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1 IrwinsJournal.com Presents: The Unofficial Micro-Trains Release Report Issue #182 February, 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! This shortest month is longer by a day it s Leap Year and among the various busy-ness of this month (including your byte-slinger s birthday!) there are more MTL new and reprint items to tell you about. Without further ado, let s get started N SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $21.90 Reporting Marks: SOO LINE (will be SOO in website listings). 50 Foot Steel Exterior Post Boxcar, Plug Door, Soo Line. White with red door. Mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left and large roadname across car. Approximate Time Period: mid-1970s to mid-1990s, but see text. So let s get the bad news out of the way first: the 027 body style is a stand in at best for this Soo Line prototype. The real series to along with many other (if not all of) Soo Line boxcars constructed by the railroad during the period 1964 to 1979 were seven-post eight panel boxcars. A three-quarter view of sister car on George Elwood s Fallen Flags site ( ) shows that the ends of these cars were more like those found on Pullman-Standard PS-1 boxcars than the more modern FMC 5077 x-post boxcar that is modeled by MTL. The door and side sills are different as well need I go on? Unfortunately, a see text here, particularly since a specialty model of the Soo s 7-post car does exist in N Scale. Anyway, the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for April 1975 will do for a lookup. The cars are in the above numbered group, even numbers only, described as Box, Steel, Type E Freightmaster Cushioning Device, 2 Nylon Belts, 10 Foot Sliding Plug Door with Grain Access Doors, Even Numbers, 50K with AAR Designation XL. The inside length on these cars was 50 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 4 inches, inside height 10 feet 7 inches, outside length 57 feet 3 inches, extreme height 15 feet 2 inches, and capacity 5038 cubic feet or 154,000 pounds. There were 210 cars in the group at that time. Just 33 cars were left as of October 1991; many of the Soo s boxcars were sold to Wisconsin Central Ltd. as part of the startup of that line in In fact, 50 cars in the same road number series and with the same dimensional data are in the same October 91 ORER under the Wisconsin Central s registration. 1

2 , $17.85 Reporting Marks: C&O Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Door, No Roofwalk, Full Ladders, Chesapeake and Ohio. Brown with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left and C&O For Progress herald on right. Approximate Time Period: 1969 through decade of the 1970s. Freshly painted forty foot C&O boxcars in 1969 seem out of place, wrote David H. Hickcox in Morning Sun s Chesapeake & Ohio Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. And indeed, [they] are. Hickcox tells the rest of the story on Page 26 of the Color Guide: The C&O had a severe shortage of boxcars, and leased some refurbished ones from the Chicago Freight Car Company. The reworked boxcars lost their roofwalks but kept the full ladders. Illustrating the story is sister car C&O and yes, that s just one road number off a bingo. The six foot doors are accurate, but the side sills aren t. In addition, the paint shade of the MTL car is more brown than the image in the Color Guide implies it should be. The ORER for April 1970 shows all 500 possible boxcars in the series to , listed as your basic Box, Steel with AAR Designation XM. The inside length was 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 44 feet 3 inches, extreme height 14 feet 10 inches, and capacity 3898 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. The C&O also had listed groups numbered to and to , with identical dimensions, for a total of 900 cars. That would probably allow for a Runner Pack or two! As author Hickcox noted, the forty foot boxcar was rapidly running out of time, and by the April 1981 ORER these had too, with just fourteen cars remaining in all of the groups. That s where I stopped looking , $27.35 Reporting Marks: MP Two Bay Center Flow Covered Hopper, Union Pacific (Missouri Pacific Reporting Marks). Gray with mostly black lettering including reporting marks on left. Black and yellow warning boxes along bottom sill. Red, white and blue Union Pacific shield herald and black slogan Building America on right. Approximate Time Period: the present. We could consider this release an update of sorts to MTL s December 1993 release of a twobay Center Flow in the Missouri Pacific eagle and buzzsaw scheme, road number , Micro-Trains Catalog Number According to a caption on RRPictureArchives.net, these cars were built in Images of the series of cars show the paint in various states, including a particularly bad looking car with the original herald showing through and a 2

3 Union Pacific herald that seems to be peeling off! I guess it s not just modelers who use decals! Meanwhile, sister car was found in March 2011 to be a nice clean car showing off the UP Building America scheme that MTL depicts, complete with conspicuity stripes. The was found with fresh paint in January 2011 as well. These are in the UP Class CH We get a hint as to what at least some of these cars carry with the photo of MP , spotted at the Texas-Lehigh Cement Company s Roanoke (Texas) Terminal. It s also noted that at least one of these cars was a former MKT covered hopper. That makes sense given that the Katy was formally merged into the MP before the MP went into the UP. The ORER for January 2011 shows two groups of cars with identical dimensions under the Union Pacific registration. MP to accounts for 165 cars and there are another 265 cars in the group MP to They have an outside length of 41 feet 11 inches, a gross rail weight of 265,000 pounds, and capacity of 2980 cubic feet. If you d like to get nitpicky, that is actually ten cubic feet off the ACF2970 design that is the source for the MTL model. I don t want to get nitpicky here. Fun fact: The ORER entry shows no cars at all with UP reporting marks and road numbers in the s , $36.55 Reporting Marks: ATSF Bay Window Caboose, Windowless Sides, without Battery Box, Santa Fe (AT&SF). Red with partially yellow bay window and black underframe. Yellow stripe across most of side. Yellow (with red showing through) circle cross herald on left. Mostly white lettering including reporting marks on bay window. White side grab irons. Approximate Time Period: 1983 to 1988, or at least The Toledo, Peoria and Western was featured in the Winter 2011 issue of the magazine Classic Trains, from which we glean two important facts that pertain to this release. First, the line built twelve of its own steel cabooses, and second, the Santa Fe merged the TP&W in 1983 after a number of years of joint ownership with the Pennsylvania Railroad (the Santa Fe bought out the PRR s half from Conrail in 1979). With the TP&W property came three bay window cabooses, two of which, including this one, being kept in service. The TP&W trackage was part of the Santa Fe s Illinois Division for as long as it lasted. This story didn t end in abandonment, but in reincarnation: in February 1989 the Santa Fe sold most of the former TP&W to a group headed by investor Gordon Fuller, who named the newly independent line the Toledo, Peoria and Western! The TP&W is now part of RailAmerica and operates from Galesburg, Illinois through East Peoria to Logansport, Indiana, while Pioneer Railcorp operates much of the rest of the original TP&W s trackage west of Peoria. There is a bingo on this car on the Fallen Flags site and don t forget, on the ATSF it s not a caboose but a waycar. There are also photos of the in the book Santa Fe Waycars by Stephen Priest, both in Santa Fe paint but also in the previous TP&W scheme; thanks to UMTRR Gang Member Wayne Underwood for that info and a look at the photos. And 3

