Also there are certain models that are completely wrong for the prototypes and I'll list those separately as well, so we can all be on the lookout for them and try as best we can NOT to waste time and effort working on them or buying them to start with.
Currently (Febuary 2017) I am still adding cars to this list, there are still many more cars needed across the fleet to fill various holes.
Boxcars - Plain 40ft
One of the car types that we're very short on right now is plain "XM" type 40ft boxcars, both wood, steel and steel-sheathed ex-wood cars. Also we have very few models of unique road cars that were seen in large numbers. These other boxcar body styles when seen in a train tend to break up the "All the cars look the same" complaint of only buying 2-3 model types for an operating layout.
PRR X29
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| My first X29 still under construction from re-purposed PRR Battery MW Supply Car. |
The PRR X29 box cars is one car type that we are extremely short on. PRR built about 25000 of this class car during the 1920s.
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| Red Caboose and IMRC continue to release models of the X29 using the same tooling. Very nice kits to put together! |
We could probably use 20-30 of them easily without flooding the pool. The Red Caboose produced currently by Intermountain is the easiest and very accurate model. They produce several versions of the model to represent when it was built and if it has side sheet repairs riveted over the lower car side.
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| PRR X29 with lower side patch panels. |
Many X29s were rebuilt with new lower side patches, IMRC has this option available X29 Patches.
The X29B was a rebuilt X29 which received a new body above the frame that resembled a 1937 AAR designed body, however these cars can be recognized by the narrower frame of the original X29 visible under the wider rebuilt body.
About 1/3 of the PRR X29 fleet was rebuilt by 1950 to X29B standards. As of early 2017, we could use 10-15 of these cars. Unfortunately at this time correct X29B models are only available in resin, or would require kitbashing, which I have some ideas for, but haven't done yet.
BLI has made very nice models of these cars with two different ends. The NYC built these cars during the same time that the PRR was building the X29s, and they had about the same number as the X29s. For LMRC purposes, we should have about equal numbers of the NYC USRA Rebuilt cars and PRR X29s.
As of early 2017, we could use 25 or so more of this one series of NYC car!
The B&O also built their own unique design of boxcar, using one sheet of metal for the roof and curving down to also form the sides of the car. Ribs formed the joints between each panel of the roof/side.
Fox Valley and Exact Rail have made these models in HO scale. The Fox Valley cars are about 12" too short in length, but look very nice and have been easier to acquire. In Early 2017, we have about three of these in freight service, and several more in the express passenger service. We could probably use 5-8 more of these cars in the brown freight scheme.
Another interesting car is the Rebuilt USRA boxcars of the late 1920s.
Sadly, I've learned that many railroads that rebuilt USRA cars went with a wider 1937 AAR style body built on the top of the narrower frame. So the Atlas model is completely incorrect for PRR X26C. I'm not sure if NKP used this type of rebuild or if Atlas car is completely a fobbie. F&C does make a correct PRR X26 and sub varients.
These are just two of the schemes that Atlas released for this new body style. I've not started weathering either of these cars yet.
Several railroads were assigned boxcars built under the AAR's "Emergency Production" during WWII. Santa Fe, among others, received cars of this type. Many would later have their wood sides replaced with steel sheeting. - Again I've not started weathering this model yet.
We seem to have a lot of ATSF 40ft boxcars in the pool and only about 1/3 as many SP boxcars. Red Caboose-Intermountain makes very nice B-50-20.
Branchline Yardmaster (now Atlas) made nice 40ft 1937 AAR steel cars for a variaty of RR's, SP and ATSF being two that we could use. They were inexpensive and nicely detailed. Much easier to finish than older MDC or Athearn models.
The SP also resheathed the earlier wood boxcars of B-50-15/16, currently there's no model available to model these cars. Hopefully soon one will become available.
The SP got rid of basically all of its double sheathed wood boxcars just after WW2.
The remaining wood cars of classes B-50-13/14 can be modeled fairly well in plastic with the Tichy or Accurail boxcar models.
Pacific Electric did have some B-50-13/14s, but they were being reabsorbed into the SP's numbering system after 1951, so these cars would have been repainted during shoppings with their new SP numbers.
The B-50-15/16s unfortunately have only been available in brass or resin, and currently are out of production as of early 2017.
Many railroads bought "Fowler" boxcars during the 1910-1920s and kept them around for years, often these were short 36ft cars, which combined with their unique sidesill design made them stand out in consists. Erie and Southern were a couple of railroads that had large numbers of them. Enough to justify 3-4 of them in the LMRC fleet. They are available as resin kits and some 'stand-in' suitable cars now (2018) by Accurail. Currently the 1950's fleet has none of these cars.
One of the interesting cars we could use more of (probably 10-15 cars) would be a mix of NP and UP boxcars for use in rough paper card-stock shipments to cardboard manufacturers near Los Angeles. This traffic would move on OCM over Tehachapi.
SP started building covered hoppers for specialized services, such as cement service, in 1947. By 1952 they had not yet started receiving the PS-2 cars from Pullman Standard. All of SP's classes before the PS-2s had eight square hatches and either solid or open side sheets between the hoppers.
SP also bought cars for the T&NO lines, but I doubt these would show up very much as the cars were in captive service between regular customers most of the time. Cement was also rather perishable, and was usually only shipped a few hundred miles by rail.
Kato and Bowser both make very fine models of these cars which are not as expensive as the Kadee models. Intermountain has also produced this type of car. We could probably use another 40-50 covered hoppers for cement and potash service in the 1950's era freight pool.
Currently the club's requirements of flatcars can be broken down into three categories:
1. SP lumber pool flats - these will mostly be used to replicate the heavy lumber trains moving from Northern CA to Southern CA over Tehachapi both on SP and some on ATSF trains off the NWP or to points on ATSF's Southern CA destinations.
2. ATSF lumber pool flats - these would
3. General Service flats - this would cover the rest of the loads moving on flat cars from around the country. This pool would also use some ATSF and SP flats as well. I will list a few models that are available to bolster our fleet of foreign road flat cars.
Red Caboose made the signature 1946-1950's SP 53ft flat car, the F-70-7. Espee Models bought the tooling and has produced several short runs of these cars since then. The models are also correct if painted for the earlier class F-70-6, and with some modifications for the smaller class of F-70-5. The SP Lumber train pool for the railroad could use between 100-150 cars. Currently we have about 50-60 of these cars between the membership being built. There would be room eventually in the pool for maybe another 20-30 of these cars.
I suggest that the club try to keep the F-70-5 class open for our "Heritage" fleet of stand-in models from Athearn and other incorrect 50ft fishbelly flat cars.
