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1 IrwinsJournal.com Presents: The Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report Issue #226 October, 2015 (Not affiliated with Micro-Trains Line, Inc.) Copyright 2015, George J. Irwin. Reproduction prohibited. Please see legal notice at the end of this document. Hello again everyone! Let s start off with some Database News. Well, some non-news, except to me. When the folks in Talent, Oregon changed websites and URLs, I had thought that the company-maintained listings of Micro-Trains releases had been lost in the shuffle. (To be fair, I wasn t the only one.) And the good news is that they haven t. They re just a little harder to find. Simply go over to microtrainsline.com and then scroll down no, further down, that s it to the Extras heading at the bottom right of the page. Then click on Databases. You ll find all of the same listings as before, right up to date. With that out of the way, let s continue with the news and views for this month N SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $24.60 Reporting Marks: MP Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Superior Door, Missouri Pacific and , $24.60 Reporting Marks: MP Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Superior Door, No Running Board, Full Ladders, Missouri Pacific : Boxcar red (brown) with mostly white lettering including reporting marks and DF2 Loader legend on left and Route of the Eagles slogan with MP buzzsaw herald on right. Approximate Time Period: early 1960s (based on road number) or early 1970s (based on service date) to early 1980s. 1

2 : Gray with mostly white lettering including reporting marks and DF2 Loader legend on left and Route of the Eagles slogan with MP buzzsaw herald on right. Approximate Time Period: early 1970s to early 1980s. Last month we covered MTL s reprint of an RF&P boxcar which, when first issued, was half of a paired release modeling the same car in two different Approximate Time Periods. This paired release covers two cars in the same series in two different, but overlapping, Approximate Time Periods. Overlapping ATPs? Yes. In fact, the bingo photos on these cars were taken less than two months apart and in the same state. Let s start with the brown car. The bingo is on Page 44 of the Missouri Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment and was taken in Dupo, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, in October The running board is still in place at this rather late date, contrasting with the double panel consolidated stencils and ACI Label and the U-1 yellow dot stencil (which would need to be added by the modeler). This road number is clearly a restencil and it s an example of the MP system-wide renumbering that took place starting in the early 1960s. The MP itself and its subsidiaries like the Texas and Pacific and later the Chicago and Eastern Illinois were all included in this effort. On Page 34 of the Color Guide we see that the original road numbers were to 38524, changed over to the series to (A photo of MP is also on Page 34 a possible follow-on release.) These cars and a number of others were built by the Missouri Pacific at its own De Soto, Missouri shops. Comparing prototype to model, the first delta is a door thing ; eight feet wide on the real car and six feet wide on the MTL model. Both are of the Superior Type, though there were six panels on the prototype while there are seven on Micro-Trains version of the door. (Does that make for a Double Door Thing? Never mind.) The side sills and ends also differ a bit. Also on Page 44 of the Color Guide is a bingo to the MP , in unmistakable (and quite unusual) grey paint according to the book s author James Kincaid. Its photo was taken about 300 miles north of Dupo, in Cicero, Illinois outside of Chicago, in December of The running board is gone, and so is half of the end ladder; so an 024 series body style might have been a little better choice here for MTL. The rest of the information applies. Speaking of which about that DF2 Loader the DF stands for Damage Free not Dunnage Free as in the MTL car copy for both of these boxcars. I don t remember seeing any grey MP boxcars like this in real life and the only photo of which I m aware is the one I m citing from the Color Guide. (I m excluding, of course, the striking blue, gray and yellow Eagle Merchandise Service cars, though I don t think I personally witnessed any of those either.) We get a two-for-one special here with respect to lookups in the Official Railway Equipment Registers (ORERs) since both the brown and gray cars were in the same prototype series. (And thus the slight deviation from my usual catalog number order this time out.) The ORER for January 1978 is the nearest to the 1979 photo dates so that s a reasonable place to begin. The MP series to given in the Color Guide is oddly split into several sets, but one of them, to , covers both of the MTL models and specifically had DF Loaders according to the description. The inside length of the fifty-five cars in the group 2

3 at that time was 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 44 feet 4 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 8 feet and capacity 3917 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. The height from rail is a dimension I don t usually provide but in this case, it s either 14 feet or 14 feet 5 inches, which implies to me that some of these cars had the running boards removed by then and some didn t. The ORER for April 1984 showed how quickly the forty foot boxcar was falling out of favor, as the car count was down to just 17, seven of which were no longer listed as having DF Loaders. A year later in the April 1985 Register there were only seven cars remaining, and only the was left by the October 1986 ORER , $29.95 Reporting Marks: NATX Foot Single Dome Tank Car, Baby Ruth Series #5. White with black underframe. Black reporting marks and dimensional data on left. Red lettering including large Baby Ruth across middle of car, America s Favorite Candy 5 at lower center. Black end markings. Approximate Time Period: mid-1920s to mid-1930s. Yes, we can go to Billboard Refrigerator Cars for information on this release even though this is clearly not a refrigerator car! Page 63 of that book has a small undated photo of NATX 375 with the caption, Curtiss even leased tank cars from North American with billboard Baby Ruth paint and lettering; NATX 375 was probably used to transport bulk corn syrup or other liquid sweetener. I don t see a build date on the car, that doesn t mean it isn t there, it might be too small to read off of the photograph. The ORER for April 1928 shows a large series of Tank Cars numbered 50 to 1099 which were either 60,000, 80,000 or 100,000 pounds capacity (gallons aren t given). NATX 375 is called out as being in the 80,000 pounds capacity group which numbered 587 out of a total of 707 cars. These were all MCB Designation TM which was your basic tank car. The July 1935 Register puts NATX 375 into the smaller series 50 to 509 but it s still a mix of capacities, and even the car counts are gone. None of this, of course, helps with understanding how these cars were painted, and so the Approximate Time Period is more than a guess than it s been for the other Baby Ruth cars. The ATP wouldn t begin any earlier than 1921 since that s when Kandy Kake was renamed to Baby Ruth and I suspect it s a bit later than that. Refrigerator car or not, the banning of Billboard Cars applied, and so the end of the ATP would be the same. 3