4 thanks to David Carnell for a comparison of model to prototype: The TP&W car utilized riveted body construction with a peaked roof with raised rib joints. The MTL car is a welded car. The MTL car has a higher bay with taller windows. The TP&W car does not have the vertical end stanchions on the end handrails. The TP&W car s trucks are Gould-Bettendorf roller bearings with a truck mounted axle-end generator that did not require a belt but used a bevel gear on the journal which transferred electricity to the car through an electrical cable. The waycar was given class CE-13 on the Santa Fe. The Santa Fe Subjects website (URL atsf.railfan.net, or more directly atsf.railfan.net/waycars/ce13.html ) states that the car is the former TP&W 523 and was off the Santa Fe s roster by But the photo on Fallen Flags is dated June 1997, so we know the lasted at least that long. It s noted on the website and in the Santa Fe Waycars book that the car was in local service on former TP&W trackage around East Peoria, so it didn t stray far from home. Local service cabooses generally had yellow cupolas, so the shop forces painted the upper half of the bay windows yellow, notes webmaster Evan Werkema. Fallen Flags has a photo of the other bay window caboose that the AT&SF got from the TP&W, the , and it s less of a match, having only the top half of a bay window. (It s the TP&W s former 521 that s pictured in the Classic Trains piece.) As hard as it is for me to believe especially considering how many models are out there, including in N Scale these former TP&W cars were in fact the only bay window waycars the Santa Fe ever owned , $22.70 Road Number: none (will be GN none in website listings). Paired Window Heavyweight Coach, Great Northern. Pullman green sides and ends, black roof, underframe and details. Delux gold lettering including roadname only in center of letterboard. Approximate Time Period: 1938 to early 1950s at least, but see text. We re sort of kind of picking up the story of the Pullman release on this body style ( , December 2011). Jerry LaBoda had previously noted in several online venues that Pullman rebuilt six Plan 2416 parlor-drawing room cars into coaches for use by the Great Northern, road numbers 990 to 995. The GN leased them in 1935 and bought them in And here s the first ever reference to a Doug s Railroad Stuff CD-ROM of the Official Register of Passenger Train Equipment (ORPTE) for March, 1943 in these bytes: the 990 to 995 are shown in the Great Northern registration. Seating capacity was 52 people and the cars was 81 feet 11 inches long. I also have another Doug s Railroad Stuff CD-ROM for the January 1953 ORPTE. Five of the six cars remain, with just the 990 off the roster. We ll have to settle for an at least on the ATP. But there s also the see text and it s not just the prototype being about three feet longer than the model. Jerry Laboda stated that these coaches didn t look that close to the MTL 4

5 body style. And how s this for evidence: a photo of the 902 as found in 1978(!) in the Pullman Green paint, in Morning Sun s Great Northern Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. The 902 had been sold to the White Sulphur Springs & Yellowstone Park Railway and not flipped to company service. Among the deltas was the use of a truss rod underframe (!) for these cars. Call this a stand in or a fill in to complete a Great Northern passenger train, or perhaps a pre-painted offering for you to use as a starting point for other models , $24.30 Road Number: 1006 (will be PRR 1006 in website listings). Paired Window Heavyweight Coach, Pennsylvania Railroad. Tuscan red sides and ends. Black roof, underbody and trucks. Buff lettering including roadname in center of letterboard and road number at either end of side. Buff stripes above and below windows on sides. Approximate Time Period: 1930s to early 1950s. The passenger equivalent to Pennsy s ubiquitous X29 boxcar was its famous P70 coach. They were used everywhere on the system for commuters, locals, or blue ribbon trains. That s from David Sweetland and Robert Yanosey, on Page 11 of Morning Sun s Pennsylvania Railroad Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Volume One), specifically the caption of a January 1961 photo of sister cars 1032 and The 1006 would fall into this series, numbered 820 to 1099, which accounted for 187 of the 6000 (!) passenger cars on the PRR roster listed in the ORPTE for March (See, after not using it at all previously, I hit it twice in this issue!) All told, the Pennsy had more than a thousand P70s, including various subclasses. And they were paired-window coaches, though not quite the same as the MTL body style. A principal difference is that the P70s rode on four wheel, not six wheel, trucks. Dave Vollmer wrote online that the MTL car is close to the P70 s somewhat modernized look from the 1930s to early 1950s; we ll take that for our ATP. The 70 in P70 refers to the passenger compartment being 70 feet long; the overall car is 80 feet long which is a bit more than the 78 feet of the MTL car. The actual road number 1006, interestingly enough, isn t found in a number by number roster of PRR passenger equipment from 1954 that s available on Rob s Pennsy Page (URL prr.railfan.net, no www ). Plenty of other cars in the series are, however. The paint scheme used by Micro-Trains lasted into the 1960s as both cars in the photo are still painted the same way in the photo in the Color Guide. And we actually caught up with the 1006 courtesy of an image on the Fallen Flags site: it s in the collection of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg. Within the online roster of the museum it s noted that the 1006 was built by Standard Steel Car Company in

6 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 February , $ Southern Pacific/Cotton Belt Train Set. Consists of the items described below. Please note that images are preliminary artwork; catalog numbers and reporting marks/road numbers are subject to change/confirmation , Road Number 304 (will be SSW 304 in website listings). GP7 Powered Diesel, Cotton Belt. Bachmann release equipped with Micro- Trains Magne-Matic couplers. Bloody nose scheme of gray with red ends. White lettering including roadname on long hood and road number on cab. Approximate Time Period: 1959 to early 1970s. The exact unit 304 happens to be captured in the only photo of any Cotton Belt GP7s on LocoPhotos.com. It was found in August 1974 in Memphis in the paint scheme depicted. Built in 1950, it began as SSW 320, was renumbered in 1954, and had its steam generator removed in It was sold to the Illinois Central and became its 8029, went to the Illinois Central Gulf and then to Mid-South. The bloody nose paint scheme dates to 1959 so that s the earliest possible start of the ATP. According to an Illinois Central diesel roster I found online, the unit was rebuilt in 1973, which would be before the 1974 photo date. So something s not quite in line here. I ll call the ATP end at early 1970s to account for this. There s a reason why this is the only GP7 for which I found photos it was also the only GP7 on the roster of the Cotton Belt or the Southern Pacific! When it was 320, it was painted in the Daylight scheme and was officially one of the Cotton Belt s few passenger locomotives. The Daylight scheme was apparently short lived it s also been noted that there are no surviving color photos of the unit in that paint scheme. It was painted in the Black Widow version of the SP/Cotton Belt decoration before going to the Bloody Nose scheme , Road Number 1147 (Will be SP 1147 in website listings). 36 Foot Steel Caboose, End Cupola, Southern Pacific. Silver with black lettering including roadname (accented with red S and P with black shadowing) across top, road number below cupola, and Trailer-Flatcar Service below windows. Approximate Time Period: 1954 to 1960s. New release, but this car has also been issued as a special run commissioned by the N Scale Collectors Society (now the N Scale Enthusiast), NSC Number MTL with Road Number 1099, part of the SP Vintage Piggyback Trailer-Flatcar Service pack. 6

7 I dutifully note that I m taking the items out of catalog number sequence, the reason for which will become apparent in a short while. We get a bingo on this caboose on Page 57 of Morning Sun s Southern Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Volume One). The caboose isn t even the main subject of the 1958 photo it s the new auto rack equipped flat car behind it. The 1147 is already rather dirty, so it wasn t freshly painted for display at this inspection event. It was one of seven SP C-40-3 and one C-40-1 cabooses that were painted in this scheme in 1954 and 1955, inspired by the silver trailers in use by the Espee at the time. These cars ran with special hot piggyback service between San Francisco and Los Angeles. According to Richard Percy s site ( espee.railfan.net ) these cars lasted into the 1960s. The MTL model isn t an exact match to the prototype, with the cupola and riveted construction being significant deltas , , Reporting Marks: SP , SP , SP Three 58 Foot TOFC Flat Cars, Southern Pacific. Brown with white lettering including reporting marks and Trailer-Flatcar Service legend on left. Approximate Time Period: late 1950s to early 1960s, but see text. New release, but two cars in the same paint scheme were issued as Special Runs commissioned by the N Scale Collectors Society (now the N Scale Enthusiast), NSC Number MTL with Road Number and NSC Number MTL with Road Number , part of the SP Vintage Piggyback Trailer-Flatcar Service pack. Lee Gautreaux s Railgoat site ( ) shows the series SP to as the railroad s class F in the table of flat cars by road number, but the detail page gives the road numbers as being to renumbered to to The cars were built in 1953 and 1954 by the S.P. Equipment Company and had a loading platform of 53 feet 6 inches. These cars don t appear to look much like the 064 body style. In fact, they look more like the 045 body style. And here s why I went to the caboose first: another photo in the SP Color Guide, on Page 78 to be exact, shows another silver caboose trailing an early piggyback train in an undated photo. The SP trailers are mounted on basic flat cars with side rails and other accessories. I can t read any of the road numbers but I suspect the cars belong to the F class. I think what I m trying to say here is we have a stand in large enough for a see text and so there it is in the ATP. So let s get to the dates in that see text ATP: Two of the three road numbers in question first appear in my ORER Accumulation in the January 1959 Edition. The short series to is listed as Flat, Steel, Highway Trailer with an inside length of 53 feet 6 inches, inside width of 10 feet 6 inches, outside length of 54 feet 2 inches, extreme height of 7 feet 10 inches and capacity of 140,000 pounds. Just thirteen cars were in the group at that time, and I can t guarantee that they were painted with reporting marks only. And there they go: by the July 1963 ORER, there are only two cars left numbered and ! I have the feeling that there may have been more in the group before the ORER of 59, but there aren t any in 7