Before the SP upgraded to 53ft cars as their standard flat cars after WW2, the SP's standard flat cars were the 4500 car strong fleet of F-50-series flatcars. These cars served in all types of service, from lumber to sugar beet rack flats to low-sided gondolas with sideboards.
OwlMtModels F-50-series flat car was released in Sept 2017. A proportional fleet of 100-150 cars for the club's SP flats would call for about 40-45 of these cars.
Another 10-20 or so more in MOW service hauling supplies from Sacramento General Shops or Los Angeles General Shops across the division or to Bakersfield's shops area.
PRR X29B
The X29B was a rebuilt X29 which received a new body above the frame that resembled a 1937 AAR designed body, however these cars can be recognized by the narrower frame of the original X29 visible under the wider rebuilt body.
About 1/3 of the PRR X29 fleet was rebuilt by 1950 to X29B standards. As of early 2017, we could use 10-15 of these cars. Unfortunately at this time correct X29B models are only available in resin, or would require kitbashing, which I have some ideas for, but haven't done yet.
NYC "1923 Proposed ARA Standard" Boxcar
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| NYC 111869 is a Rebuilt-USRA boxcar from BLI |
BLI has made very nice models of these cars with two different ends. The NYC built these cars during the same time that the PRR was building the X29s, and they had about the same number as the X29s. For LMRC purposes, we should have about equal numbers of the NYC USRA Rebuilt cars and PRR X29s.
As of early 2017, we could use 25 or so more of this one series of NYC car!
B&O "Wagon Tops"
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| Fox Valley M-53 class "Wagon Top" boxcar. |
The B&O also built their own unique design of boxcar, using one sheet of metal for the roof and curving down to also form the sides of the car. Ribs formed the joints between each panel of the roof/side.
Fox Valley and Exact Rail have made these models in HO scale. The Fox Valley cars are about 12" too short in length, but look very nice and have been easier to acquire. In Early 2017, we have about three of these in freight service, and several more in the express passenger service. We could probably use 5-8 more of these cars in the brown freight scheme.
USRA Rebuilds
Another interesting car is the Rebuilt USRA boxcars of the late 1920s.
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| PRR Received a large number of X26s (WWI USRA cars) and had them rebuilt during the 1920s and 1930s as fully steel bodied cars. |
Sadly, I've learned that many railroads that rebuilt USRA cars went with a wider 1937 AAR style body built on the top of the narrower frame. So the Atlas model is completely incorrect for PRR X26C. I'm not sure if NKP used this type of rebuild or if Atlas car is completely a fobbie. F&C does make a correct PRR X26 and sub varients.
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| This NKP example is the second of this type of car that I decided to pick up. |
These are just two of the schemes that Atlas released for this new body style. I've not started weathering either of these cars yet.
WWII Emergency Boxcars
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| ATSF 129872, a very nice Santa Fe WWII Emergency Boxcar by Intermountain. |
Several railroads were assigned boxcars built under the AAR's "Emergency Production" during WWII. Santa Fe, among others, received cars of this type. Many would later have their wood sides replaced with steel sheeting. - Again I've not started weathering this model yet.
SP Steel 40ft Boxcars
Boxcars were still used for shipping bulk products, which after about 1955-1960 moved to specialized cars, such as covered hoppers. The SP would have provided the boxcars if there were not enough covered hoppers available in Mojave to send to Monolith Trona on a given day.
This increases our needs for boxcars by about 40-60 cars, to keep 15-30 cars to keep sufficient cars on hand to protect these loadings at any one time. Mojave also needs to supply the boxcars for the Owenyo Branch loadings of minerals and Talc from the narrow gauge and other industries. The same applies to Bakersfield's needs to protect the canned goods service.
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| One of the 300 Specially Printed "Return to Agent Bakersfield, Calif" cars made for LMRC about 20 years ago |
We seem to have a lot of ATSF 40ft boxcars in the pool and only about 1/3 as many SP boxcars. Red Caboose-Intermountain makes very nice B-50-20.
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| Branchline SP 82992 with replaced "SOUTHERN PACIFIC" lettering decals from Speedwitch |
Branchline Yardmaster (now Atlas) made nice 40ft 1937 AAR steel cars for a variaty of RR's, SP and ATSF being two that we could use. They were inexpensive and nicely detailed. Much easier to finish than older MDC or Athearn models.
The SP also resheathed the earlier wood boxcars of B-50-15/16, currently there's no model available to model these cars. Hopefully soon one will become available.
SP Wood 40ft Boxcars
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| All early double sheathed cars, like this B-50-6, were retired from revenue service after WW2. |
The SP got rid of basically all of its double sheathed wood boxcars just after WW2.
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| Accurail's 40ft single sheathed car, with steel ends and wood doors, standing in for B-50-13/14 class cars. |
The remaining wood cars of classes B-50-13/14 can be modeled fairly well in plastic with the Tichy or Accurail boxcar models.
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| PE 2707 is one of the few cars still in PE lettering after 1951. |
Pacific Electric did have some B-50-13/14s, but they were being reabsorbed into the SP's numbering system after 1951, so these cars would have been repainted during shoppings with their new SP numbers.
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| Sunshine's resin car side for the wood-side version. |
The B-50-15/16s unfortunately have only been available in brass or resin, and currently are out of production as of early 2017.
Fowler Boxcars
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| My painted-unlettered Accurail starting point for a CN 'grain service' Fowler boxcar. |
Many railroads bought "Fowler" boxcars during the 1910-1920s and kept them around for years, often these were short 36ft cars, which combined with their unique sidesill design made them stand out in consists. Erie and Southern were a couple of railroads that had large numbers of them. Enough to justify 3-4 of them in the LMRC fleet. They are available as resin kits and some 'stand-in' suitable cars now (2018) by Accurail. Currently the 1950's fleet has none of these cars.
Northwest Boxcars
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| NP Standard boxcar by Rapido - Note the Lumber Door in the A-end of the car! |
One of the interesting cars we could use more of (probably 10-15 cars) would be a mix of NP and UP boxcars for use in rough paper card-stock shipments to cardboard manufacturers near Los Angeles. This traffic would move on OCM over Tehachapi.
Covered Hoppers "LO"
SP H-70-Series
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| SP 90612, one of the Kato 3-pack covered hoppers finished with weathering for cement service. |
SP started building covered hoppers for specialized services, such as cement service, in 1947. By 1952 they had not yet started receiving the PS-2 cars from Pullman Standard. All of SP's classes before the PS-2s had eight square hatches and either solid or open side sheets between the hoppers.