4 , $28.80 Reporting Marks: CSXT Three Bay High-Side Covered Hopper, CSX Transportation. Tan with dark blue reporting marks on left and CSX logo on right. Black dimensional data; black and white double panel consolidated stencils at lower right. Red and yellow Ease Up! stencils at top left and bottom left. Yellow conspicuity stripes along bottom of car. Approximate Time Period: late 1990s to at least The first bingo for this car can be found on the Freight Car Photo Archive, a website we don t see that often ( freightcars.midatlanticrr.com ). The photo, taken at Elsmere, Delaware in January 2012, is in low light, either sunrise or sunset I would guess, and immediately raises for me the question of whether those reporting marks and CSX logo are dark blue or black. Can I get a second opinion? Why, yes, I can, over on RRPictureArchives.net. This shot was taken two years and three months later in April 2014 in much brighter light. This time the lettering looks more like dark blue, but the car color looks more beige than tan! Could the tiebreaker be the shot of the same car taken along US 1&9 in Newark in January 2009? Under an overcast, gloomy sky (and please skip the New Jersey jokes!) the car looks most like the MTL rendition in that picture. This is probably the most dramatic example I ve seen in a while of how light can affect the way paint appears. Time to drag out that saying I first saw in San Francisco s Exploratorium, probably a decade ago now: We don t see colors as they are, we see colors as we are. I suppose that s fine, but what about cameras? Anyway, CSXT is part of a group of, well, just two cars in the series to in the October 2014 ORER. This makes me wonder whether to present is really going to fit for the Approximate Time Period, and so I ve stated at least 2014 instead this time. The key dimension is probably the 4427 cubic foot capacity, which aligns with the MTL body style. Only the outside dimensions appear in the listing: length 54 feet 3 inches, outside width 9 feet 11 inches, and extreme height 15 feet. The Gross Rail Weight (car plus lading) is 263,000 pounds. Let s go backwards from there: the car series first appears in the January 1996 Register with a change from previous issue symbol and a mere three cars. Given that the rest of the page is loaded with mostly small sets of covered hoppers, I suspect that this was part of a gradual renumbering of a group of cars from a predecessor. According to RRPictureArchives, the car was originally a Pullman-Standard 4427 type that was the Baltimore & Ohio s class HC-30. If that s true, there s a delta: the HC-30s had six round hatches instead of the much more typical trough hatches. The original B&O series wasn t very large: just the road numbers to A post on the old Atlas Forum which peripherally mentioned the HC-30s included the notion that these cars may have been in special service. 4

5 , $26.40 Reporting Marks: D&H Foot Steel 14 Panel Gondola, Straight Sides, Fixed Ends, Delaware and Hudson Railway. Pink with black lettering including stencil style reporting marks on left. Darker pink ribbon icon signifying breast cancer awareness on left and right. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on right. Yellow conspicuity stripes on ends of sides and along bottom of side. Approximate Time Period: the present. Micro-Trains has announced that ten percent of the proceeds of sales of these cars will be donated to the breast cancer fund of the American Cancer Society. I thought I was going to have to turn in my D&H fan card after seeing this release. Why hadn t I heard about this before? But checking the photos on RRPictureArchives.net and elsewhere, I can give myself a break: the car apparently was repainted this year and is used in company service. The AAR Classification is MWM, translating to Store-Supply Car, a car equipped for handling material to be distributed for railroad use. When photographed in Delanson, New York on what was once the D&H, it was carrying a load of wheelsets. Later the same day, July 23, 2015 to be exact, it was caught in the same train by the same photographer Philip M. Goldstein in East Worcester, New York, about 28 miles to the southeast from Delanson along the former D&H mainline that has just recently become part of the Norfolk Southern. The ribbons on the prototype car have the legend Find A Cure in small script lettering. I would be very impressed if MTL was able to reproduce that lettering in 1:160 actual size. In the October 2014 ORER, all but six cars from the D&H have been absorbed into the Canadian Pacific listing, so no help there. I backtracked (pun not intended) to previous ORERs into the 1990s, but didn t come up with a hit on the That s not surprising considering the company service status of the car; the official road numbers for the D&H maintenance of way equipment is NONE in the ORERs. I also checked the D&H Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment and didn t find a photo match to a straight side fixed end 14 panel gondola, though the railroad did pick up fishbelly side versions of these cars ceded by Conrail from the Erie Lackawanna s roster in Writing on his Facebook page, MTL s R&D guru Joe D Amato noted, We routinely release different cars during the year as we find prototypes decorated this way. A portion of the money we make goes to the Cancer Society. Thankfully they are really popular with our dealers and customers. We routinely encourage the railroads we have relations with to at least put a pink ribbon stick on a car so we can model it and make it available. Every little bit helps. Speaking as someone who has lost too many people to cancer, including my dad, I heartily agree. 5

6 , $34.90 Road Number: 89 (will be CN 89 in website listings). 3-2 Heavyweight Observation 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, car name at bottom center and multi-color maple leaf heralds at bottom left and right. Approximate Time Period: 1959 to as late as 1972 for this particular car, see below. The bingo on this car is in the Business Car section of the Canadian National Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume 1, Page 66. At least I hope this is the bingo, since there were four cars that at one time or another carried that 89 road number. This particular one was found in Moncton, New Brunswick, in 1966 when assigned to the Vice President of the Atlantic Region of the CN. The caption for this car provides its history: built by the CN predecessor Grand Trunk (that s not the Grand Trunk Western) in 1913 as the Ottawa, subsequently numbered 97, 98, 92 and then 89, air conditioning installed in 1941, modified further in 1960, and sold to a scrapper in The view of the car is from the bedroom side and the window arrangement isn t the same as the MTL 144 body style. Further examination reveals other deltas, but I think it s fair to keep in mind that this was a business car, not a standard observation car. Michael Livingston, who provided a guest commentary on last month s CN release, checks in with further information. The information in the Color Guide matches the listing for the second number 89 in the book Canadian National Railways; An Annotated Historical Roster of Passenger Equipment (Gay Lepkey and Brian West, editors). For the Approximate Time Period on this car, Michael writes, it was renumbered 89 in September 1959 and retired and sold in November 1972, in this paint scheme through the 1960s. Note that there is a photo of this car in Toronto in July 1969 still in this paint scheme, so it is likely that it wasn t repainted in the 1961 and later CN noodle scheme after Michael also reports that the car was still assigned to the Moncton area in March By 1970, it was in Northern Ontario at Capreol, Ontario. It does not appear in the business car listing in February Finally, Michael reports that the air conditioning ducting was only on the left side of the car. Thanks again, Michael! 6

7 , $32.50 Road Number: 1736 (will be UP 1736 in website listings). 70 Foot Heavyweight Baggage Car, 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: Early 1950s or strictly speaking, 1959, to mid-1960s, but see text. The bingo for this car is on Page 65 of Morning Sun s Union Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume 2. It was photographed in Council Bluffs, Iowa in April It s noted that the 1736 was among twenty-five cars built by American Car & Foundry in 1922, followed by fourteen more in The yellow and gray paint didn t come along as the system-wide standard until around 1952, followed by gray trucks starting in 1959, so if you re Strictly Speaking in the 1950s, you ll need some black paint that works on MTL s Slippery Engineering Plastic. (Try the R/C car paint selections.) The shot of the 1736 in the Color Guide does show it with black trucks. Strictly Speaking again, this release does warrant a see text in my opinion, as the real 1736 had what s informally known as a Harriman arch round roof, different sized doors (though unlike each other as on the MTL 148 body style) and deltas with respect to the underframe arrangement. Broken record advisory: the Micro-Trains car is based on an Erie Railroad prototype and I m not sure the UP had anything like it. Therefore, this could be termed a for completeness release as always, the decision is yours. According to Don Strack s UtahRails.net site, the ATP for these cars ends mostly in the mid- 1960s, with the 1736 being retired in October A few of these baggage cars were cut down to Roadway flat cars in 1968 and some were used as recreation/dance cars as well whatever that is! We re not quite done with New Releases yet here are a trio of surprise Civil War Era Steam Locomotives all of which are Atlas products with MTL decoration. All are noted to be of Limited Quantities which probably means Very Limited. You ve been cautioned , $ Road Number 7 (will be UP 7 in website listings) Steam Locomotive, Union Pacific. Black and red with gold striping. Gold lettering including U.P.R.R. on cab and roadname and road number on tender. 7