8 the January 1967 Equipment Register. In fact, the few cars in the s in that book are 79 foot flat cars equipped for boat loading. The good news is that so far, we re still in the same ATP for the locomotive, caboose and flat cars, albeit a short ATP. Let s check the trailers Reporting Marks PMT Foot Smooth Side Trailer, Southern Pacific. Silver with orange stripe. Black lettering including roadname (accented with red S and P with black shadowing) across top, road number at tail, and Truck Service at front. SP Sunset herald on rear doors. Approximate Time Period: 1953 to early 1960s. New release, but this trailer has also been issued as a special run commissioned by the N Scale Collectors Society (now the N Scale Enthusiast), NSC Number MTL with Road Number 5844, part of the SP Vintage Piggyback Trailer-Flatcar Service pack Reporting Marks PMTZ Foot Smooth Side Trailer, Southern Pacific. Silver with red stripe. Black lettering including roadname (accented with red S and P with black shadowing) across top, road number at tail, and Truck Service at front. Roadname and reporting marks on rear doors. Approximate Time Period: 1960s. New release, but this trailer has also been issued as a special run commissioned by the N Scale Collectors Society (now the N Scale Enthusiast), NSC Number MTL with Road Number 1099, part of the SP Vintage Piggyback Trailer- Flatcar Service pack Reporting Marks to be determined. 40 Foot Smooth Side Trailer, Cotton Belt. Silver with black lettering including roadname (accented with red C and B with black shadowing) across top and Truck Service in center. Roadname on rear doors. Approximate Time Period: mid-1950s to mid-1960s (a guess). The ORER for January 1953 doesn t even list trailers yet, and unfortunately the Westerfield CD-ROMs for the January 1955 and January 1959 Equipment Registers don t include those pages if indeed they existed then. So the best we can do is use the July 1963 ORER. From the separate listing of trailers for the Southern Pacific we have 110 Dry Van trailers of 35 foot outside length (not the 40 foot length of the MTL body style) numbered PMT 5750 to 5859, and nothing with the reporting marks PMTZ as of yet. We don t have any reporting marks listed for the Cotton Belt trailer but the St. Louis Southwestern registration for trailers does include 40 foot Vans numbered 1825 to 1899, 1900 to 1999, 2000 to 2037 and 3001 to 3021, all with the reporting marks SWT. So if Micro-Trains was planning to put a road number on the trailer those are some possible choices. On the other hand, by the January 1967 ORER 8

9 the 40 foot vans had been renumbered into series starting with 20- and running from 8501 to 8948 (not consecutively). In that same book we have the first appearance I see of the Southern Pacific trailer series PMT to which includes the , although officially it s still PMT not PMTZ. There are just six trailers left in the group that includes PMT Hmm, trailers might be messier to keep track of than freight cars Anyway, the PMT stands for Pacific Motor Trucking which was founded by the SP way back in The railroad began trailer on flat car service in 1953 using only their PMT trailers other shippers couldn t send their trailers on the Espee s flat cars. That 1953 date doesn t necessarily give us a reasonable start to the ATP for the two Southern Pacific trailers, however, as it appears that the orange stripe version with the Sunset SP herald pre-dates the red stripe version with the roadname. According to the SP Color Guide, [by] early 1965 silver trailers with red lettering had become universal. Most of the photos in the Intermodal section of the MSCG are not dated. Another 1960s era photo shows trailer PMTZ , just two numbers off the MTL selected number It s a ribbed and riveted side model so we have a delta to the MTL body style. In the entire three volume set of Morning Sun Color Guides to the SP (now part of the UMTRR Research Accumulation) there s not a single photo of a Cotton Belt trailer. There are a few images of very beat up trailers online, one of which might have matched the MTL decoration when first painted. N SCALE REPRINTS: , $23.90 Reporting Marks: BCOL Foot Single Dome Tank Car, British Columbia Railway. Green with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left and roadname on left; multicolor dogwood herald on right. Approximate Time Period: 1974 to mid-1980s. Previous Release: Road Number 1924, May April 1, 1972 marks the name change from Pacific Great Eastern to British Columbia Railway, which makes for the earliest possible start of the Approximate Time Period for this car. (But see below.) MTL states in its copy that the car was actually repainted in February 1978, which makes sense given the gradual transition of roadnames. The U-1 wheel stencil gives us a strictly speaking ATP start of 1978 also. I had my fingers crossed when I grabbed the April 1976 ORER, hoping that even though the tankers are company service, that they might be listed. And they were: series 1903 to 1950 is of 43 cars, AAR Designation TM, 100,000 pounds capacity and marked either "PGE" or "BCOL". The same 43 cars appear in the April 1981 ORER. But by the January 1985 Register the British Columbia Railway has been renamed BC Rail, and the listed tank car roster is down to just 11 cars, which does not include the 1906 or the previously released

10 The Canadian Freight Railcar Gallery ( canadianfreightcargallery.ca ) has a photo of BCOL 1949 from the series as caught in 2004 and 2006; that s after the two MTL-chosen road numbers have apparently left the roster, but it does allow a look at the tankcar group. The prototype looks to be a bit less long and more tall, with a larger diameter tank than the 065 body style. The real 1949 is also marked Septic Service Only, right over the space where Diesel Fuel would have been marked on the car. Detail information accompanying the images on the website has the car series acquired by the BCOL in 1974, so I ve adjusted the start of the ATP , $19.45 Reporting Marks: ROCK Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Door, No Roofwalk, Full Ladders, The Rock (Rock Island). Blue with black lettering including reporting marks on left. Roadname "The Rock" on left; large black and white "R" herald on right. Reporting Marks: ROCK Approximate Time Period: mid 1970's to around Previous Release: Road Number 57607, February Well, what was true in 2002 is still true today: an Internet lookup on The Rock plus boxcar returns way too many citations to be useful. Not when rock is a genre of music I didn t know there was a Boxcar Records! Yikes! So much for that idea. We can still use some research help on the tracing of the history of this and other Rock freight cars, since, as I ve mentioned before, they vanished from the ORERs after the Rock Island was shut down in I mean it... in the April 1976 Register, there are over 25 thousand cars listed under RI and ROCK, and in April 1981 s book, nothing, nada, zippo. Fortunately, we do have the single citation in the April 76 book for the series ROCK to 58149, AAR Class XM, the usual Box, Steel. There were 737 cars in this group, with inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 5 inches, outside length 44 feet 4 inches, extreme height 14 feet 10 inches, door opening 6 feet, and capacity 4840 cubic feet or 110,000 pounds. This was by far the largest group of ROCK boxcars in existence at the time; it appears that there were no more than about 300 of the more familiar 50 foot outside post boxcars in bankruptcy blue at that point. We do improve upon the UMTRR coverage this time around via a photo of sister car ROCK in glorious black and white on the Fallen Flags site. There are a couple of nitpicks: first, the side sill is different, and second, the large R is moved up on the MTL car to accommodate the black and yellow Keep Off Roof / No Running Board advisory. On the real car, that warning is under the remaining full size ladder; even MTL can t pull off a painting trick like that. The has a Youngstown door, meanwhile a 1976 color photo of ROCK on RailcarPhotos.com shows that car with a Superior door. I think the protoypes had a mix of door types so we should be alright there. The National Railroad 10

