of that ATP? Checking UtahRails.net, we find that the cars 416 to 421 last appeared in issues of the Official Register of Passenger Train Equipment in 1958, 1959 or So late fifties seems to be alright for the end of the ATP. (This also means that the 417 may never have had aluminum trucks consider some black paint.) The start of the ATP would be called at the rebuild of 1936, except that the gray and yellow paint scheme was not made official for all UP passenger equipment until March I think decade of the 1950s might be the best Approximate Time Period choice here , $22.70 Road Number: 986 (will be CP 986 in website listings). Paired Window Heavyweight Coach, Canadian Pacific. Maroon sides and ends. Black roof, underbody and trucks. Imitation gold roadname in center of letterboard and road number at bottom center of side. Approximate Time Period: 1920s to at least was the build date for the CP series of four first class coaches numbered 986 to 989. The real cars were 75 feet 6 inches long a bit shorter than the MTL model and seated eighty passengers. Looking at the September 1959 photo of the real 986 in Morning Sun s Canadian Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Page 6, it s evident that we don t quite have a paired window style on the prototype. The roofline and trucks are different as well. I m going to assume that the paint scheme remained constant from the build date to the time of the photo, since the CP adopted the rich tuscan red enamel of its subsidiary Soo Line. As a true transcontinental line with plenty of passenger service to cover, it s probably not surprising that the CP had 989 first class coaches as of By the 1960s, though, the preference of air and auto travel over rail impacted Canada just as it had the United States, and in 1978 VIA Rail Canada assumed long distance passenger train operations of both the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National. I doubt that the 986 survived to see the startup of that service, but I did not come up with any data beyond the 1959 photo date in the MSCG. So an at least it will have to be for the Approximate Time Period. 5

6 , $19.75 Reporting Marks: B&OZ Foot Trailer, Baltimore & Ohio. Aluminum with black wheels and hitch. Blue lettering including two angles and large B&O near front and reporting marks at bottom center. Approximate Time Period: 1960s, but see text. I must admit that when I was much younger, the sight of the letter Z often threw me into a fit of giggles. In the railroad business, the Z in the last position of reporting marks refers to trailers, just as the X refers to privately owned equipment. In the case of the Baltimore and Ohio, the reporting marks were augmented by that last letter of the alphabet, yielding B&OZ. Which led to giggles. I don t know why. Maybe it s the use of the letter to denote sleeping in comic strips? Well, what might seem silly to some N Scalers is the see text part of the ATP. While the paint scheme is a reasonable representation of early B&O piggybacks, specifically the take on the sunburst scheme that is probably better known on B&O second generation diesels, it s on a forty-eight foot trailer, which just plain didn t yet exist at the time. Morning Sun s Baltimore & Ohio Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment does have somewhat of an example of this scheme on a rib-sided forty foot trailer found out of service in The B&O lettering and angle stripes are augmented by a placard reading Tofcee Service, the Tofcee being an attempt to make a sort of a word out of the acronym TOFC which is of course short for Trailer on Flat Car. I m placing the ATP for this trailer in the 1960s. The ORER for July 1963 does show a series of trailers in the series, ahem, B&OZ to These were of forty foot length and 12 foot 6 inch extreme height, with capacity of 2400 cubic feet and a light weight of 12,200 pounds. They were licensed in the State of Maryland. The obvious question, already asked in online forums, is why MTL didn t use their forty foot trailer for this release. The following item is in dealer pre-order mode at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is May MTL s Micro-News indicates that dealers need to add this car, and the rest of the Meat Packer Reefer Series, to their standing orders before January 31. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions , $ Foot Wood Double Sheathed Refrigerator Car, Miller and Hart Berkshire Ham and Bacon. Red sides with yellow border and yellow diagonal stripe from bottom left to top right. Wording Berkshire Ham and Bacon in black on diagonal stripe. White lettering including reporting marks on left and company name on right. Boxcar red roof and yellow ends. Approximate Time Period: early 1930 s (1931 paint date given in reference materials). Release #1 of an expected twelve in the Meat Packer Reefer Series. Note that artwork above is representative and that actual car may vary. 6

7 I needed to think a little bit about how to place this car into the sequence for this column. If it were a typical Special Edition release, also known as a fantasy car, it would be easy. However, the cars to be run in this group of twelve are based on actual prototype cars which firmly puts it in the New Release Category. Since this is a more or less pre-order situation at the dealer level, though, I need to attempt to not confuse the situation, so here is this car, out of sequence at the end of the New Releases. Although it s really up to the dealers to add this and the other Meat Packer cars to their standing orders, it probably makes sense for customers to contact their favorite Micro-Trains Authorized Retailer to express interest. I m told that a key source for information for this and the other cars in the series is the Signature Press book Billboard Refrigerator Cars by Richard Hendrickson and Ed Kaminski. Fortunately, that volume is already in the UMTRR Research Accumulation. Page 120 has a black and white photo of the exact car MAHX According to Hendrickson and Kaminsky, this car was built by General American and leased to the Miller and Hart packing company of Chicago but was operated by Quaker City Refrigerator Express. That firm began as the Quaker City Tank Line by a former General American employee; it was purchased by General American in 1928 and officially absorbed in the mid-1930s. Assuming that the preliminary MTL artwork won t change much, it looks pretty well spot on with the photo in Billboard Refrigerator Cars, subject to the constraint of the photo being black and white! While I note that there s no view of the roof in the prototype photo, it appears that we have a fairly good match to the car. I have exactly no ORERs that can help here; the April 1928 issue has ten Miller & Hart cars numbered 2001 to 2010 and there is no listing for the company in the July 1935 Register. Fortunately, my father has the February 1931 ORER and I called him for a look. There are ten cars numbered 2020 to 2029, plus three more numbered 2030, 2031 and Aha! The inside dimensions were: length 33 feet 6 inches, width 8 feet 2 ½ inches, height 7 feet 5 ¼ inches, capacity 2029 cubic feet or 70,000 pounds; plus either 11,130 pounds crushed ice or 9805 pounds of chunk ice in 265 cubic feet. Those dimensions seem to line up with a 36 foot outside length car, more or less. Most of the search results for the phrase Berkshire Ham and Bacon result in references to previous models of this car, but I did learn that Berkshire is also the name of a specific breed of hogs which have been around for some four hundred years. A website attempting to sell you the meat from this particular breed claims that Berkshire pork is famous for the perfect combination of juiciness, flavor and tenderness. The first reference I found to the Miller & Hart firm was to a paperback book Little Hints for the Home which, no doubt, includes any number of uses for their products. The distribution of small books like this was a fairly common marketing practice in the early to middle part of the twentieth century. We ve also got an advertisement announcing a new issue of Convertible Preference Stock of the Miller and Hart company. It appeared in the July 27, 1928 issue of the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper. I quote: The business was established in Miller and Hart, Inc., is engaged primarily in the packing and distribution of pork products. Its plant in the Union Stock Yards, Chicago, is of the most modern type. The Company s products are sold under the well known Berkshire, Miller and Hart and LaSalle brands. A news item in the 7