8 I can t tell you how it was painted, but courtesy of UtahRails.net I can tell you that the Union Pacific s Number 7 was built by Schenectady in March 1866 and originally had the name Omaha. It quickly became the first Shop Goat in Omaha and carried the number 7 until about 1885 when it was renumbered to 574. The driver diameter was 60 inches at first and then 64 inches later. I didn t find any photos of the #7 online, and I can t say I m surprised at this, but I note that the scheme is similar to a couple of other American-type steamers in service for the Union Pacific. The 4-4-0s lasted a lot longer than we might think, easily into the 1900s certainly long enough for many of them to be repainted from the ornate red, black and gold to plain old black with white lettering. They also were converted from link-and-pin to knuckle couplers. The oldest UP locomotive still in existence is their former #737, which was built in I did find a photo of UP #9 in black and white (and so is the photo), date and location unknown, on the Locomotives and More page of the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum ( ) , $ Road Number 254 (will be CP 254 in website listings) Steam Locomotive, Central Pacific. Black with gold trim. Gold C.P.R. 254 on cab in red oval and large road number in gold outlined in red on tender. Returning to the above noted Locomotives and More page, there is a photo of CP 225, another product of Schenectady. The photo filename includes 1876 so I ll presume that was the build year. All I can conclude from this photo is that the 254 was probably built after 1876, since it appears that railroads largely numbered locomotives sequentially once road numbers replaced names. Unlike the UP, I didn t find a CP roster, and its locomotives were so tangled up with parent Southern Pacific that I m not sure I could get very far anyway. I suspect that MTL has an in-print prototype photo of the 254 (and the other two releases as well) that would not be in the UMTRR Research Accumulation. Though there isn t a roster, there is a blog called CPRR Discussion Group referencing a photo of CP 210 taken circa sometime between 1876 and the 1880s which led to a number of comments ( discussion.cprr.net/2007/05/cp-210-locomotive-at-acton.html ). It s noted there that early on the CP didn t really have a standard paint scheme, and builders delivered new locomotives with whatever decoration they wanted to use. (Not quite a precursor of EMD s recommendations for the F-series of diesels, though.) It wasn t until the first repaint that Central Pacific s locomotives received anything approaching a standard scheme, and even that was subject to considerable variation. On this blog post alone there are references to at least a dozen different paint schemes, with scrollwork, wedges, full railroad name, initials only, and intertwined initials as well. It s almost as if there was a 12 inches to the foot version of Rule #1 (It s your railroad) applied. 8

9 , $ Road Number 1512 (will be PRR 1512 in website listings) Steam Locomotive, Pennsylvania Railroad. Black with gold trim, red cab and red tender. Road number in gold inside oval on cab. Gold initials (P.R.R.) on tender. The American type locomotives were Class D steamers on the Pennsy, and once again, I have only partial insight into the relationship between the MTL release and the prototype. An image search resulted in some similar looking 4-4-0s in similar looking paint schemes, including for example the P.R.R. on the tender inside an oval. But there were no bingos and I guess that makes me zero-for-three on finding an exact image match. As a type of steam loco, the American was around for a relatively long time, and the design changed pretty dramatically from its introduction through its discontinuance. What started out looking like the model MTL utilized ended up looking more like its larger, newer siblings in steam. Witness, for example, what s probably a builder s photo of PRR 325, complete with funnel stack, box headlamp, and gold trim, versus PRR 7104, still an American but with a straight stack, narrower and longer boiler, and a look that s more from the 1900s than the 1800s. Finally there s the 6240, all the way up to Class D13a, with extended tender and workhorse look nothing fancy or ornate here. (And the photo was taken here in Rochester, so bonus points for that.) On the other hand, PRR 42 was built in 1876 and its photo was taken in 1912, looking more like the Civil War Era version than it doesn t. That photo and the one of the 325 are on the site billspennsyphotos.com. Finally, though it doesn t look anything like a Civil War Era loco, let s not forget the 1223, a class D16sb American that s preserved at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. It operated on the Strasburg Railroad until 1989 when it was revealed via an ultrasound inspection that its firebox had become too thin to hold steam safely. In addition to the above, the TTX Wind Turbine 3-Pack ( , $109.95) will be available mid-month per MTL and should be at dealers as you read this. UMTRR coverage was in the June 2015 issue. The individual catalog and road numbers are as follows: , (with blade load); , (no load); , (with load of tower components). 9

10 In addition to the above, 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 October , $ Royal American Shows Flat Car 3- Pack. Will consist of three 70 foot Warren Circus Flat Cars, all painted silver with red lettering outlined in black, Royal American Shows across car. Road numbers at left and consolidated stencils on left. Road Numbers 47, 65 and 73. Set will also include four circus wagons in various decorations mostly in red and/or white. Artwork is preliminary and is subject to change with actual release. After debating for some time whether to file this Pre-Order Announcement under New Releases or Special Editions, I went with the former. The flat cars which will be included in this set will be a new body style, so we ll focus on that here instead of the story of the Royal American Shows, which I touched on in the November 2014 UMTRR. A page on Trainweb ( direct URL ) provides some information on these cars. It s noted that the circus paid railroads by the car, so it was advantageous for circuses to obtain longer and longer cars. That included the 70 foot inside length flat cars built by the Warren Tank Car Company, or by their competition, Mount Vernon Car. A key spotting feature of the Warren Flat cars is the use of sides that have slight arcs at top and bottom, kind of like turning parenthesis sideways and flattening them out considerably (but not totally). Warren s cars were all steel and should offer a challenge to rivet counters and I mean that literally because there were hundreds of them. A set of drawings and specifications I found on the site circusmodelbuilders.com calls out these rivets at 1¼ inches in diameter. Considering that this is inch when reduced in 1:160 scale, I have to wonder whether they re going to be reproduced on the forthcoming Micro-Trains car or if anyone will be able to see them if they do without a lot of help. The website of the International Independent Showmen s Museum includes a photo of several flat cars painted in the Royal American Shows scheme that MTL has chosen for this release, and a closer-up view of one of these cars. I think this is one source Micro-Trains could have used for these forthcoming set, although I might have gone without the consolidated stencils for a less strictly speaking Approximate Time Period. Royal American played its last show in 1977, so the cars would have been in their final years of service then. Other shows had these cars so other paint schemes are quite possible. Meanwhile, it s noted on the Trainweb page that by the time Ringling Brothers needed more flat cars in 1947, both Warren and Mount Vernon were out of business, so the Less Strictly Speaking ATP could be fairly long. Some of these cars were built as early as the 1920s. 10