11 Equipment Corporation logo is easily seen below and to the right of the reporting marks. Most likely they rebuilt and then leased the cars back to the Rock Island, and probably repossessed them after the Rock crumbled. The original build date of the cars is given as December 1951 which fits the PS-1 timeframe, but we can t be sure of this car s exact heritage. Back in 2002 MTL mentioned that this release is a more prototypical update of Micro-Trains catalog number 24010, which is the same body style with cut-down ladders. Long time N Scalers might remember that car, which was first issued in September pretty contemporaneous with the real thing, actually. It was reprinted in October 1978 and in July In each of these cases there were blue and black door variations, and from a collector standpoint the black door versions have been more valuable valuable being relative, of course. Copies of these earlier cars frequently come up on that Internet Auction Site , $23.55 Reporting Marks: WP Foot 15 Panel Fixed End Gondola with Low Cover, Western Pacific. Black with yellow and white lettering. Roadname split by orange feather across center of car. Black cover. Reporting Marks: WP Approximate Time Period: early 1960s (1962 rebuild date given by MTL) to late 1970s. Previous Release: Road Number 6053, July This is the second run of part two of the story of a WP gondola. Part one is the / gondola with silver lettering, most recently issued in October The prototype for that series 6601 to 6800 dropped from its original 200 cars to 99, but two new series of gondolas appeared in the WP s roster. One of those groups was numbered 6300 to 6400 and were GBS class cars equipped with steel cradles for loading coiled steel strips. The other group included this car, part of a short series 6051 to The January 1964 ORER lists these ten as AAR Classification GBS, description Gondola, Steel, Wood Floor, Covered and Note MM refers to a three section roof and removable bulkheads that MTL notes as well. In addition, the end doors were welded shut. The inside length was 52 feet 6 inches and the outside length 55 feet 1 inch, so the model is a little short in the body and a little long overall, but not noticeably so. The extreme height was 8 feet 7 inches, which should count the cover. Capacity was 1,745 cubic feet or 140,000 pounds. And part two came with a much more elaborate paint scheme. No plain white roadname here! The large orange feather was sure to garner looks at railroad crossings. This is quite the unusual circumstance for a gondola. Morning Sun s Western Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Page 77, has a photo of WP It has a different roof and bulkheads but the same snazzy paint scheme, though faded considerably. There s a bingo on the previous road number for this release, 6053, on the previous page of the MSCG, but its yellow lettering and orange feather have nearly disappeared. 11

12 The story of what these cars carried is well described in the March 2002 issue of Trains magazine. In the piece Perlman the Magnificent by Harry Bruce, a circa-1972 negotiation is described with respect to WP business with the giant U.S. Steel. The Western Pacific and its much larger rival Southern Pacific were invited to bid on coil steel traffic between Salt Lake and the Bay Area. WP thought it submitted a better overall deal but lost to the SP. That prompted Alfred E. Perlman, legendary railroad figure and then-president of the WP, to fly out to and confront the U.S. Steel management with Bruce, who was working for Perlman at the time. The net effect of the meeting, leaving out all the intrigue, was that WP did pick up some of that steel business, and there you have a use for the covered gondolas. All ten were still around in 1972, and two of the ten lasted into N SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following item was announced as an off-cycle release for January 2012 via the Micro-Trains website, the MTL Facebook page, and via the Micro-Trains E-Line, all on January , $54.95 Reporting Marks: RI and RI (last three digits of road number obscured). A two pack of PS-2 High Side Covered Hoppers, Rock Island (Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific). Gray with black lettering including large roadname across car and reporting marks on left. Moderate weathering on both cars. Red oxide patch panels on second car. Approximate Time Period: 1970 (build date given by MTL) to 1980 and beyond. Specific catalog numbers: , Road Number , Road Number Previous Release (unweathered): Road Number , May MTL follows their now typical pattern of one new road number, one obscured road number in this two pack. What you might be most interested in is what road numbers are good to fix the obscuring, since, as already discussed, it is very unlikely that a car with a halfmissing road number is going to be found roaming the rails. That series would be RI to built by Pullman-Standard in August There were 1703 cars available to pick from as of the July 1974 ORER. I don t think it s a stretch to say that these cars lasted to the very end of the Rock Island in 1980, at which point the entire listing was simply deleted from the ORER with no clue as to where the thousands of cars still owned by the company ended up. A photo reference can be found on Page 67 of Morning Sun s Rock Island Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment , $28.40 Reporting Marks: CP PS-2 High Side Covered Hopper, CP Rail. Black with mostly white lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left. Yellow conspicuity stripes along bottom of side (except 12

13 where covered by graffiti). Light to moderate weathering. Multicolor graffiti graphic on right of one side of car. Approximate Time Period: late 1980s (or about 2005 with conspicuity stripes) to at least Previous Release: Road Number , September This car could have a rather long history, but a rather short Approximate Time Period in this scheme with the conspicuity stripes, as detailed in the September 2011 UMTRR. The black and white CP Rail paint might be unusual for this group as well. Perhaps starting out on the Illinois Central roster, these cars were formerly CPAA to , then went to the same numbers with CP reporting marks. A reference photo is a bingo on the unweathered release, road number on RailcarPhotos.com. We re good in terms of match to the prototype as far as I can see. One thing we did not have in September that we do now is the January 2011 ORER, and a quick look there shows precisely one car left in the group, though with the notation that the cars well, car by then was purchased in the United States. N SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #60, four Union Pacific tank cars, is now available. UMTRR coverage was in the August 2011 issue. The individual catalog and road numbers are as follows: , Road Number 69010; , Road Number 69015; , Road Number 69020; , Road Number Please note under Oops Patrol that in the August 2011 pre-review of this pack I incorrectly called the previous releases as being Catalog Number 65010; they were actually Catalog with Road Number in May 1987 and Road Number in March The following item is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is August UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February 29. Scheduled August 2012 Release: , $ Quantity four of 100 Ton Steel Three Bay Open Hoppers, Canadian National. Mineral red with mostly white lettering including roadname (English or French) and reporting marks on left and large herald on right. Simulated coal load included. Approximate Time Period: mid-1980s (1985 rebuild date given by MTL) to early 2000s. Previous Release (as Catalog Number ): Road Number , December