SP also bought cars for the T&NO lines, but I doubt these would show up very much as the cars were in captive service between regular customers most of the time. Cement was also rather perishable, and was usually only shipped a few hundred miles by rail.
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| Bowser H-70-series model, unbuilt. |
Kato and Bowser both make very fine models of these cars which are not as expensive as the Kadee models. Intermountain has also produced this type of car. We could probably use another 40-50 covered hoppers for cement and potash service in the 1950's era freight pool.
North American Chemical Corp.
The operation at Trona was owned by the North American Chemical Corp during the early 1950s. As such they leased cars from NAHX lettered for American Potash & Chemical Corp.
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| HO models available by Intermountain |
Here's a link to some NAHX 30000-series 2-bay Covered Hopper cars that Intermountain produced at one time. The LMRC fleet could probably use about 20 of these cars, for movements out of Trona.
Flat Cars
Currently the club's requirements of flatcars can be broken down into three categories:
1. SP lumber pool flats - these will mostly be used to replicate the heavy lumber trains moving from Northern CA to Southern CA over Tehachapi both on SP and some on ATSF trains off the NWP or to points on ATSF's Southern CA destinations.
2. ATSF lumber pool flats - these would
3. General Service flats - this would cover the rest of the loads moving on flat cars from around the country. This pool would also use some ATSF and SP flats as well. I will list a few models that are available to bolster our fleet of foreign road flat cars.
SP F-70-6/7 - Post-War Flats
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| SP 140579, F-70-7 from Espee Models (ex-Red Caboose) |
Red Caboose made the signature 1946-1950's SP 53ft flat car, the F-70-7. Espee Models bought the tooling and has produced several short runs of these cars since then. The models are also correct if painted for the earlier class F-70-6, and with some modifications for the smaller class of F-70-5. The SP Lumber train pool for the railroad could use between 100-150 cars. Currently we have about 50-60 of these cars between the membership being built. There would be room eventually in the pool for maybe another 20-30 of these cars.
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| The F-70-6/7s helped in the massive post-war building spree in Southern California, here with an OwlMtModels load. |
I suggest that the club try to keep the F-70-5 class open for our "Heritage" fleet of stand-in models from Athearn and other incorrect 50ft fishbelly flat cars.
SP F-50-Series - 1910-1928 Flats
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| OwlMtModels' F-50-5 painted for one of 50 NWP F-50-5 class cars with T-section trucks. (OMM#2002) |
Before the SP upgraded to 53ft cars as their standard flat cars after WW2, the SP's standard flat cars were the 4500 car strong fleet of F-50-series flatcars. These cars served in all types of service, from lumber to sugar beet rack flats to low-sided gondolas with sideboards.
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| SP 43216, an F-50-12 class car (OMM#2003) finished for service at LMRC. |
OwlMtModels F-50-series flat car was released in Sept 2017. A proportional fleet of 100-150 cars for the club's SP flats would call for about 40-45 of these cars.
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| SPMW 1413 is an example of a F-50-5 assigned to "Supply" service out of LAGS or SGS. |
Another 10-20 or so more in MOW service hauling supplies from Sacramento General Shops or Los Angeles General Shops across the division or to Bakersfield's shops area.
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| In-process concept model of SPMW 1413 being fitted with the 36" sideboards. |
Many of the cars in supply service were fitted with side-boards for carrying supplies and materials.
A couple more F-50-series flats can be used at LMRC in Track & Maintenance service.
The Santa Fe had several classes of flat cars that we can model. Resin models have been produced of the 46ft flat cars they had. Walthers and Intermountain have produced the GSC standard designs which were among the newest classes of 53ft flat cars being bought by the Santa Fe during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Westerfield makes this class in resin, but I'm pretty happy with the inexpensive Walthers 46ft gondola to represent the 22,000 or so 46ft gondolas that the PRR owned. We could easily use 15-20 or so more of these models. Decals are available from Speedwitch for members that want to buy cars with an incorrect scheme and repaint them.
PRR bought about 22,000 52ft gondolas by the 1950s, one model that we can get that numbered alone over 13000 cars is the Tangent's ACF Welded 52ft gondolas.
Prototype Roster of Tank Car Ownerships by fleet size for 1950.
The Union Tank Car Lines had the largest fleet of tank cars in the US during the 1950s. While they did acquire smaller oil companies that owned cars built by General American (GA) and American Car & Foundry (ACF), most of their vast fleet used the cars of their own design designated "X-3". These cars came in four main sizes; 6,500 gal, 8,000 gal (short), 8,000 gal (long), and 10,000 gal. The shorter framed cars were fitted with the 6.5k and short 8k tanks, and the long framed cars with the long 8k and 10k tanks.
The 6,500 gallon cars were VERY small compared to the average Athearn, Tyco, Mantua, etc cars that are models of 10,000 to 12,500 gallon cars!
During the 1940s and early 1950s most tank cars were 8,000 gallons or less. This means that we should have most of our fleet of tank cars being the P2k or Intermountain 8k gallon cars, or smaller.
There are now X-3's available in resin, but they're also $40-50 per car.
The UTLX 8302 shown above is a kitbash I started in the late-2000s with Tichy Underframe and an old MDC "olde time" tank with a new 54" Tichy dome added. Archer Rivets were added on top of a new splice plate down the top of the tank to simulate the later "Linear" type of tank these cars had.
We could probably use 10-40 more 6,500 gallon tank car models as we do not have any in service as of early 2017. Most of our tank car fleet is made from P2k 8k gallon cars or 10k gallon cars. As you'll see below, the SP and ATSF used cars between 10-12.5k gallons!
Atlas in the early to mid-2000s made their 11,000 Gallon tank car painted for CDLX (California Dispatch Lines), these cars are seen in many photos being sent out to the Taft and Buttonwillow Branches in groups of 3-8 cars.
Currently in early 2017 we have only two of these cars in service. They're a good car to keep an eye out for on-line or in LHS. We could probably use 10-20 of these cars to keep 4-5 cars in regular daily service out of Bakersfield.
SHPX also leased LPG tankcars to other companies, such as Warren - based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These cars would move west on Santa Fe's GCF symbol freights to Barstow, and from there to various points in California.
The USAX (US Army) and USQX (Quartermaster's Corps) owned a number of specialized tankcars for transporting strategic and consumables to and from various places in the US. One that we could see on Tehachapi is the movement of Anhydrous Ammonia to China Lake for use in mixing rocket fuels during the development of early air-to-air missiles. This fuel could also been seen being transported to Muroc AFB for use on the X-planes which often used rocket engines for the 'manned missiles' used in high speed experimental flights over the desert. Atlas and IMRC have produced these military transport tank cars in HO scale.