11 N SCALE REPRINTS: and , $24.55 each Reporting Marks: BN and Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcar, Double Superior Doors, Burlington Northern. Green including couplers. White lettering including BN herald above reporting marks and dimensional data on left. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on far right. Simulated interior load included. Approximate Time Period: mid-1990s (based on paint scheme) to early 1980s. Previous Release: As Catalog Number , Road Number , December Note: At press time the image of only the 201 release was available. The use of new left and right Superior Doors mostly likely tooled for the pending Incentive Per Diem series which might need them for better fidelity would qualify this release as a Not A Reprint. Toss in that the doors on the original run (at right) were oxide red brown, representing a hasty replacement, and I think that confirms the designation. And if that s not enough, the number series is different as well. So, yes, Not A Reprint. Flashing back to 2007 first, I located a photo of the exact car MTL had run what we now call a bingo around here. It, complete with non-green doors, was lensed in July 2005 in Bison, Montana in and posted on RRPicturesArchive.net. I reported multiple door things at the time, with one definite delta: the double doors are more centered with a difference of just one exterior post between the side left of the doors (six posts) and the side right of the doors (seven posts). On the MTL car, the doors are shifted more to the left (count is four on the left, seven on the right). The doors were six panel Superior doors, not Youngstown doors as you can see, that s been addressed. There was also the 2007 photo of BN on RailcarPhotos.com, which shows the car sporting one red Superior door and one green Youngstown door. My point then as now was that the modeler can have a lot of fun with multiple copies of this car, since there are enough road numbers with which to play. But the original release was part of the group to and this virtual two-pack belonged to the prototype series BN to According to the Burlington Northern Color Guide to Freight Equipment, these cars were built by Pacific Car & Foundry in Author David Casdorph calls these a different type of boxcar to go along with 40 foot, 50 foot, 60 foot and 86 foot types. These are of 52 foot 6 inch interior length, which instantly gives us a delta to the MTL 030 body style. But the Micro-Trains car does have eleven exterior posts and offset double doors, same as the real cars did, though the ends are a little different and the prototype had a flat (low pitch) roof. Some and some in terms of model to prototype here; the modeler makes the final call as usual. 11

12 The ORER for April 1981 shows all 400 cars in place well, I d hope so. The inside length, as noted, was 52 feet 6 inches, inside height 11 feet, outside length 57 feet 4 inches, extreme height 15 feet, door opening 16 feet, capacity 5486 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. That double eight-foot door is a door thing, but for a change the MTL door opening is larger with the two ten foot doors that are used on the x-post series of cars. The overall effect still seems to me to be closer than it would have been if MTL had reprinted with road numbers from the series of cars chosen for the original 2007 run, however. The example car in the Color Guide was painted in 1988 in the logoless reporting marks only scheme; about as plain as you can get. Casdorph calls the scheme MTL chose as the logo over three lines scheme and based on photos and captions it appears to have been applied starting in the early 1990s, so that s what I ve gone with for the beginning of the ATP. One was certainly likely to see these, the logoless scheme, the more common roadname plus herald scheme, and of course the successor Burlington Northern Santa Fe scheme, all in the same train perhaps, so the ATP s end isn t defined by the coming of either the reporting marks-only version of the white and green or the brown and white of the BNSF. In fact, I ll go with the end of the Approximate Time Period being the dropping of this group from the Equipment Register, which occurred between the January 2011 edition (only four cars left) and the April 2013 issue (zero cars). Checking online images, Color Guide author David Casdorph contributed his own shot of BN as of July 2006, showing the logoless paint scheme and here we go again two different style doors in two different shades of green. And how about a bingo, in the scheme MTL used in one of the road numbers they used, as of July 2004 running through Weedsport, New York (an hour or so east of UMTRR HQ), over on George Elwood s Fallen Flags. N SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following items were announced as mid-month releases via the Micro-Trains website, the MTL Facebook page, and via the Micro-Trains E- Line, all on or about October , $28.90 Reporting Marks: FCRD Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, First Coast Railroad. Brown with extensive weathering and simulated rust. Graffiti across one side of car with including rendition of POW/MIA insignia on door. Yellow vertical conspicuity stripes at far left and right. Approximate Time Period: At least 2011 and MTL thoughtfully points us to one of the two photos on RRPictureArchives.net of the First Coast Railroad s boxcar, the second this year to be part of a Weathered/Graffiti release. The first one was half of the Creation of Adam pair of boxcars, and that road number, 5072, was only five cars away from the The prototype is also a 5377 cubic foot boxcar, a bit larger than the 5077 type car that is the basis for the MTL body style. In the January 2011 ORER it s in the short group 5064 to 5068, and it s still present in the October 2014 Equipment Register. 12

13 We don t know if it s still, well, decorated in the same way. We do know from the two online photos that the extensive graffiti was on the car in both September 2011 and January You might notice that I haven t attempted to transcribe the exact reading of the words astride the POW/MIA symbol on the door. That s because I can t figure out what the first character on the left is! I was never good at reading graffiti. As noted in July, First Coast is one of the many shortline properties of Genesee and Wyoming Industries and since 2005 has operated on 32 miles of former Seaboard Air Line trackage in extreme northeast Florida and southeast Georgia , $32.90 Reporting Marks: TILX Three Bay Center Flow Covered Hoppers with Trough Hatches, Trinity Industries Leasing Company. One side gray, one side mostly black (part of the graffiti pattern), gray ends, roof, top of side and grab irons. One side has black reporting marks on left and dimensional data on right in untouched gray sections of side and divided panel consolidated stencils on right, and rendition of POW/MIA insignia. Other side of car is presumably in gray only with the same lettering and without graffiti. Approximate Time Period: at least late Chances are that this car, photographed in November 2013 in Ogden, Utah and posted on RRPictureArchives.net, is still roaming the rails with this extensive repaint. That s because the artist(s) left the reporting marks and other data intact even as the rest of the side of the car was completely covered in black paint. (I still wonder how long this car had to be standing still for this work to be done.) The real car, owned by Trinity Industries, was probably built by them as well. It s a significant bit larger than the MTL 094 body style at 60 feet 1 inch outside length and 5161 cubic foot capacity. The ends are different as well. As usual with these releases, that s generally not the point. The ORER for October 2014 shows the as part of the series TILX to , which had 187 total cars. A substantially less covered TILX as of February 2012 can be found over on George Elwood s Fallen Flags site; I m presuming that this is more like what the other side of the car looks like, perhaps including the conspicuity stripes. And just for a bit more trivia, Fallen Flags also has TILX , another covered hopper that is described as unpainted. 13