14 Morning Sun s Canadian National Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, Volume 2, includes two photos of the series of cars from which MTL draws its inspiration, including a bingo on the previously run road number as captured in July 1985 in Toronto. The observer will quickly note that the prototype car seems a bit taller than the body style, and that would be correct. While the car builder Hawker-Siddeley followed the Pennsylvania Railroad s H39 design (a model for the 108 body style) including 13 side ribs, the sides were built taller in order to increase the cubic capacity. The prototype s height is really noticeable considering the way the roadname and herald hug the top of the car. These 500 cars were built in 1964 according to both MTL and Ian Cranstone's Canadian Freight Cars website. Ian has the renumbering that MTL mentioned with the original release, from the series to , as taking place in 1967, and the last date of service as We ll grab an entry from the ORER of April 1970 for some vital statistics: inside length 39 feet 10 inches, outside length 43 feet 7 inches, extreme height 12 feet 1 inch, capacity 3000 cubic feet or 165,000 pounds. Yes, that wouldn t be a 100 ton hopper, but the trucks used help determine the overall capacity. There were 368 in 1970 but just one left in January N SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: , $ Foot Boxcar, Plug Door, Without Roofwalk, Full Ladders, Presidential Series #41: Ulysses S. Grant. 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. Micro-Trains could have made the Presidential Trivia Question a lot easier this month by simply asking, Who is buried in Grant s Tomb? That s a question variously credited to multiple sources, but is perhaps most famously known as a creampuff quiz query on Groucho Marx s radio and television show You Bet Your Life. Groucho would ask this question to be able to award an unlucky contestant at least some sort of prize although I m told that at least once, a contestant answered, I am, Groucho! By the way, the strictly speaking correct answer is No one is buried in Grant s Tomb, since it is actually a mausoleum and the remains of our eighteenth President and his wife are inside it, not in the ground below. The life of Ulysses S. Grant, like the answer to the absurdist question above, is more complicated than it first appears. The only thing I remember from History Class besides his 14

15 presidency is his role in the Civil War and his nickname, Unconditional Surrender Grant. That was of course taken from the initials US and what better initials for the person who became the leader of the Union forces during the Civil War but would you be surprised to know that his given name was actually Hiram Ulysses Grant? He was born with that name in Point Pleasant Ohio, on April 27, 1822, the first of six children. Growing up, he was quiet and reserved earning him the nickname Useless Grant, but he was very good with horses which was a needed and respected skill at the time. His father was a tanner, but Grant certainly didn t want to follow that profession. He instead applied to and was accepted into the United States Military Academy. It s said that his Congressman miswrote his given name as Ulysses S. Grant on his application form, and the mistake was never corrected. At the time of Grant s graduation from West Point, the Army numbered only about seven thousand men. While stationed near St. Louis, he met his future wife Julia Dent. He fought in the Mexican War and was twice cited for bravery, unexpected considering his quiet nature. After the Mexican War, he married Julia and was promptly transferred all over the country. He could not always take Julia with him and after what seemed to be a difficult assignment he suddenly resigned in The rest of the decade was difficult, as Grant couldn t support his family which had grown to include four children. Then came the Civil War and Grant re-entered the Army. He was given command of an untrainable Illinois regiment and turned them into a disciplined unit. From there he rose to a Brigadier General of the Union Army, helping to reverse the incompetent leadership of the North s military. Grant led the Union to its first major victories at two forts in Tennessee which gave him overnight fame, but then he was blamed for major losses at the Battle of Shiloh. President Lincoln stood by Grant, aware that he was not afraid to take the war into the South, and made him a Major General in His forces captured Vicksburg in 1863 and before long he ran the entire western theatre of the war. His string of victories there catapulted him to leader of the entire Union Army in 1864 and he moved to Washington to oversee victory from there, though not without heavy losses that caused some Democrats to nickname him The Butcher. It was Grant to whom Robert E. Lee surrendered at a small courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865, earning Grant another nickname: Hero of Appomattox. He was also named General of the Armies in 1866, the first person of that rank since George Washington. Military heroes were often considered Presidential material at that time in United States history, and Grant was no exception. Abraham Lincoln s assassination led to the ineffective Andrew Johnson rising to the Presidency. Republicans then split over how to handle the defeated south and the General of the Armies found himself in conflict with the President. Grant eventually moved toward the Radical Republican views of keeping former Confederates out of power and protecting former slaves. Andrew Johnson supported neither position. Grant said he wasn t interested in the Presidency but was nominated by the Republicans on the first ballot. He won the popular vote of the Election of 1868 by just 300,000 ballots but took the Electoral College by almost three to one. While there was yet another split in the Republican Party which resulted in the Liberal Republicans and Democrats both nominating newspaperman Horace 15

16 Greeley (of Go West Young Man fame) for the Election of 1872, Grant won reelection easily. Grant took office at what remained an extremely difficult time for the country, and with the nearly impossible conflict of Southern States Rights versus the mitigation of rampant discrimination against former slaves. His responses varied, sometimes sending troops in to enforce voting rights and sometimes choosing not to act at all. He also had a fierce loyalty to people, which resulted in inconsistent choices for and high turnover of his cabinet, as well as a number of scandals which, while not ever implicating Grant directly, did damage to his administration s reputation. Among these was the infamous Crédit Mobilier of America scandal which had been brewing since the Lincoln Administration and involved malfeasance during and after the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Grant s first Vice President was caught in this net and was replaced on the ticket for Grant s second term. Grant s personal secretary was implicated in the Whiskey Ring scandal. But Grant was not totally naïve either. When Jay Gould and Jim Fisk (railroad barons!) tried to corner the gold market in 1869 using Grant s brother-in-law as their agent to attempt to keep the Treasury from selling some of the country s reserves, Grant blew up the scheme by selling $4 million of gold and crashing its price. (And let the record show that attempts at spectacular financial manipulation are not limited to our current century.) Grant also tried to reform civil service and Native American affairs, and defused a situation with Great Britain with regard to its building of Confederate warships. The resulting improvement in Anglo- American relations was seen as one of Grant s key accomplishments. Arguably it was the economy that did in Grant s presidency. The Panic of 1873 started in Europe and quickly spread to the United States. The resulting downturn was called the Great Depression up until, well, the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although it had many causes including a railroad bubble of overexpansion with 89 railroads going bankrupt it was laid at the doorstep of the White House. Grant s policy of monetary contraction did not help the situation, and he vetoed a bill to essentially inflate the United States currency. The Republican Party stuck to fiscal conservatism through the rest of the century. In 1875 Grant announced that he would not seek a third term. As we already know from September 2009 s UMTRR, the election of his successor Rutherford B. Hayes was the most disputed election in United States history; Grant s calm leadership during this time helped keep things from getting farther out of hand. Following the conclusion of his Presidency, Grant and his wife Julia traveled the world for two years. Grant considered running for President again in 1880 but saw that he didn t have his party s support despite his continued public popularity. But financial disaster hit when he lost everything he had invested in a partnership co-led by his son. Impoverished, he took an offer from Century Magazine to write about the Civil War, which led to interest in writing his memoirs. Mark Twain offered to publish them and Grant accepted. Then Grant learned he had throat cancer (he was a heavy cigar smoker). The final campaign of Grant s life was a race against time to finish his memoirs and thus provide for his family, and he completed the work just days before his death on July 23,

17 It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training, Grant said in 1876 in his farewell address to Congress. The Miller Center concludes that Grant is no longer viewed to be as poor a President as he once was, but still notes that there were shortcomings that finished a transition of dominance from the Executive Branch to the Legislative that would endure until the 1900s. Ultimately, President Grant remains somewhat of an enigma in American history. He was such a successful general that his failings as President seem hard to comprehend. He was a natural leader on the battlefield but was not an especially effective leader of his country. And that brings us to the Trivia Question, which is easiest to answer from the last part: was never elected Vice President or President. Many were either or, but only one man was both: appointed to the Vice President s office and then assumed the Presidency after the only resignation of a sitting President in United States history. Can I add and also portrayed humorously by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live? We ll look at that and more next month when we cover the life and Presidency of Gerald Ford. Get those responses in, and good luck! , $99.95 FT-B Powered Diesel Unit, Presidential Series. Cream sides and ends with green roof, radiator screens and handrails. Green rendition of eagle device from the Seal of the United States, flanked by stars. Reporting Marks (POTUS 44) at rear. Companion release to Presidents of the United States Special Edition Series. MTL notes that this item is not included in dealer standing orders. Yes, I had to call into MTL to get the reporting marks for this new companion release, and they do make sense, at least until 2013 or 2017 depending on the outcome of the next election. (And that s all I ll say about that: current politics make my trains nervous.) Micro-Trains has chosen and interesting and appropriate motif for the B-unit; recalling that the A-unit has an outline drawing of the White House in the same style as the eagle and stars on this locomotive. That eagle is similar to but not exactly the same as that used on the Great Seal of the United States and the Seal of the President of the United States, as the one on the unit has its wings outspread and is somewhat simplified. And besides, the Seal of the President of the United States is already on the A-unit. I expect that this was a relatively low production item, but I certainly would think that the run was of a quantity roughly the same as for the A-unit. I m not quite ready to call this the pick to click this month, but I also wouldn t be surprised if it sold through quickly. Especially if some of the Presidential Car accumulators would like to run them behind an A- B-B set of locomotives. 17

