About The Steam Era Freightcars Blog

This blog discusses all aspects of North American freight cars of the steam era, from the dawn of railroading through 1960.
It is intended to support the efforts of model railroaders who wish to produce the most prototypically accurate freight cars possible.
Prototype modelers are encouraged to participate in this blog. Please consider sending photos of prototypes and your efforts to model them, reviews of kits, books and other products, “articles” about your modeling efforts – with or without photos. The nature of blogging means the material can be "real time," and in-process models can be shared. These are not only welcomed, but appreciated as we all love to see a model develop over time.
Also welcome is information about upcoming prototype meets, shows, and other events.
Information submitted for this blog is considered gratis. Also, all submissions must include your name and contact email.
For more information or to submit information email steamfreightcar@gmail.com.

Monday, October 26, 2015

The cars of Central Vermont XTRA 471

Know I haven't posted in a while but my hobby time has been completely consumed by structures and scenery. I'm going to start getting back into freight car modeling in a big way this coming modeling season!

Here's a start - most of this post is cross-posted from my CV blog. 
This post is something of a work in progress. A few years ago I purchased a set of photos (no photographer identified) showing a Central Vermont freight crossing a rather nondescript plate girder bridge somewhere on the railroad's Southern Division. These photos inspired my "Williams Creek" bridge scene. 
The head end of the train is shown in the lead photo above - with CV 2-8-0 471 in the lead. It's been something of an ongoing project to identify each of the cars in this train with the idea of modeling them.
I've managed to ID most of them - but believe I may have misidentified the boxcar in the second photo partially obscured by the bush. 
At first glance I saw the Roman style "L &" (all that's clearly readable in the photo, though there is clearly another single letter after the "&") and figured this might be an Louisville & Nashville car, perhaps one of the L&N's rebuilt cars with "reverse" Murphy ends. This seemed entirely logical. L&N didn't have a huge boxcar fleet, but it was a fairly substantial one, and entirely likely to show up in a wayfreight in south-central New England.
But scanning the print at a higher resolution and sharpening the image in Photoshop reveals a little more about the car. It has a flat end and a pronounced seam at the top of the end creating the appearance of a triangle on the top of the end. I couldn't identify a class of L&N boxcars that looked like the rest of the car with that style end. One group of cars with this end were the 1932 ARA boxcars. But which of those would have "L &" as the reporting marks.
The true freight car experts already have the answer of course. And, after doing a little more digging this weekend I'm now of the opinion this is a much more rare (considering sheer numbers) Louisiana & Arkansas 1932 ARA boxcar. As built these cars had a block, almost Gothic style lettering with the roadname spelled out above the reporting marks.
This one doesn't have the roadname and the lettering is clearly Roman. Which means this is the second scheme these cars wore, with the "L&A" and car number to the left of the door and a Kansas City Southern herald to the right of the door. 
I know Atlas makes a 1932 ARA boxcar - and even made one in this scheme. 
Guess who can't find one of those anywhere??

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Resin Car Works Web site

Eric Hansmann recently posted the following notice on the Steam Era Freight Cars Yahoo Group: 


"The Resin Car Works website is now open! This is a new venture from Frank Hodina for HO scale resin freight car kits. Our first kits represent ACF Type 27 Acid Tank Cars in both 7,000- and 8,000-gallon versions. HO scale acid tank car models have not been offered before. Pre-production models were displayed at the recent Prototype Rails meet at Cocoa Beach. Check out our website for more details.





A PDF file to order can be found on the Kits page. 

Resin Car Works has many projects under development to augment your freight car fleet. We look forward to serving you.

Eric Hansmann, RCW web guy"