I got to Papa Ben’s in Houston on a family Christmas visit, first time there since Mr. Pearlman passed away.
I have been concentrating on southwestern prototype roadnames for the freight cars on my mid-1950s Santa Fe Texas layout, but I realized that so many manufactured goods originated on the NEW YORK CENTRAL, I needed to have that railroad represented. I have an NYC Pacemarker boxcar but those generally didn’t go off line from NYC-- ie. would not appear on MY railroad.
Today at Papa Ben’s, I bought a Deluxe #14020 AAR 40’ boxcar in what appeared to be a more generic NYC paint scheme, plain brown rather than Pacemaker, numbered NYC 168000. I checked my 1954 Equipment Register and found NYC cars with this number and dimensions that appear similar to the model. However, I notice the model has a large white star under the NYC herald. Any NYC modeler out there know what this means? Does it signify some special assignment? Is it suitable to have this car in general interchange freight service with a load to Texas?
IIRC, the star meant that an offline railroad could repair the car with up to 85% of the car’s value, if it got wrecked.
On a baggage car, a star meant that there was a bathroom on board.
Thanks, orsonroy. Your explanation suggests that offline interchange was a definitely intended use for this prototype. That gives me some confidence in my planned use of the model NYC boxcar.
There were plenty of Pacemaker boxcars that went off line, especially in the later years. There were probably Pacemaker boxcars in very washed out paint up untill their demise in about December 1967. The only Pacemaker box cars that did not go off line were the ones that had no interchange data printed on them, so they were illegial in interchange. That data was printed in the smaller lettering on the lower right quadrant of the car. It had the length, width, Lt Weight and other information. It is noticable by its absence.
So either of the boxcars in the brown or Pacemaker scheme is proper for off line use. There were also brown Pacemaker boxcars with the same lettering as the maroon and grey scheme, and the “Pacemaker” lettering. I am not sure if they were repainted or later new cars.
Paul
Dayton and Mad River RR
leighant;
I read your post when you first put it up on the forum - one of the first times I had been up on this prototype information portion - but it wasn’t until the other day that a particular significance of it smacked me between the eyes.
When I was stationed in Massachusetts with the Air Force in the mid-60s I used to pass a warehouse complex and at one of the businesses located in that complex I used to observe at the loading/unloading dock a large number of Spokane, Portland, and Seattle boxcars, that road being the predominant foreign road present. I don’t remember now what the name of the particular business was but, for sure, the preponderance of the material/merchandise being received came from the Pacific Northwest and had been loaded on the SP&S. Atlantic Coast Line was another road with a marked presence at that particular location.
There are businesses which do receive a majority of their shipments from a specific location. This warrants a string of foreign road cars from a single source being spotted by one switch crew, picked up by another which might, at that time, spot a string from another railroad or which might, at that time, spot home road cars for loading. All too often we trend towards utilization of a virtual alphabet soup of roads spotted at the loading dock of a warehouse but such is not always the case - some facilities do receive solid blocks of rolling stock from a single railroad and this would, I feel, tend to increase operations interest.