18 The following items are in pre-order at present and are NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is May UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of these items in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February and , $15.85 each Reporting Marks: RBX 33 and Foot Fishbelly Side Flat Car, Ringling Brothers ( Vintage Paint). Brown with white lettering including reporting marks on left and Ringling Bros. in vintage style lettering in center and , $15.85 each Reporting Marks: RBX 57 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, white with gold ornamentation and green wheels, with multicolor depiction of a lion in center. Second wagon is a cage type with red frame and wheels and gold bars and white Ringling Bros. legend across top. Is this the repeat of a sellout? Maybe so, as it seems to me that MTL might have been caught a bit off-guard by how fast the first runs of these really simple flat cars hit the Discontinued Alert. This time, MTL is going the pre-order route to judge interest a little more specifically. The wagons have been popular as well well, you need one pack of two for the two flat cars, so why not? Still, there s not that much to say about flat cars with very little lettering, and in an imagined scheme to boot. That lion on the wagon looks interesting but I think the real lions in the employ of Ringling Brothers would have been carried in the other wagon with the cage built in. Nn3 SCALE (NARROW GAUGE): No releases this month. 18

19 Z SCALE NEW RELEASES: , $21.35 Reporting Marks: N&W Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, Norfolk and Western. Brown with white lettering including large circle ( hamburger ) herald and reporting marks on left and large roadname on right. Approximate Time Period: mid 1960s (based on paint scheme) through decade of the 1970s. The Norfolk and Western Historical Society commissioned an N Scale Special Run three-pack of N&W Class B-8 boxcars. The prototypes came from Pullman-Standard and were numbered to 42899, to 44999, and to My immediate question: Couldn t MTL have used one of those road numbers for this release? Okay, so maybe I m being a bit sensitive here, but using the N&W s prototype series of PS-1 boxcars as the basis for a release in the 500 body style seems to make more sense to me. Well, unless one considers that the to group of B-8 cars had eight foot doors. Anyway, a car from the prototype group that actually was used for this 1:220 depiction appears on both the dust cover and Page 46 of Morning Sun s Norfolk & Western Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Jim Nichols. The MTL car copy is drawn from the caption on Page 42. The cars were rebuilt in 1945 by the Wabash from series boxcars and and series gondolas (!). Probably only the underframes and trucks were reused, notes Nichols. The Wabash cars went into the N&W when the latter leased the former in The actual car shown is just two road numbers off a bingo, N&W , and with the space between the first three and last three digits of the road number. It was photographed sometime after the service date, and probably repainting date, of August The real car is not a match for a PS-1 on several attributes that I can see, including a different side sill, riveted sides and the offset nature of the sides with respect to the ends and roof. The straight-on photo doesn t allow a good look at those ends or roof. The paint including the circle herald looks good. The ORER for January 1967 shows a larger number series than I would have expected, running from to , and including four sets that total to 96 cars. The dimensions differ somewhat across these subgroups that s why they are subgroups! so I ll just take the statistics from the most populous group of 71 cars: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside width 9 feet 2 inches, inside height 10 feet 4 inches, outside length 45 feet 5 inches, extreme height 14 feet 9 inches, door opening 6 feet, capacity 3835 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. An end note is an indication that these cars came from the Wabash series to (drop the leading 3 from the road number) and that group numbered another 565 cars. I would have expected a growth in the N&W series as more cars were repainted into the hamburger scheme, but that doesn t seem to be the case. The April 1970 ORER shows only 84 total cars in the N&W groups. In July 1974 we have an interesting anomaly: the main 19

20 series of cars with a count of zero, and a subset of nine road numbers with a count of one car! Suffice to say, thus endeth the ATP and , $20.85 each. Reporting Marks: CN and Foot Wood Double Sheathed Refrigerator Car, Vertical Brake Staff, Canadian National. Brown with white lettering including roadname (in English only) and reporting marks on left. Green and white Serves All Canada maple leaf herald on right. Approximate Time Period: early 1940s to as late as We will have to begin with the usual disclaimer, which you ll probably become sick of before too much longer: because the 518 body style is based on a Pacific Fruit Express prototype, there is a degree of difference against any other roadname MTL chooses to release on this car. Based on photos in Morning Sun s Canadian National Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment Volume Two, we can start with a ladder versus grab irons, the use of corner braces, the shape of the ends and roof, and the ever popular underslung charcoal heater (still a possible aftermarket part for some enterprising Z Scaler). I guess that all spells stand in, though the 40 foot length appears to be about right and the paint scheme with tilted Serves All Canada slogan is a match for what s left of the paint on the prototype in a photo in the MSCG. The maple leaf with Serves All Canada was introduced in the mid 1940s, which is somewhat after the build date of September 1947 given by Micro-Trains. The paint scheme could have been applied with the rebuild of October 1948 that MTL also notes. The tilted slogan was straightened in the monogram in July 1954, but based on photos of various car types in the Color Guide, you re probably safe running this car well past that date. According to Ian Cranstone s Canadian Freight Cars site ( ), the series to was built in the CN s own Transcona Shops in 1937 and lasted until the January 1972 ORER. They had steel underframes and basket bunkers and were equipped for half-stage icing. They carried the AAR Designation RSMH, which translates to Bunker Refrigerator with Beef Rails and Heaters. We ll grab the ORER from January 1943 for a sample listing of dimensions: inside length 35 feet 2 inches inside bulkheads or 40 feet 7 inches clear, inside width 8 feet 5 inches, inside height 6 feet 7 inches, outside length 42 feet 5 inches, extreme height 14 feet 2 inches, door opening 5 feet wide by 6 feet 4 inches high, capacity 1950 cubic feet or 75,000 pounds. The specific group to which Ian Cranstone referred was at the time part of the larger series to which numbered 745 cars. 20

21 , $33.95 Road Number: (will be preceded with C&NW in website listings). 30 Foot Steel Center Cupola Caboose, Chicago and North Western. Yellow with green roof. Green lettering including reporting marks (CNW) in center below cupola, road number bottom center, small heralds left and right, and We re Employee Owned! slogan at left. Black and white consolidated stencils and yellow and black U-1 inspection symbol at right. Approximate Time Period: early 1970s to Just to prove that with cabooses, one must absolutely go for the bingo on photos, the or one road number away is shown on what s called a Drover s Caboose which is more like a passenger car than what we re used to seeing! So what about the 10801? I was all set to bring out the see text but as it turns out, we re good, or at least decent. The Lehigh Valley Railroad sold off some of its surplus cabooses in the 1960s, including ten to the C&NW in May The former LV became C&NW And just to confuse things, one of the ex-lv cars was numbered 10800, as was that Drover s Caboose, obviously at different times. According to a post in the archives of Railroad.Net, the car was retired in It had one square window either side of the cupola, so it s not an exact match to the 535 body style, but as a Northeastern style caboose it s closer to the prototype than would be expected for a Midwest railroad. (And it explains why I ve seen this body style in N and other scales in C&NW paint.) The We re Employee Owned! paint scheme is roughly from the early 1970s if I recall correctly, so that would be the start of the ATP. I never did find a photo reference, but this time, there s enough material online to substitute for a bingo and , $ each Road Numbers: 6823 and 6829 (will be preceded with C&NW in website listings). SD40-2 Diesels, Chicago and North Western. Yellow with green top band on long hood and green cab. Black underframe. Green road number on long hood. Red, black and white herald on cab. Approximate Time Period: 1974 (build date) to early 1990s as painted. These two units were part of a fifty locomotive order numbered 6816 to 6865 built between February and April 1974 as EMD Order Number 74609, according to UtahRails.net. Fortyeight of the North Western s 6800 series units were renumbered to the Union Pacific series 2952 to 2949 and others went to the UP group 3015 to It looks like the 6823 became UP 2971 and the 6829 became UP