8 October 4, 1955 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette appears to report the end of the company: Stockholders of the Mount Vernon Bridge Company, Mount Vernon, [Ohio], yesterday approved the proposed merger with Miller and Hart, Inc., Chicago Miller and Hart is a former meat packer now operating a cold storage warehouse Miller and Hart, Inc., has shown a net loss in recent years. The ATP for this car ends a lot sooner than that, even earlier than the ban on advertising on refrigerator cars based on the 1935 ORER check. However, I suspect that most N (and Z) Scalers, including this author, don t care all that much about the appropriate years in which the car would actually have been run. The sales of billboard cars of all types in all scales is and probably will remain far beyond the number of model railroaders who actually have layouts set in the early 1930s! N SCALE REPRINTS: , $23.35 Reporting Marks: MILW Foot Steel Plug Door Boxcar, Milwaukee Road. Brown sides with dark yellow band, black ends, aluminum roof. Brown and yellow lettering including large roadname and reporting marks on left and herald on right. Approximate Time Period: early 1960 s (1964 build date given by MTL, but see text) to 1970s or 1980s (the latter without roofwalk). Previous Release: Road Number 2635, November In its car copy, which is itself largely a reprint from the 2005 release, MTL hints at a significant amount of the information I usually communicate, so let s take the hints again. We ll then Increment ourselves via a Morning Sun Color Guide that wasn t in the UMTRR Research Accumulation when the first run was issued. According to MTL the car was built in February 1964 but there is a 2600 to 2659 group of AAR class RBL cars in the July 1963 ORER. The full car description was Refrigerator, All Steel, Insulated, Roller Bearings and the vital statistics were as follows: inside length 50 feet 1 inch, inside height 9 feet 6 inches, outside length 51 feet 10 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet 2 inches, capacity 4632 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. All 55 cars were in service at the time... we ll come back to what time that actually was. By the April 1970 ORER the Roller Bearings were replaced with Plug Doors in the description and the outside length had increased to 54 feet 4 inches-- get out those medium extended draft gear trucks-- but the car count remained at 55. The note Cars in this series have specially equipped interiors and are not suitable for general service that MTL uses comes out of this issue of the Register, and other issues, I am sure. In the April 1976 ORER we get to find out what the special equipment is, as the description changed again, to Refrigerator, Cushion Underframe, 9 Sparton Belt Rails, Plug Doors, 25K. Four cars in a subseries had pallets that were considered part of the car and four others weren t listed as 8

9 having Cushion Underframes, but the outside length wasn t any different on those four and the 2635 was part of the main series of 44 cars. By this time, of course, you d need to be thinking about roofwalk removal as well, so the strictly speaking ATP is at or near its close. How that Sparton Belt Rails translates to that large S and small E and L on the door, I really don t know. And MTL further notes that more than twenty years later, cars in this series were still operating with MILW reporting marks in the same paint scheme. That brings us to the October 1986 ORER and the Soo Line listing, at least the MILW markings is confirmed: eighteen cars in the 2600 to 2653 group, with yet another description change: Refrigerator, 9 Sparton Belt Rails, Plug Doors, 25K. Ten remained in July 1989 and one, the 2633, made it all the way to July If I recall correctly, the Soo Line didn t make it a habit of restenciling the freight cars it acquired when it took over what was left of the Milwaukee in The Milwaukee Road Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Volume 2, has two representative shots from the series, though neither is a bingo to either number that Micro-Trains has modeled so far. The 2614 was photographed in January 1965 and the 2627 in May 1963, captioned as being less than one year old. The build date on both cars is shown as 4-62, that s April I wonder if somewhere in the MTL production process of the original car transferred to the reprint as well-- there was a transposition, and 4-62 became 2-64, or February 1964? I must admit that I m getting to the point where I can t see that lettering without my glasses, and I don t think I m alone there. More visible, though, is the silver roof; the MSCG says that the cars in the 2600s had those painted black, while the previous series numbered in the 2500s had unpainted galvanized roofs. The MTL 032 body style does appear to be a good match to the prototype car, which was built by Pullman- Standard. There is one exception to this which is right on the door: two vertical lines of rivets. MTL does an interesting job of simulating this by adding paint stripes on the door , $24.60 Road Number: (will be GN in website listings). 33 Foot Two Bay Hopper, Offset Sides, Flat Ends, Great Northern. Brown with mostly white lettering including roadname on left and road number on right. Black and white side facing goat herald in center. Simulated coal load included. Approximate Time Period: late 1940s to early 1980s. Previous Releases: Road Number 73237, April 1979; Road Number 73476, September The prototype for this car was built by Standard Steel Car Company in It s not an exact match to the MTL 055 body style, for example, if you count rivets and seams. (I do mean this.) The as delivered paint scheme was most likely with the forward facing goat herald which included the slogan See America First Glacier National Park. According to Morning Sun s Great Northern Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, that See 9

