Hi,
Please, can anyone tell me what ‘ID’ means, which is part of the Mechanical Designation of a Bangoar and Aroostook ‘State of Maine’ color schemed, 1954 box car?
The car has ‘XM-ID’ on its sides and I know the’ X’ indicates Box Car and the ‘M’ indicates General Service, but I don’t know what the added letters’ ID’ mean.
Thank you,
Ralph-Train-O
I’ll hazard a guess, and only a guess, ID = Insulated Design
Balt. you may be on to something with the ID of “ID”. But to set things straight…“X” denotes private owner rather than railroad owner and does not indicated “box car”. “M” is the owner’s initial, in this case the State of Maine. And “ID” may well mean insulated design. These cars, often red, white, and blue, may also have had railroad names: Bangor and Aroostock (BAR) or Maine Central (MC or MEC) but were part of the State’s participation in marketing and transportating, Maine grown and harvested potatos.
Henry, I think you’re curving things a bit rather than setting them straight
For REPORTING MARKS, X denotes private ownership (as opposed to Railroad owned)
For MECHANICAL DESIGNATIONS, XM indeed is a general-use boxcar: http://www.nakina.net/other/aartype.html
Thank you all,
I read that B.A.R. had insulated plug door box cars for potato transportation and being that this box car has a Youngstown sliding door, maybe the ‘ID’ meant ‘Insulated Door’, or this car is part of a pool and ‘ID’ meant ‘Identification,’ as part of a pool of box cars?
I don’t know and that is why I posted on this forum, as I did on other forums, to find out from Professional Railroaders.
Ralph-Train-O
Are you sure it’s “ID”? I show a lot of those BAR cars as being of AAR Mechanical Designation XMIH, which is a box car (XM), insulated (I), with provisions for heating devices (H).
There was, for a brief time in the late 60s, a “D” that was appended to some cars to indicate a cushioning device, but (a) that didn’t last very long, and (b) it certainly doesn’t sound like the BAR cars would have qualified.
Carl,
Thank you for your info.
My photo does not have a photograph date, but does show ‘XM-ID,’ STL 3-20-54 AMF, road #4420.
I did see one having ‘XM-IF.’
Ralph
Balt,
I get a kick out of your Sea Farer riding the surf.
Train-O
Ralph, do you have a link to your picture? I’m sure we could get to the bottom of this if we could actually see it.
Edit: I just found a picture of BAR 4483. It’s a plain 40-foot box car (no insulation, no plug door). Something does appear to be stencilled after the “XM”, but I can’t make it out. Based purely on this, I’d say that this is some code that had meaning for the Bangor & Aroostook and probably few others. Still would like to see more. It’s not in the “State of Maine” paint scheme, but I know that a lot of those cars got plainer paint later in life.
I looked at the picture again, it is of a scale model car, which I confused with the following B.&W. photo.
Sorry, but I’m sure “XM-ID” is an actual designation, because why would it be modeled as such!!!
This is an Atlas ‘O’ 1:48 scale museum quality crafted model and not made by the manufacturers of the ‘Fantasy’ cars!!!
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/bar/bar4329jpb.jpg
Thank you,
Ralph-Train-O
Picture from fallenflags is XM-IF
Balt,
You are correct.
That is ‘XM-IF.’
Train-O
I looked, too…XM-IF (or possibly 1F) is correct on this car.
However, the car is not insulated, so that isn’t the connection. I still think you’ll need to uncover a BAR historian to shed some light on this.
Is it perhaps a railroad classification for this series? BAR wouldn’t be alone in classifying its car (PRR, UP, ATSF, and SP are the best known examples), and they also wouldn’t be alone in using the AAR Mechanical Designation as the basis for their classification (the Reading also did that).
Models are not always accurate. It is possible that Atlas made an error.
Could the XM-ID (or XM-1D) and XM-IF (or XM-1F) be BAR class designations?
Everyone, thank you for your kind help.
I called and spoke with Steve Millenbach, of Customer Service at Atlas in New Jersey and he and his colleagues are NOT sure, but they seem to believe it means an INSULATED box car of some sorts, so as ericsp mentions; ‘XM-ID’ may just be a mistake, or B.A.R’s. own designation.
Who, knows!!!
Also, as Carl mentioned, I should try to contact a B.A.R. Historian.
Train-O