22 Every one of the C&NW SD40-2 photos I reviewed on LocoPhotos.com showed the units in the basic green and yellow scheme that Micro-Trains used. There were differences across the units, depending on when they were photographed. These were whether there was a herald or CNW initials on the nose, the typestyle of the road number, and the exact herald used, either the Chicago / System or the Employee / Owned variation on the usual ball and bar monogram with which we re familiar. In most cases, the herald is either too far away or too faded for me to tell precisely which one was applied. But we do alright on one of the two road numbers MTL chose. A bingo on the 6823 from 1990 on LocoPhotos showed the road number in a serif style font, with the System herald and nothing on the nose. This is the way MTL has their model painted. Another bingo on the 6823 as of 1995 showed the System herald on the nose and cab and the road number in a slightly larger sans serif font. That suggests the end of the ATP to be in the early 1990s, strictly speaking. And finally, yet another bingo on the 6823, this time on RRPictureArchives.com from 1976 in black and white shows the serif road number, nothing on the nose and the Employee Owned herald. The prototype units have dynamic brakes as does the model, the horn is mounted atop the cab, and the numberboards black on white match up. The ends of the handrails can be painted white to match the real units. Z SCALE REPRINTS: No releases this month. Z SCALE WEATHERED RELEASES: The following item was announced as an off-cycle release for January 2012 via the Micro-Trains website, the MTL Facebook page, and via the Micro- Trains E-Line, all on January , $54.95, Union Pacific Two-Pack. Consists of the following items, reviewed separately below , Reporting Marks: UP Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Youngstown Door, Union Pacific. Box car red with white lettering including large roadname and reporting marks on left and slogan on right. Red, white and blue shield herald on right. Brown trucks. Light to moderate weathering. Approximate Time Period: mid-1960s (1965 repaint date given by MTL) to mid-1970s. Previous Releases: Runner Pack #12, Catalog Number , individual catalog numbers 500 5x 600, Road Numbers , , , , December This is a weathered version of an earlier release. Note: It is possible but not confirmed that all four Runner Pack road numbers could be in this weathered release. Aha! They almost got me to say this was a new release, as the 500 xx 600 catalog number is skipped in the Z Scale Database of regular run releases that s regular run releases! But then I remembered the Runner Pack listing, handily available on the UMTRR Website and once 22

23 again saving me from an Oops. Actually, the fact that I really needed a single place to look up all the Runner Packs led to the creation of that page on my site sharing it is a bonus. Anyway, we ll reach back to the June 2009 UMTRR coverage of Runner Pack #12 s announcement for the following. While this is a well known paint scheme, apparently it wasn t used on that many cars in the prototype series, simply because there weren t that many cars remaining in the series by the time this paint scheme was adopted. In the January 1964 ORER there were 1881 cars in the group numbered to But by January 1967 that number series was all the way down to 100 cars, and 94 in the April 1970 Register. There was a notation in the 1964 ORER that the cars were being equipped with lading side wall anchors, and I m wondering if the cars didn t get renumbered out of that series when that occurred. At any rate, here are the vital statistics: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet 6 inches, outside length 44 feet 5 inches, extreme height 15 feet 1 inch, door opening 6 feet, capacity 3909 cubic feet or 100,000 pounds. As MTL notes, these B class cars were built in 1947 by the UP itself, so they re not actually PS-1s which is the basis for the Micro-Trains body style. In HO Scale, Branchline Trains (now Atlas) has these cars as delivered scheme being the boxcar red with alternating Serves all the West and Road of the Streamliners slogans in yellow with white lettering otherwise. According to the RPI website, the shield or medallion that was first designed back in 1887 and had been dropped from the Union Pacific s decoration in the 1930 s was returned to service in the 1950 s. The word Railroad was dropped from the Union Pacific Railroad legend in So the 1965 repaint date for the car given by MTL fits right in. Whether there is any ATP overlap with the other car in the two-pack well, that s next , Reporting Marks: UP Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Plug Door, Union Pacific. Yellow sides, aluminum roof, ends, bottom sill and underframe. Aluminum trucks with brown wheels and couplers. Black reporting marks (on left) and dimensional data (left and right). Red, white and blue shield herald on left. Large slogan We Can Handle It on right. Moderate weathering especially along bottom of sides and on trucks. Approximate Time Period: 1976 (service date given by MTL) or early 1980s to early decade of the 2000s. Previous Releases: Road Numbers and , February This is a weathered version of an earlier release. Note: It is possible but not confirmed that both previous road numbers could be in this weathered release. First, the question of the Approximate Time Period overlap: there is one, but it s pretty short. The ATP for the first of the two-pack is coming to an end as the ATP for the second is just starting up. And there is an assumption we need to make to get even that window of the mid-1970s. Ah, well, there s always Rule #1. 23

24 Although I can generally quote myself from the review of the N Scale reprint of this car from September 2009, I have to begin with a key difference in the 1:220 model: it has a roofwalk. While it s arguably easier to take a running board off than put one on, I d still rather see MTL come out with a Z Scale 50 foot plug door boxcar without one to begin with, just as the 038 body style exists in N Scale. OK, I ll step back off the soapbox and commence with the selected Copy and Paste. Before We Will Deliver, but after the request that shippers Be Specific, Ship Union Pacific, was We Can Handle It. Sometimes, as in this case, followed by the phrase...the Union Pacific railroad people, the slogan was adapted in the 1970's and displayed in large bold lettering on car sides. Like many other plug door boxcars, this is actually classified as a refrigerator car in the Association of American Railroads code. It s an RBL, to be specific (no pun intended), according to Micro-Trains built in The series is described in the January 1967 ORER as Union Pacific Refrigerator Plug Door Cushion Underframe back in its original series of to , with 98 cars in the group at that time. Micro-Trains reported earlier that the cars were serviced in May 1976 and renumbered into the to series, however the ORERs I own don t exactly concur with that information. The first Equipment Register in which I pick up this exact road number is April There is a small group to of 16 cars described as Refrigerator, Steel, Cushion Underframe, Load Dividers, Single Plug Doors, Special Interior Lining, 50K with these dimensions: inside length 50 feet 1 inch, inside width 9 feet 4 inches, inside height 9 feet 11 inches, outside length 58 feet, extreme height 15 feet, door opening 10 feet 6 inches, capacity 4668 cubic feet or 135,000 pounds. The original release s road number is part of the next series to , of 79 cars, described the same way with the addition Considered Part of Car: Shipper Owned Pallets and with the same dimensions except for a door opening of 10 feet even. By July 1989 the was the first road number in the even smaller group to which was down to eight cars, and the series with MTL's first release number had slipped to 48 cars. Two years later the groups were down to seven and 36 cars respectively. Take that down to five and twenty cars in the October 1996 ORER, three and nine cars in the July 1998 Register, and three and six cars in the January 2000 book. It looks like the cars were in service for a couple more years, but in 2004 the forty year rule would have kicked in (cars older than that, unless rebuilt, are no longer supposed to be in interchange service). My next question, which I hedged on back when the first N Scale number was released in 1998, was how long we could expect to see the We Can Handle It slogan on these cars. I had submitted a guess of an Approximate Time Period to at least the end of the 1980's, but knowing what I know now, I am thinking that the paint scheme MTL depicts was the final one for these cars until they were retired sometime in the decade of the 2000's. The Fallen Flags site has a photo of very similar car UP , a class BI-70-7, as of 1989, so I believe it's safe to assume that the We Can Handle It got that far. I also note differences between prototype and model, the most prominent of which is the presence of diagonal seams either side of the plug door-- which is also wider on the real car than the model. There is also UP 24