14 In addition to the above, 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 October 31. Scheduled Delivery March 2016: , $ Reporting Marks: WRRC 229, 405, 557, and 665. Weathered Rock Train 4-Pack. Will consist of four WRRC (Western Railroad Company) Ortner Hoppers with heavy weathering and rust effects. Black, white or red restenciled reporting marks which may be on gray patch panels. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on right. Yellow vertical conspicuity stripes across car. Approximate Time Period: 2005 and later. Previous Releases: None. If it s carrying rocks, which are going to wreck a car anyway, I suppose it doesn t matter what it looks like. And so we have the Western Railroad Company s four very beat up looking Ortner cars. It didn t take long to find bingos for all four of these: the 229 and 405 are on RailcarPhotos.com and the 557 and 665 are on RRPictureArchives.net. All but the 665 were caught in 2012 while the 665, arguably the worst looking of the lot, was found in And yes, they all appear that badly used and worn out. It s actually worse than that for the 665; one of the end platforms was missing, as was that end s coupler. That would limit its usefulness! I think it s safe to assume that MTL will not be releasing its model in that particular condition. (Uh, right?) The 665 well, with the platform has or had a length of 43 feet 10 inches, outside width of 10 feet 8 inches and outside height of 12 feet 6 inches. The 557 and 665 were ten panel flat end cars, while the 229 and 405 were eight panel cars with diagonal braces at the far left and far right panels and also had flat ends. So the prototypes don t match each other, which means they also won t all align with the MTL 125 body style. Checking, ahem, my own Body Style webpage, the ten panel car is a better match. All four cars have three bays. I don t think I ll attempt tracing the lineage of these workhorses. Suffice to say that the presence of conspicuity stripes means an Approximate Time Period starting no later than 2005, when their application was first mandated by the Federal Railroad Administration. (Ten years ago?) All four of the cars were photographed in Texas, which is the location of the Western Railroad, or Western Rail Road depending on where you look. According to the folks at 14

15 Wikipedia, it s a very short line just 1.3 miles or 3.1 kilometers. It s owned by the Mexican building materials company Cemex and connects a Cemex quarry and cement plant. Thus, lots of rocks going from the former to the latter. The railroad was only completed in 1976 (!) and connected at the time with both the Missouri Pacific and the Katy (M-K-T), perhaps to incent some competition for business. So much for that idea, since both lines became part of the Union Pacific. The WRRC is considered to be a common carrier even though its reason for existence is rather limited. You d be mostly right if you thought that the WRRC utilized mostly beat up second or third hand switch engines on its line. In fact, RRPictureArchives.net has shots of a former Great Northern GP9, two SW1s, one from the SP and one from the Rock Island, a VO-1000 (!) and an SW9 which was once on the B&O roster, and in 1998 looked reasonably clean. But there s one more locomotive: how about a General Electric ES44AC-H?!? Unit number 81 carries white paint and the Cemex trademark, and was caught in 2008 headed down the Union Pacific to the WRRC in New Braunfels, Texas. It appears from the photos that most of the line s activity is behind security fences, so a look at it might be a challenge. N SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #109 ( , $109.95), four Union Pacific We Will Deliver 3 Bay Center Flow Covered Hoppers with Trough Hatches, is now available. UMTRR coverage was in the May 2015 issue. The individual catalog numbers and road numbers for these items are as follows: , 90800; , 90806; , 90852; , The following are 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 preorder decisions; pre-orders close October 31. Scheduled March 2016 Release: , $ Reporting Marks NCLX 46510, 46515, 46526, Quantity four of Three Bay Center Flow Covered Hoppers with Trough Hatches, Sclair. Orange with diagonal white band set off by black stripes. Black lettering including reporting marks on left, sclair (lowercase) Polyethylene / Polyéthyléne (English and French spellings) on white band, and various warnings and other information on right and bottom of side. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on right. Approximate 15

16 Time Period: 1996 into decade of the 2000s. Previous Releases (as Catalog Number 93040): Road Number 46542, December 1996; Road Number 46518, December 1998; Road Number 46512, December Individual Catalog Numbers for this Runner Pack should be 093 5x 040. I m not quite sure where to start with this Runner Pack so many choices! Those of us who have been N Scalers for a while know the first story: The first run in 1996 was both a short run and an instant sellout; there were rumors of hoarding, there were reports of attempts to corner the market, there were skyrocketing prices in mail bid auctions. And then there was ebay, which quickly provided an illustration of that age old law of Supply and Demand, and the prices deflated significantly. Then, two years after the first run, there was a second number which seemed to be in much more plentiful supply, which did sell out quickly, but did not come anywhere near the outrageous aftermarket prices of the first release. Two years to the month after the second run, which was two years to the month after the first run, the third run appeared. And now there are four more coming, but meanwhile the skyrocket that was that first road number has come crashing back down to earth. I m not even sure that it really was that short of a run, though I was told back in 1996 that the intricate printing work for this car resulted in a higher than usual number of rejects which never made it out of the MTL factory. Even so, a local auction of a large collection of N Scale equipment included something like three dozen copies of these first run cars. Back when a non-trivial amount of my day job was spent on commercial airlines, I flew over the inspiration for this popular and colorful car more times than I'd like to count. The St. Clair River (thus, Sclair ) plant sprawls across an expanse of real estate large enough to be seen from 28,000 feet. It s one of several chemical operations in the region, but the only one I know of that has such cool looking cars. These cars previously carried the reporting marks DOCX, which was the registration for DuPont of Canada Limited. In fact, the DuPont trademark was located on the cars to the left of the s in sclair at that time, so assuming that there s no issue with using that logo, MTL would have a simple follow-on release. The Chemical Institute of Canada published The Sclair Story (available in The Free Library online). Much of it is pretty technical stuff, but the important piece for our purposes isn t: With the restructuring of Du Pont's global interests in the early 1990s, it became evident that SCLAIR was no longer a strategic fit. In 1994, the SCLAIR polyethylene business was purchased by NOVA Chemicals Ltd. (then NOVACOR Chemicals Ltd.), the plastics and petrochemicals division of Alberta-based NOVA Corporation. NOVA Chemicals is the fourth largest ethylene producer, and with the acquisition of SCLAIR, the sixth largest polyethylene producer in North America. So the start of the ATP can t be any earlier than that, since that s the soonest that the reporting marks would have changed from DOCX to NCLX. Except that the NCLX reporting marks aren t in the October 1996 Equipment Register at all, and the DOCX reporting marks were only used on tank cars. In addition, the NCIX reporting marks which were registered to Novachem didn t include covered hoppers numbered in the 40000s. Where did the covered hoppers go? Or, perhaps, why wasn t the ORER updated? 16