10 America First herald was in place from 1922 to So Micro-Trains estimate of repainting into the scheme depicted by them sometime between 1948 and 1956 is probably reasonable. Page 78 of the Color Guide shows three cars in the same series that includes this reprint in one photo, each with a different paint scheme. (Note to MTL: Follow-on releases. ) The one farthest from the camera is the one on the model hopper; its entire road number can t be read but appears to start with 734. The photo is dated 1966 so we know that at least one car lasted that long in that paint scheme. That s only four years before the Burlington Northern merger. Repairs and repaintings at different times over the years account for the variation according to the MSCG. The ORER for July 1953 is a good enough place to check for these cars since I think some of them would have been in the paint scheme MTL chose. The series to consisted of 492 of the possible 500 cars. They were your basic Hopper, Steel with AAR Designation HM. The inside length was 34 feet 9 inches, inside width 10 feet 1 inch, inside height 7 feet 7 inches, outside length 36 feet, extreme height 10 feet 9 inches, and capacity 2160 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. So besides being different in terms of rivets and seams, the car was also a bit larger than the MTL body style as well. Jumping all the way to the April 1970 ORER and the Burlington Northern listing, we find quite the healthy quantity of 465 cars still remaining in this GN series. We re still at 376 cars in April 1976, later than I would have expected for cars built in By April 1981, the next Equipment Register I have, that s down to only 81 cars; but then again, they were fifty years old at that point. They re all gone by April , $24.15 Reporting Marks: CRMZ Foot Trailer, Conrail Mercury. White with blue lettering including reporting marks at rear. Blue and silver Conrail Mercury legend on side. Smaller version of same legend on nose and tail. Approximate Time Period: 1989 through 1990s. Previous Release (as catalog number 68040): Road Number , December According to Robert Waller s Conrail Cyclopedia ( crcyc.railfan.net, no www ) the Conrail Mercury service was a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Rail and was managed by trucking executives. Its dispatch center was in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. The Mercury intermodal service later included contracts with the United States Postal Service. Forty-eight foot long Strick trailers were purchased for this service and given CRMZ reporting marks. Unlike the B&O trailer in the New Releases section, the ORER is of no help here since trailers and containers had long before been pushed over to the Official Intermodal Equipment Register, copies of which number exactly zero in the UMTRR Research Accumulation. Photos online aren t found in my usual goto places either. However, the above mentioned Conrail Cyclopedia does contain a few images of this series of trailers, which I guess were 10

11 numbered in the s. The photos were all taken in the 1990s and illustrate variations on the main paint scheme including application of the Postal Service eagle logo. They also indicate an at least okay alignment to the MTL trailer body style, though I hasten to add that I am no expert on such things. With the breakup of Conrail, I assume that the specific Mercury service was officially discontinued, but I would imagine that both Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation folded their share of former Mercury services into their offerings. N SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following item was announced as an off-cycle release for December 2011 via the Micro-Trains website on December 14 and via the Micro- Trains E-Line on December , $ Burlington Northern Weathered Four-Pack. Consists of four fifty foot exterior post boxcars with single superior panel doors. Each car is green with mostly white lettering including reporting marks (only) on left and small simulated reflective blocks along bottom of side. Cars also have weathering and graffiti and/or brown or red oxide patch panels on sides. Individual catalog and road numbers are as follows: , Road Number (last digit partially obscured); , Road Number ; , Road Number 2497 (last two digits obscured); , Road Number (on brown patch panel). Approximate Time Period: late 1980s to mid-decade of the 2000s. Previous Releases: None. This quartet of cars (the other three of which are at left) is another chance to use that aforementioned January 2011 ORER, but we ll come back to that. First, we need to establish about when the BN dropped everything but the reporting marks from their paint scheme. Based on information in Morning Sun s Burlington Northern Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, that s sometime around 1988 as there s a shot of the logoless paint on BN painted September of that year on Page 12 of that book. That takes us to the ORER for July 1989 where we find the series to , of 418 cars described as Box, Steel, Nailable Steel Floor, Lading Strap Anchors, 50K. The key dimensions were: inside length 50 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 7 inches, outside length 55 feet 5 inches, extreme height 14 feet 11 inches, door opening 10 feet, and capacity 5077 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. From there we ll jump to the ORER for October 2007 which shows 168 cars remaining with BN markings under the BNSF Railway registration. Which means it s time to pull out the new addition: the January 2011 ORER. And then put it away: just one car left. The ATP doesn t reach to The Present. 11

12 RailcarPhotos.com, which has 14 photos of cars in the prototype series, we learn that these cars were built by Berwick Forge and Fabricating. The Micro-Trains body style is a model of an FMC 5077 cubic foot car, so we d know straight away that there isn t a match to the real cars, but for the record, at least the ends and side sills are different based on the photos. RailcarPhotos has a 1985 shot of BN painted for Railbox with a restencil only. Could this entire group of cars have been former Railbox cars? It s certainly possible. N SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #59, four Canadian National forty foot double door boxcars, is now available. UMTRR coverage was provided in the July 2011 issue. The individual catalog and road numbers are as follows: Catalog Number , Road Number ; Catalog Number , Road Number ; Catalog Number , Road Number ; Catalog Number , Road Number Also note that these cars have Canadian National (English roadname) on one side and Canadien National (French roadname) on the other side of each car (French roadname shown in image above). 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 these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close January 31. Scheduled July 2012 Release: , $124.95, Closed Autorack Multi-Pack. Will consist of three closed tri-level auto rack cars as follows: , Santa Fe. Reporting Marks: ATSF Brown (mineral red) with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left. Modern era circle cross herald on left of rack and Quality herald (circle cross inside Q ) on right. Approximate Time Period: decade of the 1990s to late 2007s. Previous Release: Road Number , September , TTX (Trailer Train). Reporting Marks: ETTX Yellow flat car with black and white lettering including reporting marks on left and TTX logo on right. Yellow and aluminum rack with black and white TTX logo on left. Approximate Time Period: late 1990s (as painted) to present. Previous Release: Road Number , January