25 shot in 2007 and with the slogan almost completely worn away, and UP as of 2006 in only slightly better condition, both on RailcarPhotos.com. Z SCALE RUNNER PACKS: In addition to the below announcement, Runner Pack #38, four Union Pacific tank cars, is now available. UMTRR coverage was in the August 2011 issue. The individual catalog and road numbers are as follows: , Road Number 70122; , Road Number 70132; , Road Number 70134; , Road Number The following item is in pre-order at present and is NOT currently available. Scheduled delivery is August UMTRR coverage is being provided ahead of the actual release of Runner Packs in order to facilitate pre-order decisions; pre-orders close February , $99.95 Quantity four of 40 Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Door, New York Central Pacemaker. Reporting Marks: NYC , , , Red and gray sides and ends, red roof, door and sill below door. Black lettering including reporting marks on left. White Pacemaker Freight Service legend on left. Black and white New York Central System oval herald on right. Approximate Time Period: mid- to late 1950s (per paint scheme). Previous Release (as Catalog 14149, now ): Road Number , August You re not seeing things with respect to the doors shown on this quartet of Pacemaker boxcars. According to the Morning Sun s New York Central Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment (Volume One), the cars numbered to had Youngstown doors and the to had Superior doors, so Micro-Trains is correctly modeling this attribute of the prototype. And the real doors were six feet wide as well, no door thing here. It s also true though that the cars construction predates the introduction of the PS-1 body style, as the real cars were built in 1945 by Despatch Shops, Incorporated, the site of which is just down the road from UMTRR HQ. As MTL reported with N Scale releases of this car, the lettering started out in all white but the reporting marks and other data went to black when the white was shown to not wear well. That s the reason for the later start of the ATP than the 1945 build date. Here is a sample review from the ORER from January 1953: inside length 40 feet 6 inches, inside height 10 feet, outside length 41 feet 10 inches, extreme height 14 feet 6 inches, and capacity a lowish 50,000 pounds. Recall, though, that these cars were meant for expedited freight service and the cars could have cubed out of capacity before loading out in terms of weight. By the January 1964 there were just two cars left in the original number series. 25

26 A book I can t normally cite is New York Central Color Photography of Ed Nowak by that noted NYC company photographer. Volume One of his three volume set, while also including the Pacemaker boxcars at various points around the system, also has a section on The Pacemaker passenger train of the late 1940s, which ran all-coach between New York and Chicago. This train carried numbers 1 and 2, not the much more famous Twentieth Century Limited! The Pacemaker Freight Service also boasted its own trains, and another Ed Nowak photo from 1946, showing a solid train of these cars behind NYC Mohawk steamer number 3100 is the cover photo of the softcover The Water Level Route. The freight service operated from New York or Boston to Buffalo. Believe it or not, the not so strictly speaking ATP for this paint scheme does stretch into the 1960 s, although with some modifications. First, full dimensional data was eventually added to the cars as their Pacemaker dedicated service ended and the cars became available for general service including forays off-line. Second, this may have included renumbering into the series; the January 1964 ORER suggests this by way of identical dimensions for that group except for the capacity which had been raised to a more typical 110,000 pounds. Third, the paint wore pretty badly. The Color Guide shows a 1971 view of one of these cars, renumbered to , that looks more like three-quarters red and one-quarter gray, with the Pacemaker legend nearly gone, and the black and white oval herald going that way. I much prefer the as-delivered version of these cars, which were a major departure of the usually dominant shades of box car red of Eastern railroads-- at least until the Central's Century Green of By the way, while that nearly $25 per car unit price might seem to be a bit eye popping, it is actually a bit lower than the $25.30 MSRP that the 2004 release with Magne-Matic couplers carried. (The Marklin coupler version was $23.50.) Another example of economies of scale. Z SCALE SPECIAL EDITION RELEASES: , $22.95 Reporting Marks: TN Foot Box Car, Plug Door, Tennessee 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 (iris) and state bird (mockingbird) on right. Forty-third release in the Z Scale States of the Union series. [Note: This commentary is largely reprinted from the August 2005 UMTRR.] Following the accomplishment of my goal of setting foot in all fifty states, I turned my attention to cities around the United States that I still want to visit. And Number One on that hit parade was Nashville. I made it there in September 2009, after the release of the N Scale 26

27 version of this car. I was a total tourist for a weekend, visiting for example the Ryman Auditorium--photo evidence at right, though the guitar is theirs, not mine! (For the record, this is the first photo of your faithful author to appear in this column.) I also toured the Country Music Hall of Fame, which included a visit to the famous Studio B where I sat at the Steinway piano that was used on many of Elvis Presley s recordings. A walk down Lower Broad and environs on a Saturday night is, well, the thing that inspires songs. I met some of the nicest people there, including more than a couple in the business. One of them played in the band of bluegrass big Ricky Scaggs. No major star sightings though, although a number of people whose 45s and CDs I own were on the bill at the Grand Ole Opry. There is also nothing quite like WSM in terms of radio stations. (They stream online as well, including the Opry on Saturday nights.) But Maybe It Was Memphis, to borrow title of a Pam Tillis song, as another place I set foot in the Volunteer State, and yes, I ve been to Graceland too (a lot smaller of a house than I thought it would be). But my very first stop in Tennessee was way over in the eastern part of the state, you know, the part that gets stuck in its own little map in the Rand McNally Atlas. It was early 1991 and it looked very much like I was going to be moving west after Grad School, so my then fiancé Rosemary and I took a trip south from Rochester to pick up both Tennessee and South Carolina for my list. Johnson City was the primary destination that trip before heading over the mountains in what was, and still very much is, Clinchfield Railroad country, regardless of what the names on the locomotives say these days. That Eastern part of Tennessee that I first visited was once the home of the Cherokee, while the Memphis area that was the site of three business trips was once inhabited by the Chickasaws. Desoto first claimed the land for the Spanish in the 1540's but LaSalle established a fort on the Mississippi circa 1682 as part of the Mississippi Territory for France. A series of indian treaties followed through the 1700's and Daniel Boone blazed his trails through the area starting in the 1760's including the Wilderness Road. Interestingly, North Carolina held title to territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and at first ceded the area now called Tennessee to the Federal Government, then changed its mind. In the meantime, some of the settlers who were already there wanted a State of Frankland, later Franklin in honor of Benjamin Franklin. (For those of you in the N Scale Enthusiasts looking for your next Almost A State? There it is. You re welcome.) John Sevier was the first governor in before he was arrested by North Carolina! He returned to head the Tennessee government upon the granting of statehood in Another early governor of the state was Sam Houston, who later went on to fame and fortune in Texas. In 1838 one of the darker events in United States history-- the Trail of Tears forced eviction of the Cherokee-- took place across the length of the state. James K. Polk became state governor the next year, and U.S. President in And Andrew Johnson took the same path later. But that was after Tennessee became the last state to withdraw from the Union to the Confederacy, a choice made by popular vote. The celebrated Scopes Monkey Trial took 27