17 And perhaps it is the latter question, since the April 1997 ORER does have an entry for Nova Chemicals Limited which includes 252 covered hoppers. The ones in which we re most interested are numbered in several groups spanning from NCLX to 46564, which includes the forthcoming Runner Pack and the previous three releases. The outside length of these cars was listed at 54 feet 7 inches and cubic capacity at 4650 cubic feet, with all but three cars at a weight capacity of 154,000 pounds. (The exceptions are at 200,000 pounds.) Obviously there was at least one of these cars available for photography and send to Micro- Trains before the ORER entry, since the first run predates the ORER date by five months! Over on RRPictureArchives.net there s a February 2005 shot of NCLX rolling through Burlington, Ontario. How s this for a nitpick: the hatches look to have a smaller diameter than those used on the 093 body style. (I did say nitpick. ) Remarkably, the car has not been tagged, at least the side we can see and I ve probably just jinxed it, haven t I. An image from 2006 of NCLX shows the bilingual Polyethylene / Polyéthyléne removed, which would, well, remove the strictly speaking ATP for at least that one car. And a somewhat tired looking NCLX was found in June 2013 in Brantford, Ontario with only the French spelling of the term and redone reporting marks. That same car appears as of March 2009, with some graffiti. There are other cars in the Sclair scheme on RailcarPhotos.com, however they re not from the same series. The ORER for October 2014 shows only three cars remaining in the group to 46563, and there were only seven in the January 2011 book. Between that and the dropping of some of the lettering on the example photos I found, I think it s better to call the ATP a little earlier than later, though with some weathering and white paint you could come pretty close to The Present. N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: In addition to the below, the Reindeer Belt Train Set ( , $289.95) will be available mid-month per MTL and should be at dealers as you read this. UMTRR coverage was in the June 2015 issue, but the images weren t, so here they are: , Pacific Steam Locomotive and Tender, produced by MRC (former Model Power release) and decorated by Micro- Trains. Road Number , Heavyweight Mail Baggage Car, Rudolph. No road number. 17

18 , Heavyweight Baggage Car, Prancer / Donner / Cupid. No road number , Heavyweight Baggage Car, Dasher / Dancer / Vixen. No road number , Heavyweight Baggage Car, Blitzen / Reindeer Belt / Comet. No road number , $23.95 Modified 40 Foot Hy-Cube Boxcar, Winter Stroll. Car #4 in the Postcard Series. Ends, roof, side sill and edges of sides are green. End ladders are red. Side A has a multicolor rendition of a picture postcard with off-yellow and green graphics at left and right. Side B has a Postcard Message from Micro-Trains. No reporting marks or road number appear on this car. Here s the first release of Year Two of the Postcard Series. I guess this isn t my month for locating bingos, since I went zero for three on the Civil War Era steam locomotives earlier and I did not come up with a match for the postcard depicted on this car. I did note hundreds of postcards with holiday themes, dozens with walks in the snow, and way too many matches to be useful for the phrase With Christmas Greetings. Well, I wrote in the pre-order coverage of this series in the June 2015 UMTRR that I probably wouldn t chase after the reference artwork for each of the nine intended releases in this set and then I tried for this one anyway. However, over on the Railroad-Line Forums discussion venue, member and moderator Russ slimrails has posted a multi-part thread discussing the history of vintage postcards. Check for that thread; I don t think you need to be a member of the forum to read it. You might also check out his blog railroadpostcards.blogspot.com. 18

19 , $32.95 Ringling Brothers Heavyweight Series #2, Globe (Advertising Car #2). Red with aluminum roof and black underframe and trucks. Yellow lettering outlined in black including Advertising Car #2 / Combined Shows on left and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey in center. Multicolor The Greatest Show on Earth globe trademark on right. The slogan The Greatest Show on Earth came to the Combined Shows from Barnum & Bailey and so its Approximate Time Period, if you will, pre-dates both the official merger of it into the Ringling Brothers operation in 1919 and the ATP of this car, had it existed. The idea of an Advertising Car also would precede this car; in fact there s a transcription of an article titled Ahead of the Circus: A Week on the Road With the Advertising Car, from the June 10, 1894 issue of the newspaper The Cleveland Leader, on the website of the Circus Historical Society ( direct URL ). The article s author deemed circus advertising on a scale unknown to the theatrical world. This not only in the vast amount of money annually invested in it, but in the perfect labyrinth of details incidental to the system. A single advertising car, such as used by Barnum & Bailey, independently of the money invested in the car, and the paper handled by it, costs $1,000 a week. Barnum & Bailey used six Advertising Cars at a time to promote the show. NARROW GAUGE RELEASES: No releases this month. Z SCALE NEW RELEASES: and , $26.40 each. Reporting Marks: RDG and Foot Steel Gondolas, Fishbelly Sides, Drop Ends, Reading Railroad. Green with yellow lettering including reporting marks on left and large slant roadname in center. Simulated steel plate load included, decorated but not assembled. Approximate Time Period: about 1969 to no later than 1978 with load, into the mid- 1980s otherwise. Did those steel plate loads really sit that way in these gondolas? Didn t the gondolas tip over? The answers: Yes, they did, and no, they didn t. What you don t see in the MTL photos is the bracing that keeps these loads in place and at the proper angle to keep load weight balanced. For documentation of this, we go right to the Reading Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Craig T. Bossler. The photo of RDG on Page 28 shows the back side of the steel superstructure which was added to the gondola. The sheets sit at an angle along 19