13 , Union Pacific/TTX. Reporting Marks: ETTX Yellow flat car with black and white lettering including reporting marks on left and TTX logo on right. Yellow and aluminum rack with black lettering including We Will Deliver on top left panel. Red, white and blue shield herald on yellow placard on left. Approximate Time Period: 1996 to early decade of the 2000s at least. Previous Releases: Road Numbers and , July We can sort of kind of take these three reprints together, since first, the dimensions should be nearly identical; second, the Approximate Time Periods overlap, and third, I m lazy. The Santa Fe car was the very first enclosed autorack release from MTL and I remember holding one of them at the 2004 National N Scale Convention (has it really been that long since I attended one?). At the time, the use of a transparent core enclosed by the car sides was an innovation, which resulted in a car with plenty of weight to enable good tracking but of course also no way to include a real load. But I observed that the casual viewer probably wouldn t be able to tell anyway, especially if the car was in motion. Anyway, While the reporting marks were changed to Gothic font back in 1991 per the RPI website, the ruling detail for the ATP is the Q. Micro-Scale has the Santa Fe s introduction of that logo and the Quality Scheme as being introduced circa 1990, at least on boxcars. So it s off to the October 1991 ORER. The AAR Classification was FA, the description was Flat, Tri-Level, Axle Spacing 5 feet 1 inch, Truck Centers 64 feet, and the notation was F+ meaning that the car exceeded Plate F dimensions. The inside length was 89 feet 4 inches, outside length 93 feet 10 inches, and extreme height-- well, it was pretty extreme at 19 feet. The capacity, though, was just 72,000 pounds. There were 98 cars in the group to , out of a possible 100. The January 2002 ORER showed 43 cars in the series. But just five remained in the October 2007 Register and they re gone by the October 2011 ORER. So not quite the present for the ATP on this. I ll add the caution that views of cars in this series available on George Elwood s Fallen Flags site ( ) reveal that not all of them had the Q paint scheme. While the Q dates to the early nineties, it s more like the late nineties for the particular TTX car that is the second of these three auto rack reprints. While Trailer Train officially flipped to its best known reporting marks as its corporate name in 1991 and adopted the trademark shown on this car, ETTX cars numbered in the to series don t appear until the July 1998 ORER. The inside length is 89 feet 4 inches, outside length 93 feet 8 inches, extreme height 19 feet, and gross rail weight 179,000 pounds. There were 290 cars in the group then. And the January 2011 ORER shows 344 cars in the group. I think we re OK on to present here, although starting in 2008 TTX used a new logo in the tuscan red of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the original founder of Trailer Train. I had a bingo on the previously released road number over on Fallen Flags, and I m sure that there are plenty of other images online as well. Some of those cars will have racking from railroads instead of racking with the TTX paint scheme. Meanwhile, it s the mid-nineties for the start of the ATP for the Union Pacific/TTX car that completes the trio in this Multi-Pack, driven by the slogan We Will Deliver. At the time, 13

14 UP wasn t delivering as well as it could have been, as there was a, well, service meltdown resulting from the UP s merger with the Southern Pacific. We will deliver eventually was one of the twists given to the slogan online. It s probably not surprising that the line was rather quickly given up; in fact, according to UtahRails.net it was painted onto diesels only from April to December A quick look at an ORER from July 1997 shows both cars with your typical dimensions for autoracks. Inside length is 89 feet 4 inches, outside length 93 feet 10 inches-- just a little less than the width of my front yard, by comparison. There is variance within the ETTX series to in both the extreme height and the nominal capacity, but the main series is at 18 feet 9 inches and 62,000 pounds. It looks like both cars were still in service as of the January 2011 Register, but I m tempering that with the idea that the We Will Deliver could easily be removed by swapping out a panel. I expect that would have occurred well before the present so I m cutting the ATP at a few years after Even so, that provides an ATP for all three of these cars concurrently of the late 1990s to those early 2000s. Invoking Rule #1 (It s your railroad) will extend that farther out, of course. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: In addition to the items listed below, the Santa Fe Vintage Poster Loco and Caboose Set ( , $169.95) is scheduled for midmonth release. Images weren t available when pre-orders were taken for this item in September 2011, so here they are. The pair are a Model Power Steam Locomotive with MTL coupler (rear only) and decoration, and an MTL wood caboose with straight cupola, road number Please see the UMTRR Website following its next update for catalog numbers on these individual items and , $15.85 each Reporting Marks: RBX 52 and Foot Fishbelly Side Flat Car, Ringling Brothers ( Vintage Paint). Red with white lettering including reporting marks on left and Ringling Bros. in vintage style lettering in center. Companion Release: , $29.95, Ringling Brothers Two-Pack of Circus Wagons. First wagon is fully enclosed, orange with yellow ornamentation and white wheels. Second wagon is a cage type with blue frame and wheels and gold bars and Ringling Bros. legend across top. Can we just say ditto here and call it a commentary? There isn t much to add for these items, which are the same as last month s Vintage offerings except for the colors in which 14

15 they are painted. Oh, and MTL reminds dealers that neither the flat cars nor the wagon two pack are on standing orders. Last month s pair of wagons is already sold out so you ve been cautioned on this month s issuances , $ Foot Boxcar, Plug Door, Without Roofwalk, Full Ladders, Presidential Series #40: Ronald Reagan. 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. The last of the Presidents that share my astrological sign of Aquarius thus far (the others are William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and Franklin D. Roosevelt), Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois. Like me, Reagan had ambitions of being on the radio, unlike me, he actually got there as a sports broadcaster in Iowa. Dutch Reagan struggled at first but then became quite well-known in the Midwest for his radio voice. When the Chicago Cubs went to California in 1937 for spring training, he went also and did a screen test at Warner Brothers. Warners liked him and put him under contract; he went on to make fifty-two films between 1937 and Perhaps you d prefer to recall Bedtime for Bonzo, in which his co-star was a chimp (!) but he might be somewhat better known for playing doomed football star George Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All-American. This gave Reagan his second nickname, The Gipper, borrowed from the character he played. Reagan said the favorite of his films was the 1942 feature Kings Row. From films he moved to television as the host of General Electric Theatre, which was an anthology show that presented adaptations of novels, short stories or other literature. The program ran on CBS for 209 episodes from February 1953 to May 1962 and Reagan provided continuity between the disparate episodes of the anthology format as its one and only host. Reagan credited the further development of his public speaking ability to the show and the duties he had as spokesperson for General Electric off-air. Reagan was brought up as a Democrat and admired FDR; but after age 50 he determined that the Republican Party was closer to his personal beliefs possibly given his exposure to General Electric and the considerable wealth he accumulated during his time as their spokesperson and television host and switched alliances in In 1964 he gave a speech in support of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater which propelled him to top of mind among conservatives in the party despite Goldwater getting trounced in the general election by Lyndon Johnson. He was encouraged to run for Governor of California in 1966 and beat a popular incumbent; then was re-elected in 1970 by a million vote margin. As Governor, Reagan had his share of missteps but on balance is thought to be successful and quite pragmatic; he worked with Democrats on important issues ranging from budget balancing to conserving rivers in the northern part of the state. In 1968 he made a half- 15