The other car we see from time to time on Tehachapi is the USAX tankcars transporting JP-4 and AvGas for use on the experimental aircraft at Muroc AFB - what will later become Edwards AFB.
The operations on the branchlines out of Mojave will prototypically need about 60 SP tank cars to provide the correct daily schedule from the Consolidated Pipeline's loading facility at Mojave. The two easiest kitbashes for making 98% accurate stand-ins for the SP's vast fleet of tank cars are covered briefly below.
The basic Athearn model with a dome doubled in height by Tony Thompson's method, or replacing with a Tichy 60" dome will work well for the last class of 200 cars SP bought and assigned class O-50-12.
Athearn's basic single and triple dome tank cars can be kitbashed into correct models for the four or five classes of SP 12.5k gallon tank cars. These earlier cars used "Radial" courses of sheet steel for the upper parts of the tank, where as later cars used two "Linear" sheets of steel running down the top left and right sides of the tank, with a rivet row down the top of the tank. I've kitbashed several of these older cars, and plan to do quite a few more.
The Santa Fe every other day would send a train of about 40 of their company fuel-oil cars to Mojave's Consolidated Fuel Pipeline facility to load Bunker-C for all their Western Division engines that burned oil. This train would come in from Barstow, get lunch and spot their empty cars for loading. The crew would then pick up the loaded cars and head back to Barstow.
We can simulate this service with about 20 cars, which will fill up one whole track at the Consolidated Fuel facility and by having the crew "go to lunch" and pick up the same string of cars to take back to East Staging, we'll save on building any more cars than we absolutely need to. It should also be noted that these cars will not need to be super accurate for ATSF's common "bent framed" tank car fleet, models of which are only available in brass.
So as this traffic will be running about 90% of it's run in staging, low-end Life-Like, Mantua, etc tank cars painted originally for V-8, etc will be repainted and decalled for ATSF. If we have a few Athearn 12K gallon cars mixed in that would be great. Basically, we're looking to use any members old "junky" tank car models for this service. I figure a $3-5 swapmeet car and $5 for trucks and couplers, etc. we should be able to build some very affordable cars for the fleet.
Union Tank Car Lines leased cars to many other companies, some of which are listed below. Union Tank Car Lines was the supplier of cars to "Standard Oil" across the country once they decided not to try to own their own fleet of tank cars.
Has a plant at Giant, along the SF Bay, north of Oakland. Served by SP via freight symbols AW and AE from Bakersfield. Tangent has produced a GATX 1917 design tankcar painted for Hercules Powder. Proto2000/Walthers many years ago also produced an ACF Type-21 8k gal. model for Hercules Powder. Both models are accurate and useful at LMRC.
SHPX leased tank cars to a number of companies for chemical and food product shipments. Some cars may be "billboarded" for who they are being leased to.
The General American Tank leasing pool mostly consisted of plain black tankcars with white lettering. While many GATX cars were built by General American Tank Car Company, some were acquired second hand when GATX took over operations of other companies and absorbed their tank car fleets into the GAT fleet. In such cases other car builder's cars would comprise a percentage of the lease fleet. Proto2000/Walthers has produced their 8 and 10k gallon Type-21 models in GATX paint schemes.
GATX leased tank cars to a number of companies for chemical and food product shipments. Some cars may be "billboarded" for who they are being leased to. Among GATX's leased cars were a large number of 'wine cars' in assigned service moving wine (grape juice) stock to eastern wine companies to blend with locally grown grape stock for unique tastes.
General American Tank Car Corp also operated a fleet of 3-compartment cars in specialized service. These cars were used where the lading had to be kept separate due to shipping different commodities or smaller lots to avoid contamination.
One of the large uses was in paint and chemical product movements, but also in the distribution of petro-chemicals in smaller than full tank car batches. The latter use is how most of these tank cars will be seen on the Tehachapi Pass.
The smaller oil distributors will be getting smaller batches of fuels in these cars, as will Pennzoil shipping lubricants to Bakersfield for the oil fields. These cars will be routed in various cycles, eventually in cycles that will probably be over a dozen paths before repeating to generate cars that only show up a couple times a month at each location to simulate the lower volume of traffic arriving at those industries. Unmarked black cars will be used for this cycle, so it's not obvious that each model's not in an exact cycle, as we'll be reusing the model faster than a real car could go from Texas to Richmond for example.
Harbor Tank Car Lines is based out of Los Angeles and ships over Tehachapi in lease service. Proto2000 has produced HTCX Type-21 8k gal cars,
Intermountain has produced Type-27 8k gal cars as well.
Richfield is based out of Thenard, California, near Los Angeles. Red Caboose has produced a Type-27 10k gal tank car model of Richfield Oil cars.
Union Oil of California ships gasoline and other petroleum products out of Orange County, Calif. in their fleet of UOCX tankcars. The Tehachapi Sub has many local distributors of Union Oil of Calif. petroleum products which include those located at Bakersfield, Taft, Tehachapi, and Mojave.
Proto2000 has produced Type-21 8k gal cars for Union Oil of California.
These cars are the Petroleum and Gasoline distribution cars, suitable for shipments to local distributors at Bakersfield and other towns in the San Joaquin Valley, Mojave-Lancaster, and on the Jawbone Branch.
Proto2000 has produced models for SCCX Type-21 8k gal cars. Shell Oil was based out of Long Beach, Calif. near Los Angeles.
These cars are for chemical shipments by and for the Shell Chemical Corp, a separate division of Shell Oil. These generally will be over-head movements between the LA and SF Bay Areas, with possibly an occasional shipment going to the Oil City Branch.
Intermountain has produced models for SCMX 900-series Type-27 8k gal cars.
The Associated Oil Company was set up by the SP and received the transfer of all the SP's oil lands around Bakersfield. These cars should be showing up on the Oil City branch and around Bakersfield in large numbers. Unfortunately only a few models of AOX reporting marks have been made over the years. Many of the AOX cars were originally SP designed O-50-2 class tankcars, which have never been produced in HO.
Associated Oil is based out of LA, Long Beach, and Bakersfield.
The Associated Oil branding was the "Flying A" brand, which is modeled nicely on the TWOX reporting marks models by Proto2000. However relettering of those models will be required to replicate stand-in AOX models. I believe that many of the AOX cars were not the ACF Type-21s that have been produced with TWOX reporting marks.
Tony Thompson has made several nice AOX tankcar models from various manufactures and decalling them with after-market lettering sets. Remember however to use LMRC standard weighting practice on your tankcars. Keep the weight as low as possible in the car, underframe and bottom of tank. No nuts glued in the tank!