20 this framing. Wider sheets can be shipped when loaded in this manner without becoming dimensional (oversize) loads, Bossler wrote. Only ten of the Reading s Class GHm gondolas were equipped with this frame. When the photo of the was taken in May 1969, the green and yellow paint had been applied only about three months previously. This scheme was among the last for the railroad and relatively few gondolas in the Reading s relatively large fleet received it. While I m here, I ll note a key delta: the real cars had fixed ends while the MTL 522 body style has drop ends. The fourteen panels and fishbelly sides are correct; I guess MTL decided to go with appropriate sides at the cost of the incorrect ends. The October 1969 ORER shows a total of 820 cars in the series to Just nine of those were equipped for diagonal steel plates loading. If you re particular about this, neither of the road numbers MTL chose are among those listed, which are, for the record: 33051, 33083, 33106, 33194, (the one in the Color Guide), 33333, 33553, and The capacity of these cars was reduced to 125,000 pounds to account for the permanent metal posts which had been installed for the steel plate special service. All of the other dimensions were the same: inside length 53 feet 6 inches, inside height 3 feet 6 inches, outside length 56 feet 8 inches, extreme height 7 feet. That last one surprises me since I would think that the permanent posts would have added considerably to the overall height. By the coming of Conrail in the April 1976 Register, the tenth car, 33862, had been added to the special service, although the series as a whole had dropped to 502 cars. All of the cars with the sheet steel permanent metal posts were gone no later than the January 1978 ORER, though it s not clear whether they were just put back into the main series which stood at 374 cars, were repainted into Conrail livery, or were just taken out of service. That main series was all the way down to 35 cars in the January 1985 Register. This decline wasn't just because of absorption into the Conrail roster; the steel mills were going away in Pennsylvania during the same time period. It was 1982, remember, when Billy Joel sang about Allentown, and he wasn t exactly making that up , $28.75 Reporting Marks: D&H Foot Steel 14 Panel Gondola, Straight Sides, Fixed Ends, Delaware and Hudson Railway. Pink with black lettering including stencil style reporting marks on left. Darker pink ribbon icon signifying breast cancer awareness on left and right. Black and white double panel consolidated stencils on right. Yellow conspicuity stripes on ends of sides and along bottom of side. Approximate Time Period: the present. Micro-Trains has announced that ten percent of the proceeds of sales of these cars will be donated to the breast cancer fund of the American Cancer Society. Please see the coverage of the N Scale release above (Catalog Number ). 20

21 , $29.95 Reporting Marks: NATX Foot Single Dome Tank Car, Baby Ruth Series #5. White with black underframe. Black reporting marks and dimensional data on left. Red lettering including large Baby Ruth across middle of car, America s Favorite Candy 5 at lower center. Black end markings. Approximate Time Period: mid-1920s to mid-1930s. Please see the coverage of the N Scale release above (Catalog Number ) and , $ each; , $ (only one release) Road Numbers: 268 and 271 (A units); no road number (B unit) (will be preceded by RDG in website listings). F7A and F7B Powered Diesels, Reading Railroad. Black with green band with yellow stripes across sides extending around nose on A-units. Aluminum grilles with yellow stripe below. Yellow lettering including roadname in center of side and road number below cab on A-unit only. No lettering on B-unit. A-unit also has white on black numberboards and diamond Reading Lines herald on A-unit. Approximate Time Period: 1950 to OK, it was actually a pair of FP7s, not F7s, but I did have the chance to see Reading covered wagons in this very paint scheme when they appeared on a very rare mileage fan trip into Port Reading, New Jersey. I have long forgotten when this was, though I know my dad and I took pictures, but the Internet hasn t: it was the Farewell to the Reading excursion organized by the National Railway Historical Society in March 1976, the month before Conrail took over and the Reading became a Fallen Flag. The two FP7s, 902 and 903, were preserved and restored and at present reside at Steamtown in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Hmm, that gives me yet another excuse to visit. Let s turn to the F7s now. Units 271 and 273 were among twenty-four units built for the Reading during The Reading also had FTs (offered in N Scale by MTL, in fact) but instead of going with ABBA set as they had with the FTs, the Reading purchased six A-B pairs numbered 266 A+B to 271 A+B, plus another twelve A units numbered 272A through 283A. So strictly speaking, that un-numbered B unit should be 271B. The Reading ran both ABA and AA lashups so the B-unit is optional although I m sure that Micro-Trains would prefer that you pick up all three diesels! 21

22 These F-units were unusual in two ways: first, they kept their as-delivered paint scheme for their entire service life; and second, that service life was short, as all of them were traded in for EMD GP35s in This to me makes it even more remarkable that two of the company s four FP7s survived, but hey, we ll gladly take it. The Reading Modeler website has a nice writeup on these F7s as well including their usual assignments on the railroad one of which was to Port Reading. The exact URL is for your perusal. In addition to the above, 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 October 31. Scheduled February 2016 Release: Baltimore and Ohio Streamlined Passenger Cars , Sleeper, $ , Dome Car, $ , Coach, $ , Baggage Car, $32.90 All cars expected to have gray, blue and yellow sides with black roof and ends, yellow B&O Capitol Dome heralds left and right, and car name or road number at bottom center (dome car exception is described below). Approximate Time Period: as early as the early 1960s into the early 1970s. Preliminary artwork (of coach only) is shown and is subject to change. Well, this pre-release coverage is a bit of a shot in the dark! We have only artwork for one car, though there is a bingo for it, and we re left to guess at the potential matches, or lack of same, for the other three pending releases. We ll do the best we can has new meaning here Anyway, the bingo is to the coach, Road Number 5506 that is in the preliminary artwork. It s formerly the B&O s New Castle which was built in 1949 for the B&O train The Columbian and was part of the series 5500 to Pictured on Page 15 of the B&O Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, it s in the paint scheme that mirrors that of parent Chesapeake and Ohio, which took financial control of the B&O back in Only the Capitol Dome heralds distinguish this equipment from that of the C&O s. As depicted, the model 5502 has a different window arrangement than the prototype did, but that doesn t surprise me. 22

23 The B&O s first dome cars were also part of the order for The Columbian and there were just two of them: originally High Dome and Sky Dome, they were later numbered 5550 and They are both pictured on Page 16 of the Color Guide. High domes and sky domes they were not, given the B&O s clearances in fact, I m surprised that the railroad owned any dome cars at all given that this was the same company that specified ten foot inside height boxcars instead of the usual ten foot six inch cars. On these cars, the blue band is interrupted underneath the dome. One side of these cars has the windows dropped below the dome and the other side does not. That s also true of the MTL 551 body style, though again, the window configurations are different between prototype and model. Page 20 of the Color Guide includes a photo of the B&O s sleeper Opequon, also road number It was among ten, numbered 7040 to 7049; the other names were Auglaise, Catocin, Guyandotte, Kokosing, Muscatuck, Shenango, Tuscawaras, Tygart and Youghioheny. These were built by Pullman in 1950 and did not have the semi-stainless sides which were shown to trap moisture and lead to damage to the structure of the cars. The Opequon and its sister cars were 10-6 sleepers with the car names in C&O-style art deco script lettering at the bottom center. It s not perfectly aligned with the MTL 550 body style, and yes, I know I m repeating myself here. Jerry Laboda s Passenger Car Photo Index (at passcarphotos.info ) has shots of most of these cars, including their later life in service for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and their earlier life in the classic B&O blue and gray paint. There s also a photo of the Opequan on Fallen Flags; in that shot, the word Pullman appears in blue C&O art deco script at the left and right of the yellow band at the top of the side. There is a photo in the Color Guide, Page 9, of a former C&O baggage car done in the scheme in which the streamlined car will appear, however it s a heavyweight baggage car with six wheel trucks. It s noted that twenty of the B&O s baggage cars remained on the revenue roster as of early It s noted on Wikipedia, citing the 1972 publication Car Names, Numbers and Consists, that Pullman-Standard constructed two lightweight consists for the 1949 iteration of the Columbian. Each consist included a baggage-dormitory-coffee shop, four coaches, Strata- Dome dome coach, dining car, and tavern-observation car. Each coach could seat 56; the dining car had seating space for 36. The new Strata-Domes could seat 24 in the dome area (non-revenue) and 40 in revenue seating below, along with two lounges. Sleepers and full baggage cars aren t included in this list, but there s also the rest of the B&O roster of course. And in addition, The Columbian underwent numerous route and consist changes until it was discontinued entirely in According to the Color Guide, some of the cars stayed with the B&O until Amtrak took over passenger service in None of the B&O s routes were in the original Amtrak configuration. 23