16 hearted run for the Presidency which fizzled quickly. He was better prepared in 1976 and nearly stole the Republican nomination away from Gerald Ford. This positioned him as the front-runner for the Election of He won the nomination and took the White House away from Jimmy Carter. He was reelected by a landslide in When he first took office, the United States was in a terrible mood. The Iran Hostage Crisis ended on the day of his inauguration (perhaps as a slap in the face to his predecessor Carter more than anything else) and the economy was in fairly bad shape with serious double-digit inflation rates peaking at almost fifteen percent two months after he took office. Reagan also had to deal with the nagging spectre of the Cold War with the Soviets. It s often a criticism that Reagan s economic policies benefited the wealthy more than everyone else, however the inflation rate was brought down and the economy did recover from about 1983 through the end of his tenure in the White House. In foreign affairs Reagan had his greatest success. And since I was around, and not as a small child as with, say, JFK and LBJ, there are things I remember about the Reagan Presidency. Considering that his third and probably most lasting nickname was The Great Communicator, it s not surprising that I think of specific quotes when recalling certain events. For example, while standing at the Brandenburg Gate at the then boundary between East and West Berlin, and addressing in absentia the head of the Soviet Union: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. I don t remember anything else about the speech, and tear down this wall was called the four most famous words of Reagan s presidency in a Time magazine article twenty years later. Four years before his June 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, Reagan had referred to the Soviet Union as the evil empire, another very famous quote. But he also feared that the long-standing policy of mutually assured destruction would lead to exactly that one day. The relations with the Soviets were not good during Reagan s first term; it wasn t until Mikhail Gorbachev, who in his own way was as forward looking as Reagan, took control of the USSR that there was anyone in Moscow to talk to seriously about bringing down the number of nuclear weapons that the two countries possessed. Two other quotes came to mind immediately, both being used during election campaigns. The first, during the run against Jimmy Carter, was Are you better off now than you were four years ago, a line still being used today, though with not quite the same impact. And the second was during Reagan s second term campaign. Already the oldest man elected to the White House, he needed to defuse the potential negative slant put on that point by his much younger challenger, Walter Mondale. He did it masterfully: in the second debate, he coolly declared in response to a question that I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent s youth and inexperience. Even Mondale laughed out loud and there was considerable applause. There is one more quote I recall that is as sad as the previous one is playful. On November 5, 1994, Reagan addressed a letter to the country: My Fellow Americans. I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. After that, he 16

17 retreated from public view, and passed away on June 5, A state funeral followed, and his struggle with Alzheimer s gave a prominent profile to the disease and the continuing search for a cure. Ronald Reagan left office with the highest approval rating since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man that Reagan himself admired growing up. Although they ended up in different parties, it s easy to draw some parallels between the two men. They both came into office in difficult times, made unpopular decisions, and gained the respect and admiration of the American people. The comparison might stop there FDR never had the taint of an Iran- Contra Affair for example but like his idol, Reagan has become one of the country s most popular presidents. The Miller Center, which has a great deal about Reagan including audio and video clips, is not quite as celebratory: It is an open question whether Reagan's accomplishments occurred because of his philosophy or despite it or both. But they also conclude by saying that he casts a long shadow. The trivia question is a bit of a poser this month. Who was President while twenty railroads went bankrupt during a depression? This is a little easier if you recall that another term for depression was panic back in the day, or the year: The Chief Executive at the time was better known for his nickname: Unconditional Surrender. That would be U.S. or more properly Ulysses S. Grant. Good luck with your entry! Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE): No releases this month. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $31.80 Reporting Marks: UP Foot Steel Boxcar, Plug Door, Union Pacific. Yellow sides; aluminum roof, ends, bottom side sill, trucks and couplers. Black lettering including reporting marks on left. Red, white and blue Union Pacific shield herald on left. Multicolor Automated RAILway logo with map on right. Approximate Time Period: 1963 (build date) to no later than Micro-Trains depicts the second car in sequence of the UP series to The ORER for January 1964 describes these cars as UP Refrigerator, Steel, Plug Doors, Cushion Underframe, Compartmentizer with AAR Designation RBL. The inside length was 50 feet 1 inch, inside width 9 feet 5 inches, inside height 9 feet 11 inches, outside length 53 feet 6 inches, extreme height 15 feet, door opening 10 feet and capacity 4638 cubic feet or 135,000 pounds. There were 171 cars in the series at the time and a special character on the line appeared, which denotes reduction. The Union Pacific class for this car was BI-70-4, even though the classification was officially a refrigerator car. As we know that s often the case for plug door boxcars, especially if they re insulated which this one was. I guess the UP figured 17