The majority of "Tidewater Oil" cars that also show "Flying A" that have been produced are the models with TWOX reporting marks, which are not home-based in the Western US, but instead based out of the New Jersey based subsidiary. Although while "Associated Oil" and "Tidewarer Oil" were combined under the same "brand" they were operated as separate oil companies per anti-trust laws which split up the larger oil companies by region.
By 1936, the separate operations seem to have been combined under the TWOX reporting marks predominately by the mid-late 1950s according to Tony Thompson's blog post on Associated Oil.
By 1950, a growing number of TWOX reporting mark tank cars would be used nation-wide, as the consolidation of reporting marks was well underway by then, so we can probably use the TWOX reporting marks without too much issue. A few more AOX cars would be nice if we could get them. I know of at least two in possession by members at this time.
The Stauffer Chemical Corp acid tank car traffic is based out of Richmond, Calif. which ships as the primary supplier for sulfuric acid used in the chemical processing of minerals at Trona and West End on the "Jawbone" Branch out of Mojave, Calif.
The DOW Chemical Corp ships hydrochloric acid out of Texas in their leased fleet of acid cars. These cars dominantly will show up on the Santa Fe's GCF-symbol freights and also on TMW on the SP for connection to AW at Bakersfield.
General American Tank Corp also owned a number of unmarked 'black' acid tank cars which were used in short term lease to smaller shippers and to 'protect' their fleet of 'billboarded' tank cars used in assigned service to the larger customers shipping in the cars. The result is these unmarked acid cars could move in almost any routing across Tehachapi, or covering additional traffic in the services listed above.
--- There are many other tank car operators and leasers that I should cover, and will update as I have time.
The LMRC 1950's freight car fleet could use a few hundred more PFE reefers in it. The PFE reefers will be used at the new packing sheds at Edison or Arvin, as well as various loading points in Bakersfield and west of Bakersfield. Edison will have about 80 car spots, and Arvin already has about 85 car spots, plus the 10 or so dual service team track spots.
I plan to do more research in this area into what other cars and classes we need, and in what proportions they should be.
This is the kit that Red Caboose made many years ago, unfortunately most of the R-30-9 was rebuilt by the early 1950s into the later classes, such as R-30-18, or even later classes.
The Tichy kit is a very well detailed model, first produced over 30 years ago, it still holds up well in the current market with good paint and decals applied to the undecorated model.
The Tichy R-40-2/4 can be kitbashed to create some of the other intermediate classes of PFE reefer that were common during the early 1950s. Unfortunately, Terry Wegmann's passed away and I need to track down if the parts he made to convert the Tichy kit still exist.
Intermountain's first PFE reefer model, which was also one of the largest classes of PFE reefer in the early 1950s.
Accurail has produced a R-40-26 model, which is fairly accurate, some minor painting and lettering revisions are needed.
This class of car was brand new during 1952, so while we can use some of these cars, they only made up a small part of the PFE fleet.
The SFRD needs of the LMRC's 1950's era fleet is about the same as our needs in terms of PFE, we could easily use another 200-300 SFRD reefers. Our SFRD operations will need cars for Arvin or Edison, plus the locals working west of Bakersfield. The Arvin and Edison branches prototypically alternated operation between the SP and ATSF using PFE and SFRD cars. Once we put the Edison sheds into service we'll address at some point the options of how often we might want to have the sheds switch off which RR serves them.
The SFRD fleet were classified under RR-series classes. I need to do more research into these classes. I do know that SFRD was also building new plug-door 40ft reefers, as was PFE.
The 50ft SFRD cars were assigned to special loading of frozen orange juice and other super-chilled loads which we don't have on the Arvin branch. Therefore, these 50ft reefers should not be sent to Arvin - EVER!
One area in which we need to do a lot more researching is in correlating the data of bunker capacity from the ORERs and the SFRD 1954 ICC Report which states what reefers were suitable for higher class loading than potatoes. Basically the lower capacity bunker cars, with thinner insulation would be primarily used for potato loading.
Currently our fleet is only defined between 40ft cars and 50ft cars, in the future it would nice to at least survey the fleet to see which number series cars are these "thinner" insulation cars. Once we do this research, we can then start to properly assign the suitable cars to certain divisions.
I'll briefly put down some of the car types and RR's that we are in good shape on. Eventually I'll move this to a separate page.
The SP's fleet of 1000 USRA boxcars, classified as B-50-12, were retired or the best 650 cars were completely rebuilt in 1949 to B-50-12A.
Given that most of this class were retired or completely rebuilt as all-steel boxcars with new upper bodies, no more of these cars are really needed in the LMRC fleet. We'll have a couple which have been donated for our 'pre-1949' representational fleet.
Jason Hill is building a model of the only B-50-12s that was still in MW service in 1956 as a supply car.
The PRR owned 2600 G26-series cars, that's more than all of the composite "beet" & "chip" gondolas that the SP owned, all in one class number for the PRR! Currently we have about 5-6 G26's in the club pool, which should keep us covered.
The SP continued the 1949 built F-70-7 class with the all-welded F-70-10 in late-1953 and into 1954. These cars were also different in that they had exposed bolster and draft gear cover plates which made them stand out when viewed from above. Several club members have bought a few of the as-delivered 142K series. Unless you're specifically wanting to model after 1953 with SD9s, etc, I would suggest staying with the earlier riveted cars of F-70-6/7.
The PRR had about 1600 50ft F30A cast flatcars, we currently have about 9 or 10 of these in service, which is more than enough.
I'll be updating this page from time to time as new models come on the market and the numbers and types of cars needed at LMRC changes.
Jason Hill
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| SPMW 3605, converted to MW service in 1944 and assigned to "T&M" Dept. seen here at Bakersfield, near the Store House. |
A couple more F-50-series flats can be used at LMRC in Track & Maintenance service.
ATSF Flats
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| ATSF 93604, Ft-3 class, I believe IMRC or ExactRail models with OwlMtModels 3001 Lumber Load. Vic Yoder model and photo. |
The Santa Fe had several classes of flat cars that we can model. Resin models have been produced of the 46ft flat cars they had. Walthers and Intermountain have produced the GSC standard designs which were among the newest classes of 53ft flat cars being bought by the Santa Fe during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Gondolas
PRR G25
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| PRR 317083, from Walthers weathered and chalk marked. |
Westerfield makes this class in resin, but I'm pretty happy with the inexpensive Walthers 46ft gondola to represent the 22,000 or so 46ft gondolas that the PRR owned. We could easily use 15-20 or so more of these models. Decals are available from Speedwitch for members that want to buy cars with an incorrect scheme and repaint them.
