I have an Athearn RTR heavy duty flat car w/ load. It is lettered for the Dept. Of Defense (DODX 39907 , item # 92243). I can’t use it as is as it is out of my era (2005-07) but i was wondering if any cars of this type are still i service and if this car has a prototrype? I can’t find any info on a prototype DODX car with this number. Anyone have any info on it. Thanks.
It’s a fantasy car. All the DODX flat cars in the 39000 series used six wheel Buckeye trucks and were built in the early to late 50’s by Pullman-Standard and Ortner. I’m not sure what this is supposed to be a prototype of (if anything) but it’s not a DODX flat car.
I pulled out an ORER from January 1970. In the DOD section there is a listing for series 39900-39907. It’s listed as having four 4-wheel trucks. Outside length is 44’-11", height from rail to deck either 4’-1" or 4’-2". Capacity is 375000 pounds.
My first HO kit was this Athearn car (in C&NW). I bought it in '58 or '59 and it came with dis-assembled trucks that had little rubber spring inserts. The model is very similar to numerous prototypes. It fails for me to be a good model because it sits too high from the rail and the trucks are too close together on the span bolster–my opinion, anyway. Still pretty neat, though.
Ed
Hmm…those must be the only 8 of the 39000 series with standard trucks and a span bolster. All the others I can find information on always had the Buckeye trucks. Any idea who made them and when?
Do you mean that you actually got it to stay on the track? The car seems to be too light and there is simply no place to add much weight.
Have fun
They are in my ORER of October 1957 but not in July 1956. They were USAX at the time, not DODX. They also had a capacity of 400000 pounds at the time. The cars retained the same numbers when they went to DOD. A January 1976 ORER shows all the cars.
An April 1980 ORER shows DODX 39900 as being converted to carrying radioactive materials.
April 1995 is the last of my ORER’s showing all eight cars.
An October 1996 shows five cars left with the “radioactive” car gone from the roster. July 2000 shows only 3 cars left.
April 2001 shows them gone.
Don’t know who made them.
Ed
I don’t remember the car being particularly troublesome, though it’s been a hangar queen for many decades now. I note that mine came with several little cast weights that fit down inside the car’s internal framework. I doubt that the car still does, so maybe my car weighs more than the later ones.
Ed
If you do a search for “dodx 39906” (with quotes, I think), you’ll turn up a photo of the car. If you go to “Fallen Flags”, they’ve got a very nice shot of 39907 showing the deck. I’d say the car is pretty close to Athearn’s.
Ed
I still have my CNW version that I must have bought about 1960 and was one of the first cars I ever built as a teenager. It certainly makes for more work as it seems to derail if you even look at it. I haven’t run mine in 15 years. It just sits with the work train.
Here is an interesting comparison of the two back to back…
George