18 that the I in BI was enough to communicate that the car was insulated since there s no other indication shown. Morning Sun s Union Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Volume One), Page 26, shows sister car UP which was built a couple of months after the but still in The car was of smooth side riveted construction which presents an immediately noticeable delta between prototype and model. The side sills are also a bit different on the MTL 507 body style, and extended draft gear would be a better fit on the car as well. In the April 1970 ORER the reduction must have been reversed, as the car count for the series is up to 191. An end note describes pallets considered part of car ; the had 52 of them. Load dividers and side fillers had been added to the description and compartmentizers were deleted. By the April 1976 Register the end notes had been brought into the description, creating a bunch of subsets of these cars organized by the number of pallets included (!) totaling 183 cars. Though you d have to be thinking about both roofwalk removal and fading paint by April 1981, the ORER showed 173 cars remaining. The group was all the way down to 22 cars by January 1985, and the series is gone by the October 1986 Register, so we can narrow down the end of the ATP pretty tightly this time and , $26.85 each. Reporting Marks: GVSR and Foot Bulkhead Flat Cars, Golden West Service (Galveston Railroad, LP). Blue with mostly yellow lettering including reporting marks on left and roadname in center. Simulated plywood loads included. Approximate Time Period: early 1990s to early decade of the 2000s. We ve covered the ground of both the Galveston Railroad, LP and the Golden West Service before, and in fact veteran readers of the UMTRR have even seen coverage of one of these two road numbers before. But a recap is in order. Sometime between the July 1987 and the July 1989 ORERs the Galveston Wharves Railroad became the Galveston Railroad, LP. The City of Galveston retained ownership of the property and leased it to the Limited Partnership beginning in November Meanwhile, the Golden West Service was the name given to the venture of Greenbrier Corporation for refurbishment and leaseback of Southern Pacific freight equipment, including these bulkhead flat cars. Among the ORERs in the Research Accumulation, the first one in which these flat cars show is the July 1992 edition, by which point the GVSR has over 1400 freight cars. There were a total of 75 cars in the general grouping to , in an annoying nine different subseries based on capacity. All of these cars are of 57 foot inside length and 65 foot 5 inch outside length, a little short overall against the MTL body style, but not too bad. And I note here that the place that long time readers would have seen this is the N Scale release

19 from back in June 2001, which was of road number ; and I made the same remark about the car length. The October 1996 ORER shows the series has expanded to to , and has also grown to 174 cars in six series, mostly by capacity again but with one group sporting an extreme width of 10 feet 5 inches versus only 10 feet for the rest of the population. The January 2000 Equipment Register covered about the same territory except that most of the cars appear to have added another foot to the outside length, to 66 feet 5 inches. The Golden West cars have largely been absorbed back into the roster of the Union Pacific although with subsidiary reporting marks including that of the Southern Pacific from which these cars came. There were a mere nine cars left in the group as of the October 2004 ORER, which is where I stopped looking. Fallen Flags has just one image from the series, taken of GVSR in California in August The inside of the bulkhead walls are smooth and appear to my eye to be a bit shorter than the MTL model. There are seventeen stake pockets along the side of the prototype, which I believe is more than on the MTL body style except that I don t own one of these to count how many they have! Another more general point by a reader was made with respect to the MTL-supplied loads on these cars and the N Scale Bulkhead and Centerbeam flat cars. Namely, would a wood load really travel without covering? I had to think about this, and I would have said no, the wood would have been ruined, especially plywood, were it to get soaked in the rain. But then what should I see in a train here in the area but a couple of bulkhead flat cars with exactly that uncovered wood loads. They were certainly outnumbered by wood loads that were covered in plastic, and I m quite sure that spotting a couple of cars does not make for a statistically significant sample. I checked in with UMTRR Gang Member Walt Huston, who suggested to me that what I saw without covering was cheap dimensional lumber which is not kiln dried and nowhere near straight , $20.70 Reporting Marks: N&W PS-2 Covered Hopper, Two Bay, Norfolk and Western. Gray with mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left, roadname at top center and large N&W in center. Approximate Time Period: early 1980 s (based on paint detail) to mid-1990s. While the car was built in 1960, we re going to go with more of a strictly speaking ATP given the U-1 stencil and the two panel consolidated stencils. The car was originally built in the to group according to the MTL car copy, but I m not sure that s right, see below. We get a bingo on this car on Page 73 of Morning Sun s Norfolk and Western Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, and from there we pick up additional facts: the 19

20 car belonged to the N&W s class HC9 and was built by Greenville as a near-copy of the PS-2 from Pullman-Standard, which had built 100 HC7 s for the N&W in 1958 and The N&W certainly spread things around since the HC8s which came in between were built by American Car and Foundry. The MSCG calls the paint that the wore a variation of the 1963 scheme that does not include the round hamburger herald; that somewhat unusual typestyle on the roadname is good for at least this one car. The is the last car in the series to 71475, which appears as early as the July 1963 ORER (my previous Register is before the build date). The s are actually open hoppers at this time so I wonder about the MTL car copy, but no matter. We ll jump to the January 1985 to more closely align with the strictly speaking ATP and the May 1985 date of the photo in the MSCG. There were 31 of the original 50 cars still in service at the time. The key dimensions: inside length 29 feet 3 inches, outside length 37 feet 9 inches, extreme height 13 feet 2 inches, capacity 2003 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. Twenty cars are shown in the July 1987 ORER, but just two in July 1989, neither of which is the 71475, and there are none left as of October and , $ each Road Numbers: 5367 and 5378 (will be preceded with CN in website listings). SD40-2 Diesels, Canadian National. CN North America scheme of red cab, black long hood with red and white diagonal bands, yellow sill stripe and black underframe. White road number on cab. White and gray CN North America herald and map on long hood. Approximate Time Period: mid-1990s to the present. Eric Gagnon s Trackside Treasure blog ( tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com ) discussed the first purchase of UP units by the CN: In 1994, CN bought 24 ex-up exx-mp SD40-2s which were upgraded and renumbered into the 5300-series. Formerly numbered , , the units were hastily repatched with a first digit 6 to avoid CN's 4100-series GP9RM s. There are several photos of the ex-up units working behind CN units on Canadian National trackage. In 2010, the CN went back to the Union Pacific to purchase 35 former Chicago & North Western C41-8s but that s another story. The CN North America paint scheme debuted in mid-1992 so that would have been the earliest possible start for the Approximate Time Period. When repainted, these units were renumbered: the 5367 was the former UP 6108 and the 5378 was UP However, that repainting work didn t start until September 1994 and ended in December 1995, so we ll further adjust the ATP. Gagnon reported that some of these units were retired as early as By the way, Gagnon recently completed a book titled Trackside with VIA: The First 35 Years; I like his blog so I thought I d give his hard copy effort some publicity. See the website newviarailbook.blogspot.com for more. One of these days I ll follow that path myself. 20