PRR G31B
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| PRR 373417, G31B gondola by Tangent in as-built lettering |
PRR bought about 22,000 52ft gondolas by the 1950s, one model that we can get that numbered alone over 13000 cars is the Tangent's ACF Welded 52ft gondolas.
Tank Cars
Prototype Roster of Tank Car Ownerships by fleet size for 1950.
UTLX X-3
The Union Tank Car Lines had the largest fleet of tank cars in the US during the 1950s. While they did acquire smaller oil companies that owned cars built by General American (GA) and American Car & Foundry (ACF), most of their vast fleet used the cars of their own design designated "X-3". These cars came in four main sizes; 6,500 gal, 8,000 gal (short), 8,000 gal (long), and 10,000 gal. The shorter framed cars were fitted with the 6.5k and short 8k tanks, and the long framed cars with the long 8k and 10k tanks.
The 6,500 gallon cars were VERY small compared to the average Athearn, Tyco, Mantua, etc cars that are models of 10,000 to 12,500 gallon cars!
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| UTLX 6,500 gallon cars were much more common than we think. |
During the 1940s and early 1950s most tank cars were 8,000 gallons or less. This means that we should have most of our fleet of tank cars being the P2k or Intermountain 8k gallon cars, or smaller.
There are now X-3's available in resin, but they're also $40-50 per car.
The UTLX 8302 shown above is a kitbash I started in the late-2000s with Tichy Underframe and an old MDC "olde time" tank with a new 54" Tichy dome added. Archer Rivets were added on top of a new splice plate down the top of the tank to simulate the later "Linear" type of tank these cars had.
We could probably use 10-40 more 6,500 gallon tank car models as we do not have any in service as of early 2017. Most of our tank car fleet is made from P2k 8k gallon cars or 10k gallon cars. As you'll see below, the SP and ATSF used cars between 10-12.5k gallons!
CDLX 11K Gal LPG Tanks
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| California Dispatch Lines LPG tank cars |
Atlas in the early to mid-2000s made their 11,000 Gallon tank car painted for CDLX (California Dispatch Lines), these cars are seen in many photos being sent out to the Taft and Buttonwillow Branches in groups of 3-8 cars.
Currently in early 2017 we have only two of these cars in service. They're a good car to keep an eye out for on-line or in LHS. We could probably use 10-20 of these cars to keep 4-5 cars in regular daily service out of Bakersfield.
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| Warren Petroleum Corp leased LPG tank car from Shippers Car Lines. |
SHPX also leased LPG tankcars to other companies, such as Warren - based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These cars would move west on Santa Fe's GCF symbol freights to Barstow, and from there to various points in California.
USAX tankcars
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| Atlas' 11k gallon ICC-105A300W type tank car used in Anhydrous Ammonia service. |
The USAX (US Army) and USQX (Quartermaster's Corps) owned a number of specialized tankcars for transporting strategic and consumables to and from various places in the US. One that we could see on Tehachapi is the movement of Anhydrous Ammonia to China Lake for use in mixing rocket fuels during the development of early air-to-air missiles. This fuel could also been seen being transported to Muroc AFB for use on the X-planes which often used rocket engines for the 'manned missiles' used in high speed experimental flights over the desert. Atlas and IMRC have produced these military transport tank cars in HO scale.
The other car we see from time to time on Tehachapi is the USAX tankcars transporting JP-4 and AvGas for use on the experimental aircraft at Muroc AFB - what will later become Edwards AFB.
SP 12.5K Gal "TM" Tanks
The operations on the branchlines out of Mojave will prototypically need about 60 SP tank cars to provide the correct daily schedule from the Consolidated Pipeline's loading facility at Mojave. The two easiest kitbashes for making 98% accurate stand-ins for the SP's vast fleet of tank cars are covered briefly below.
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| SP O-50-12 class tank with "Diamond S" logo indicating the car's fitted for liquid sugar loading at Crockett, CA. |
The basic Athearn model with a dome doubled in height by Tony Thompson's method, or replacing with a Tichy 60" dome will work well for the last class of 200 cars SP bought and assigned class O-50-12.
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| SP O-50-10 and -11 tank cars also starting from an Athearn model. |
Athearn's basic single and triple dome tank cars can be kitbashed into correct models for the four or five classes of SP 12.5k gallon tank cars. These earlier cars used "Radial" courses of sheet steel for the upper parts of the tank, where as later cars used two "Linear" sheets of steel running down the top left and right sides of the tank, with a rivet row down the top of the tank. I've kitbashed several of these older cars, and plan to do quite a few more.
ATSF Fuel-Oil Tanks
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| ATSF did own cars like the basic Athearn model. |
The Santa Fe every other day would send a train of about 40 of their company fuel-oil cars to Mojave's Consolidated Fuel Pipeline facility to load Bunker-C for all their Western Division engines that burned oil. This train would come in from Barstow, get lunch and spot their empty cars for loading. The crew would then pick up the loaded cars and head back to Barstow.
We can simulate this service with about 20 cars, which will fill up one whole track at the Consolidated Fuel facility and by having the crew "go to lunch" and pick up the same string of cars to take back to East Staging, we'll save on building any more cars than we absolutely need to. It should also be noted that these cars will not need to be super accurate for ATSF's common "bent framed" tank car fleet, models of which are only available in brass.
So as this traffic will be running about 90% of it's run in staging, low-end Life-Like, Mantua, etc tank cars painted originally for V-8, etc will be repainted and decalled for ATSF. If we have a few Athearn 12K gallon cars mixed in that would be great. Basically, we're looking to use any members old "junky" tank car models for this service. I figure a $3-5 swapmeet car and $5 for trucks and couplers, etc. we should be able to build some very affordable cars for the fleet.
Other Private Tankcars
UTLX - Lease
Union Tank Car Lines leased cars to many other companies, some of which are listed below. Union Tank Car Lines was the supplier of cars to "Standard Oil" across the country once they decided not to try to own their own fleet of tank cars.
- Hercules Powder Co.
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| Tangent's 1917 GA Tank model painted for UTLX's Hercules Powder Co lease service |
Has a plant at Giant, along the SF Bay, north of Oakland. Served by SP via freight symbols AW and AE from Bakersfield. Tangent has produced a GATX 1917 design tankcar painted for Hercules Powder. Proto2000/Walthers many years ago also produced an ACF Type-21 8k gal. model for Hercules Powder. Both models are accurate and useful at LMRC.
SHPX - Lease
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| SHPX 8783 in service at LMRC P2k Type-21 8k tankcar. |
SHPX leased tank cars to a number of companies for chemical and food product shipments. Some cars may be "billboarded" for who they are being leased to.