24 Scheduled March 2016 Release: Canadian National Streamlined Passenger Cars , Sleeper, $ , Dome Car, $ , Coach, $ , Baggage Car, $32.90 All cars expected to be in the post-1960 scheme of gray sides with black band, black roof, underbody and trucks, and red CN noodle herald. Approximate Time Period: 1961 into the 1970s. Preliminary artwork (of coach only) is shown and is subject to change. Shot in the dark part two now. With the Canadian National Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume 1 in hand, let s start this time with a quick look at the paint scheme. According to Color Guide author John Riddell, the wide horizontal band was originally going to be baby blue in color, but after trying it, the railroad went with black instead to avoid making the windows look like a dotted line. The distance above the railhead between the bottom of the black band and the gray below it was always the same, 72¼ inches, which meant variation in the width of the lower gray portion. This made for a smooth look as a passenger train rolled past the trackside observer. In the Color Guide there are three photos of baggage cars in the gray and black, none of which are an exact match to the MTL 553 body style. One of these cars, CN 8773, is 64 feet 1 inch long but it s a heavyweight type. CN 9197 is more like a streamlined construction but it was 79 feet 6 inches long. CN 9603, formerly CN 9231, was built in 1954 by National Steel Car and has two different width doors. Meanwhile, over on Fallen Flags there s an 1969 image of CN 9012, also streamlined and with two different width doors. The Passenger Car Photo Index cites more than sixty images of CN baggage cars, with CN 9109 being what looks like a shorter streamlined car, however with six wheel trucks. You get the idea Let s move to the car for which there is preliminary artwork. A bingo to CN 5547 is on Page 41 of the Color Guide. It was one of sixty coaches built by Canadian Car and Foundry in 1954 as the series 5437 to It seated 52 people in the main section and another 28 in the smoking section and was 85 feet 4 inches long overall. The prototype had ten equally sized windows and two smaller windows, one of which appears to be for the lavatory; this doesn t match the MTL 552 body style. Also pictured in the Color Guide from the same series are CN 5552 in the same scheme, the 5567 in the original black and green (the scheme that MTL is currently working with on its N Scale heavyweight passenger cars) and what has to be a rare shot of the 5515 in the experimental gray and blue paint. That baby blue looks like Great Northern Big Sky Blue to me, and not far away from the VIA Rail Canada blue that the 5547 eventually wore. The car went from VIA to the Algoma Central as early as

25 I went all the way back to the original announcement of the Z Scale passenger cars in July 2008 (!) to find the fact that the streamlined sleeper is a configuration built by Pullman- Standard for the Union Pacific. That helped since the CN also took delivery of twenty sleepers from Pullman-Standard in They carried road numbers 1162 to 1181 and names that began with Green. (CBC comedy viewers: There s no Red Green. ) Page 47 of the Color Guide has a photo of the Greenwich as it appeared in Among the trains to which these were assigned were the International Limited and the Montrealer/ Washingtonian pair, so these cars would also have been seen south of the border in the United States. It s hard to prove the absence of something, and of course Incremental Information is most welcome, but I did not come across anything close to the MTL 551 dome car body style in the places I looked. Sure, the CN had dome cars, perhaps most notably the Super Domes that came over from the Milwaukee Road. In a bit of a coincidence, they also picked up dome cars from the B&O that were originally meant for the C&O, but they were corrugated side cars, not streamliners. I m afraid I m not much help with regard to this one. I guess it s just that kind of month this time around. Z SCALE REPRINTS: No releases this month. Z SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following items were announced as a mid-month release via the Micro-Trains website, the MTL Facebook page, and via the Micro-Trains E- Line, all on or about October , $28.90 Reporting Marks: FCRD Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, First Coast Railroad. Brown with extensive weathering and simulated rust. Graffiti across one side of car with including rendition of POW/MIA insignia on door. Yellow vertical conspicuity stripes at far left and right. Approximate Time Period: At least 2011 and Please see the coverage of the N Scale release above, Catalog Number , $23.85 Reporting Marks: CP xxxxxx (road number knocked out ). 51 Foot Mechanical Refrigerator Car, Rivet Side, Canadian Pacific. Aluminum with red script style roadname on left and script style lettering Controlled Temperature on right. Black reporting marks on left. Moderate weathering and patch panel covering road number. Approximate Time Period: 1965 (build date) to early 1990s. Previous Releases (in unweathered form): Road Numbers and , July Note: It s 25

26 presumed but not confirmed that the two previous releases were utilized for this Weathered Release. Let s get right to what I usually do these days when MTL knocks out a road number: tell you what road numbers to use if you d like to add it back! In this case, your choices are from the series to being included in ORERs from April 1965 to October 1992, although the listing adds that some were renumbered into the to group later point. This is according to Ian Cranstone s Canadian Freight Cars site ( ) which I d used when the clean cars were issued. The builder was Hawker-Siddeley which later became the Trenton Works. There are numerous deltas between prototype and model, as noted via comparison of the MTL 548 body style to a photo of CP in the book Classic Freight Cars Volume 9. The April 1976 ORER lists the following dimensions: inside length 44 feet (leaving space for the refrigeration equipment), inside height 8 feet 7 inches (leaving room for insulation), outside length 54 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 6 inches, door opening 8 feet wide by 9 feet 3 inches tall, capacity 3294 cubic feet or 137,000 pounds. Z SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #84 ( , $74.95), four Southern Railway 33 Foot Hoppers with Offset Sides and Flat Ends with loads, is now available. UMTRR coverage was in the May 2015 issue. The individual catalog numbers and road numbers for these items are as follows: , ; , ; , ; , These are the first through fourth road numbers for this car. These cars have CNO&TP sublettering but I m listing them as Southern Railway (SOU) in the UMTRR website listings. The following is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is as shown below. UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close October 31. Scheduled March 2016 Release: , $99.95 Reporting Marks: WP 19504, 19506, 19512, Quantity four of 40 Foot Steel Boxcars, Single Youngstown Door, Western Pacific. Aluminum with black lettering including reporting marks on left and Rides Like A Feather slogan at top right. Large roadname on large diagonal feather icon across car (including door). Approximate Time Period: 1952 through the end of 26