21 Meanwhile, some photo references for these units in their CN paint would be in order. LocoPhotos.com has a February 2007 shot of the 5367 in the snow at Brantford, Ontario. Two deltas immediately come into view: the addition of a cover over the air intake at the front of the long hood, and the lack of dynamic brakes. On the other hand, it looks like the 5378 did have dynamic brakes based on a 2006 shot of that unit over in Burlington, Ontario. Checking through the other images on LocoPhotos, we appear to have a mix of some and some with respect to this feature. It does look from Eric Gagnon s photos that those that don t didn t have dynamic brakes when the units were sold to the CN. It appears that most of these former UP units are still in service on the Canadian National s lines. According to a table on The Diesel Shop ( ) last updated earlier this month, locos , 5380, 5382, and are off the roster. That gives us a to present on the ATP for the two units MTL depicted. The following item is in dealer pre-order mode at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is May MTL s Micro-News indicates that dealers need to add this car, and the rest of the Meat Packer Reefer Series, to their standing orders before January 31. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions , $ Foot Wood Double Sheathed Refrigerator Car, Miller and Hart Berkshire Ham and Bacon. Red sides with yellow border and yellow diagonal stripe from bottom left to top right. Wording Berkshire Ham and Bacon in black on diagonal stripe. White lettering including reporting marks on left and company name on right. Boxcar red roof and yellow ends. Approximate Time Period: early 1930 s (1931 paint date given in reference materials). Release #1 of an expected twelve in the Meat Packer Reefer Series. Note that artwork above is representative and that actual car may vary. Please see the commentary on the N Scale pre-order announcement above. Z SCALE REPRINTS: No releases this month. Z SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following item was announced as an off-cycle release for December 2011 via the Micro-Trains website on December 14 and via the Micro-Trains E- Line on December , $23.70 Reporting Marks: USAX Foot Single Dome Tank Car, United States Army. Black with white lettering including reporting marks and United States Army on left and 21

22 Transportation Corps logo on right. Approximate Time Period: 1960s and 1970s. Previous Releases in unweathered form: Road Number 10939, as part of U.S. Army Set #2, July Road Numbers and 10986, December This release is a weathered version of a previous release. The Approximate Time Period for this car is driven by the road number. The Army had plenty of tank cars before the 1960s but not in the series. They are in the January 1964 ORER, where the armed forces have all been consolidated under the rather bureaucratic sounding Department of Defense - Defense Traffic Management Service listing. A group of 851 ICC-103 type tank cars with USAX reporting marks are numbered from to By the April 1970 ORER, the restenciling of rolling stock from USAX, USNX, et cetera reporting marks into unified DODX reporting marks was well underway, although the series of tankers with which we re concerned could have been wearing either the new or old initials. The group is down to 530 cars by then. By April 1976 it looks like the DODX transition has been completed, and there are only 126 tankers in the series left, so that s where I stopped looking. Z SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #37, four Southern Pacific sixty foot bulkhead flat cars with loads, has been released. UMTRR coverage was in the July 2011 issue. The catalog numbers and road numbers for individual cars in this Runner Pack are as follows: Catalog , Road Number ; Catalog , Road Number ; Catalog , Road Number ; Catalog , Road Number 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 , $84.95 Quantity four of Gunderson Husky Stack Cars, Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Reporting Marks: BNSF A, B, A, B. Brown with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left and circle cross herald on right. Approximate Time Period: late 1990 s to present. Previous Release: Road Number , November The main thing we need to do here is reconfirm the to present Approximate Time Period with the January 2011 ORER. Done: A total of 233 five unit sets numbered to in place as of that date. What is more questionable is whether the circle cross has been replaced with the swoosh logo. This was the last stand of the venerable circle cross which had been around since introduced by the Santa Fe in

23 As stated above, the road numbers are actually five unit articulated sets of double stack pack flat cars, AAR Designation FCA, with inside lengths of 48 feet per unit, a total outside length of 300 feet 10 inches, and gross rail weight of 800,000 pounds with a few exceptions of 801 or 799 thousand. From earlier ORERs we can see that the approximate light weight of each unit is about 40,000 pounds. As of 2006 there were 571 sets of these cars in the BNSF series. I was able to trace backwards through the ORERs to roughly the official birth of the then Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway to come up with the Approximate Time Period. I can return to the photo citation I used with the first release of this car. Images of all five units of BNSF from the series, as caught by Scott Borden in October 2004 are available on the Fallen Flags site. First, the A and B units are the ends and the C, D and E units are in the middle. The B unit has the paint scheme as depicted by Micro-Trains, while the A unit has the herald and reporting marks flipped: the circle cross on the left and the reporting marks on the right. Of course, only two of the five units for two sets are included in this forthcoming Runner Pack, and drawbars should be used except at the ends as well. A bit of net searching will yield tutorials on how to add drawbars if so desired. In addition to the above, I got a bingo on BNSF A as of July 2006, with the flipped herald and reporting marks, on RRPictureArchives.net. The number has been patched but is the same as the MTL model. This could be to refresh the lettering since, based on images of other cars in the series on the same website, these cars got awfully dirty. RRPictureArchives has some 3400 (!) images of BNSF stack cars; you need to go all the way to Page 25 of the images to catch the beginning of the prototype series from which MTL drew these road numbers. Happy browsing! Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: , $22.95 Reporting Marks: NC Foot Box Car, Plug Door, North Carolina State Car. Aluminum sides, black roof, ends, sills and door hardware; blue and black primary lettering including reporting marks, state name and outline map on left. Four color process graphics including state flag, state flower (dogwood) and state bird (cardinal) on right. Forty-second release in the Z Scale States of the Union series. Back in April 2003 when the N Scale version of this car was released and my son Kieran was very into dinosaurs, he would have loved to know that in the ancient history of the Tar Heel State, the eastern half was underwater and giant megalodon sharks ruled that part of what is now North Carolina. Somewhat later, the first European colony was established-- twice-- at Roanoke. The first time, the settlers returned home; the second time, they became The Lost Colony, but not before Virginia Dare was born and became the first English child christened in North America. North Carolina became the 12th State of the Union in 1789, undid that in 1861 (versus seceding-- I guess they found the delete key?) and was readmitted to the 23