GATX - Lease General Service
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| ACF built Type-21 10k gallon tank car is one of the unusual cars in the GATX fleet. - P2k 10k model shown |
The General American Tank leasing pool mostly consisted of plain black tankcars with white lettering. While many GATX cars were built by General American Tank Car Company, some were acquired second hand when GATX took over operations of other companies and absorbed their tank car fleets into the GAT fleet. In such cases other car builder's cars would comprise a percentage of the lease fleet. Proto2000/Walthers has produced their 8 and 10k gallon Type-21 models in GATX paint schemes.
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| Roma Wine leased from GATX for Calif-Eastern US service. |
GATX leased tank cars to a number of companies for chemical and food product shipments. Some cars may be "billboarded" for who they are being leased to. Among GATX's leased cars were a large number of 'wine cars' in assigned service moving wine (grape juice) stock to eastern wine companies to blend with locally grown grape stock for unique tastes.
3-Compartment GATX Tankcars
General American Tank Car Corp also operated a fleet of 3-compartment cars in specialized service. These cars were used where the lading had to be kept separate due to shipping different commodities or smaller lots to avoid contamination.
One of the large uses was in paint and chemical product movements, but also in the distribution of petro-chemicals in smaller than full tank car batches. The latter use is how most of these tank cars will be seen on the Tehachapi Pass.
The smaller oil distributors will be getting smaller batches of fuels in these cars, as will Pennzoil shipping lubricants to Bakersfield for the oil fields. These cars will be routed in various cycles, eventually in cycles that will probably be over a dozen paths before repeating to generate cars that only show up a couple times a month at each location to simulate the lower volume of traffic arriving at those industries. Unmarked black cars will be used for this cycle, so it's not obvious that each model's not in an exact cycle, as we'll be reusing the model faster than a real car could go from Texas to Richmond for example.
HTCX - Harbor Tank Car Line
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| HTCX 1621 in service at LMRC starting from a P2k Type-21 8k car. |
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| HTCX 1746 being renumbered to avoid duplication of numbers at LMRC. P2k Type-21 ACF tankcar |
Harbor Tank Car Lines is based out of Los Angeles and ships over Tehachapi in lease service. Proto2000 has produced HTCX Type-21 8k gal cars,
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| HTCX 1739, a heavily weathered IMRC Type 27 ACF Tankcar. |
Intermountain has produced Type-27 8k gal cars as well.
ROX - Richfield Oil Company
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| Red Caboose (IMRC assembled) Richfield 10k gal tankcar. |
Richfield is based out of Thenard, California, near Los Angeles. Red Caboose has produced a Type-27 10k gal tank car model of Richfield Oil cars.
UOCX - Union Oil California
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| One of the P2K 8k gallon Type-21 Union Oil Co tankcars after 10 years of abuse in service at LMRC. - Ouch |
Union Oil of California ships gasoline and other petroleum products out of Orange County, Calif. in their fleet of UOCX tankcars. The Tehachapi Sub has many local distributors of Union Oil of Calif. petroleum products which include those located at Bakersfield, Taft, Tehachapi, and Mojave.
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| Union Oil's plain silver lettering scheme shown on P2k 8k Type-21 ACF tankcar body. |
Proto2000 has produced Type-21 8k gal cars for Union Oil of California.
SCCX - Shell Oil
These cars are the Petroleum and Gasoline distribution cars, suitable for shipments to local distributors at Bakersfield and other towns in the San Joaquin Valley, Mojave-Lancaster, and on the Jawbone Branch.
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| Shell Oil's SCCX reporting mark car with Shell herald, P2k 8k gal Type-21 ACF Tankcar. |
Proto2000 has produced models for SCCX Type-21 8k gal cars. Shell Oil was based out of Long Beach, Calif. near Los Angeles.
SCMX - Shell Chemical
These cars are for chemical shipments by and for the Shell Chemical Corp, a separate division of Shell Oil. These generally will be over-head movements between the LA and SF Bay Areas, with possibly an occasional shipment going to the Oil City Branch.
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| IMRC's 8k ACF Type-27 tankcar body painted and lettered for Shell Chem Co. (SCMX) |
Intermountain has produced models for SCMX 900-series Type-27 8k gal cars.
GWEX - DOW Chemical (Western Div)
The Great Western Chemical was a division of DOW Chemical Corp, which handled the western US movements of DOW Chemical's industrial chemical needs. These car should be much more common than the DOWX reporting marks of the "Eastern Division". I don't believe any GWEX reporting mark models have been produced, so relettering appropriate DOWX models is required per ORER information.
DOWX - DOW Chemical (Eastern Division)
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| DOWX 38321 being renumbered and possibly changed to new GWEX reporting marks for Western Division assignment. |
These are the Eastern Division, not as likely to be seen on the west coast unless transporting some materials cross-country which is not available locally within the Western Division.
AOX - Associated Oil Company (Western Division)
The Associated Oil Company was set up by the SP and received the transfer of all the SP's oil lands around Bakersfield. These cars should be showing up on the Oil City branch and around Bakersfield in large numbers. Unfortunately only a few models of AOX reporting marks have been made over the years. Many of the AOX cars were originally SP designed O-50-2 class tankcars, which have never been produced in HO.
Associated Oil is based out of LA, Long Beach, and Bakersfield.
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| This GATX leased car can be used to fill in some of the "Flying A Gasoline" shortage without AOX or TWOX reporting mark cars. (produced by Red Caboose) |
The Associated Oil branding was the "Flying A" brand, which is modeled nicely on the TWOX reporting marks models by Proto2000. However relettering of those models will be required to replicate stand-in AOX models. I believe that many of the AOX cars were not the ACF Type-21s that have been produced with TWOX reporting marks.
Tony Thompson has made several nice AOX tankcar models from various manufactures and decalling them with after-market lettering sets. Remember however to use LMRC standard weighting practice on your tankcars. Keep the weight as low as possible in the car, underframe and bottom of tank. No nuts glued in the tank!
TWOX - Associated Oil Company (Eastern Division, NJ)
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| TWOX 1139, a 10k gallon Type -21 tankcar by P2k |
The majority of "Tidewater Oil" cars that also show "Flying A" that have been produced are the models with TWOX reporting marks, which are not home-based in the Western US, but instead based out of the New Jersey based subsidiary. Although while "Associated Oil" and "Tidewarer Oil" were combined under the same "brand" they were operated as separate oil companies per anti-trust laws which split up the larger oil companies by region.
By 1936, the separate operations seem to have been combined under the TWOX reporting marks predominately by the mid-late 1950s according to Tony Thompson's blog post on Associated Oil.