24 Union in There s a lot of history in between, not the least of which was the rise of North Carolina native Andrew Jackson to the Presidency, and, not so fortunately, the Trail of Tears along which the native Cherokee were pushed out of their homes. Textile and furniture became important industries after the Civil War, and to this day there are field trips from all over the East to the area around High Point for furniture shopping. The Wright Brothers made history at Kitty Hawk in 1903, and the state reworked its industrial base again starting in 1959 with the establishment of Research Triangle Park near Raleigh. The Raleigh/Durham area was named best place to live in 1994 and remains an attractive area for working age folks and retirees alike. I found several good references for more historical information, including the NC Encyclopedia (now at the URL ncpedia.org, no www ) and the history on the Kid s Page ( ). Besides the Cardinal and Dogwood being the state bird and flower, there are plenty of other Official State Symbols. For the record, the official drink is milk. Just thought you d like to know. One thing I did want to know is the origin of The Tar Heel State. One explanation I found online is that the tar was going to be applied to the heels of those who were supposed to be supporting North Carolina troops in the War Between the States, so that they would stick around-- literally. It s said that Robert E. Lee heard this and remarked, God bless the Tar Heel boys. Before the Civil War, The Old North State was popular, given its geographical location north of South Carolina and its having been settled before then. Most of my experience with the state is centered around Charlotte, its largest city. It was the destination of my first plane trip (on Eastern Airlines, no less!) and then it was almost twenty years before I set foot there again. And in the interim the place experienced explosive growth, becoming a center of banking and expanding to cover almost all of Mecklenburg County. I ve been back a couple times to the Queen City since then, and I ve also been briefly in the pretty Great Smoky Mountains. As the state was the fourth to be honored in the N Scale series, I had not yet begun the listing of famous natives. So here s a list, starting with Presidents Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Andrew Johnson, as well as First Lady Dolley Madison. Famous authors include Thomas Wolfe who wrote You Can t Go Home Again and William Sydney Porter, also known as O. Henry, perhaps best known for surprise endings such as the one in The Gift of the Magi. Charles Kuralt, who went On The Road was from Wilmington, as was David Brinkley. Perhaps the most renowned television journalist of all, Edward R. Murrow, was from Polecat Creek. For sports coverage was Howard Cosell, and in interviewing there is Charlie Rose. Roberta Flack was born on my birthday no, actually, I was born on hers. My father could probably tell me without looking that Ava Gardner was from North Carolina. Jazz legends Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane both hailed from the state, as does bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs. I can t leave out Michael Jordan and Meadowlark Lemon, both unique contributors to basketball in their own way. And does it surprise you at all to know that Andy Griffith is from Mayberry oops, I mean Mount Airy? 24

25 HOn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE): The following item was announced as an off-cycle release for December 2011 via the Micro-Trains website on December 14 and via the Micro-Trains E- Line on December , $39.95 Reporting Marks: C&S Foot Double Sheathed Refrigerator Car, Colorado & Southern. Freight car red with black lettering on sides including large C. & S. initials and small roadname on left, and Refrigerator (in all caps) and road number on right. White lettering on ends (reporting marks). Approximate Time Period: early 1910 s to late 1920 s. Weathered version of a previous release (January 2010). This is one of the several paint schemes in which a small group of C&S cars was decorated over a relatively short time period. The start of the ATP lies in the fact that the cars were repainted when renumbered circa 1912 per Micro-Trains information. The end comes with the adoption of the button herald and is a little more squishy. MTL has previously noted use of the button herald starting in 1928 while the San Juan Decals site has the transition from this block lettering version beginning in the 1920 s with most repaints later in the decade. We ll keep the most as the operative word and call the ATP in the later part of that decade. MTL ANNOUNCEMENTS: MTL now has available the MRC/JTT line of Z Scale trees. There are three different lines, Scenic, Pro and Premium. Sizes, quantities and prices vary. Still with Z, there s a two pack of Jet Engine Container Loads ( , $9.95) and in N Scale is a pair of Freight Loads for boxcar interiors ( , $9.95). STRUCTURE KITS: To go with the Coal Mine Tipple, there is now a Coal Dock Kit in Z Scale ( , $24.95). I think the Waterfront Series done in Z is coming to N Scale, as we have a Cannery Kit ( , $44.95) and a Narrow Pier Kit ( , two for $24.95). DISCONTINUED ALERT: Whoa, all four scales are represented on the Bye-Bye Board this month. First, there s a single out in HOn3, the Colorado and Southern refrigerator car in brown with black lettering and round herald ( , December 2009). Double that for Nn3, with the Colorado and Northwestern boxcar reprint ( , April 2008) and the Conoco tank car ( , January 2011) both outta here. In Z Scale, we have three virtual two-packs that have left the building: the Burlington Northern x-post boxcars ( x, March 2011), the Canadian Pacific bulkhead flat cars ( x, December 2007), and the Southern Pacific PS-2 covered hoppers ( x, January 2011). Two weathered cars have bit the dust: the Northern Pacific boxcar ( , mid-month September 2011) and the Pennsylvania Star Union Line wood boxcar ( , November 2010). Last month s CP Rail x-post boxcar has rolled on ( ). And finally, there are just two singles of paired releases to bring up: the second number of the GARX/Rio Grande plug door boxcar ( , December 2010, first number already sold 25