By 1950, a growing number of TWOX reporting mark tank cars would be used nation-wide, as the consolidation of reporting marks was well underway by then, so we can probably use the TWOX reporting marks without too much issue. A few more AOX cars would be nice if we could get them. I know of at least two in possession by members at this time.
GATX - Acid Tankcars ICC-103BW
GATX - "Stauffer Chem"
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| Stauffer Chemical leased GATX 8k gallon Acid tankcar by Tangent Scale Models. |
The Stauffer Chemical Corp acid tank car traffic is based out of Richmond, Calif. which ships as the primary supplier for sulfuric acid used in the chemical processing of minerals at Trona and West End on the "Jawbone" Branch out of Mojave, Calif.
GATX - "DOW Chem"
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| DOW Chemical Co. leased Acid Tankcar from GATX by Tangent Scale Models |
The DOW Chemical Corp ships hydrochloric acid out of Texas in their leased fleet of acid cars. These cars dominantly will show up on the Santa Fe's GCF-symbol freights and also on TMW on the SP for connection to AW at Bakersfield.
GATX - "Lease Fleet"
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| GATX's standard all-black leasing scheme. - Tangent Scale Models 8k gallon acid tankcar |
General American Tank Corp also owned a number of unmarked 'black' acid tank cars which were used in short term lease to smaller shippers and to 'protect' their fleet of 'billboarded' tank cars used in assigned service to the larger customers shipping in the cars. The result is these unmarked acid cars could move in almost any routing across Tehachapi, or covering additional traffic in the services listed above.
--- There are many other tank car operators and leasers that I should cover, and will update as I have time.
Reefers - PFE
The LMRC 1950's freight car fleet could use a few hundred more PFE reefers in it. The PFE reefers will be used at the new packing sheds at Edison or Arvin, as well as various loading points in Bakersfield and west of Bakersfield. Edison will have about 80 car spots, and Arvin already has about 85 car spots, plus the 10 or so dual service team track spots.
I plan to do more research in this area into what other cars and classes we need, and in what proportions they should be.
R-30-9/18 - Wood rebuilt reefer
This is the kit that Red Caboose made many years ago, unfortunately most of the R-30-9 was rebuilt by the early 1950s into the later classes, such as R-30-18, or even later classes.
R-40-2/4 - Wood unrebuilt reefer
The Tichy kit is a very well detailed model, first produced over 30 years ago, it still holds up well in the current market with good paint and decals applied to the undecorated model.
R-40-10 - Steel Reefer
R-40-16 - Rebuilt wood reefer
The Tichy R-40-2/4 can be kitbashed to create some of the other intermediate classes of PFE reefer that were common during the early 1950s. Unfortunately, Terry Wegmann's passed away and I need to track down if the parts he made to convert the Tichy kit still exist.
R-40-23 - Steel Reefer
Intermountain's first PFE reefer model, which was also one of the largest classes of PFE reefer in the early 1950s.
R-40-26 - Steel Plug-door Reefer
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| PFE 9785, an Accurail R-40-26 |
Accurail has produced a R-40-26 model, which is fairly accurate, some minor painting and lettering revisions are needed.
This class of car was brand new during 1952, so while we can use some of these cars, they only made up a small part of the PFE fleet.
Reefers - SFRD
The SFRD needs of the LMRC's 1950's era fleet is about the same as our needs in terms of PFE, we could easily use another 200-300 SFRD reefers. Our SFRD operations will need cars for Arvin or Edison, plus the locals working west of Bakersfield. The Arvin and Edison branches prototypically alternated operation between the SP and ATSF using PFE and SFRD cars. Once we put the Edison sheds into service we'll address at some point the options of how often we might want to have the sheds switch off which RR serves them.
The SFRD fleet were classified under RR-series classes. I need to do more research into these classes. I do know that SFRD was also building new plug-door 40ft reefers, as was PFE.
The 50ft SFRD cars were assigned to special loading of frozen orange juice and other super-chilled loads which we don't have on the Arvin branch. Therefore, these 50ft reefers should not be sent to Arvin - EVER!
One area in which we need to do a lot more researching is in correlating the data of bunker capacity from the ORERs and the SFRD 1954 ICC Report which states what reefers were suitable for higher class loading than potatoes. Basically the lower capacity bunker cars, with thinner insulation would be primarily used for potato loading.
Currently our fleet is only defined between 40ft cars and 50ft cars, in the future it would nice to at least survey the fleet to see which number series cars are these "thinner" insulation cars. Once we do this research, we can then start to properly assign the suitable cars to certain divisions.
No More Cars Needed
I'll briefly put down some of the car types and RR's that we are in good shape on. Eventually I'll move this to a separate page.
Boxcars
SP B-50-12 (USRA unrebuilt boxcars)
The SP's fleet of 1000 USRA boxcars, classified as B-50-12, were retired or the best 650 cars were completely rebuilt in 1949 to B-50-12A.
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| SP 26948, B-50-12, assembled by IMRC using Tichy Train Group parts. |
Given that most of this class were retired or completely rebuilt as all-steel boxcars with new upper bodies, no more of these cars are really needed in the LMRC fleet. We'll have a couple which have been donated for our 'pre-1949' representational fleet.
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| SPMW 2676 - Supply Car built from Tichy USRA boxcar. |
Jason Hill is building a model of the only B-50-12s that was still in MW service in 1956 as a supply car.
Gondolas
PRR G26 & G26A Mill Gondola
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| PRR 440173 is one of the PRR's many "mill" gondolas with drop ends |
The PRR owned 2600 G26-series cars, that's more than all of the composite "beet" & "chip" gondolas that the SP owned, all in one class number for the PRR! Currently we have about 5-6 G26's in the club pool, which should keep us covered.
Flatcars
SP F-70-10 - Welded Flats
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| SP 142617, F-70-10 by Espee Models with as-built lettering. |
The SP continued the 1949 built F-70-7 class with the all-welded F-70-10 in late-1953 and into 1954. These cars were also different in that they had exposed bolster and draft gear cover plates which made them stand out when viewed from above. Several club members have bought a few of the as-delivered 142K series. Unless you're specifically wanting to model after 1953 with SD9s, etc, I would suggest staying with the earlier riveted cars of F-70-6/7.
PRR F30A 50ft Flat
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| Bowser's excellent F30A flatcar model |
The PRR had about 1600 50ft F30A cast flatcars, we currently have about 9 or 10 of these in service, which is more than enough.
In Closing
I'll be updating this page from time to time as new models come on the market and the numbers and types of cars needed at LMRC changes.
Jason Hill
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