Recently in this month’s Model Railroader issue in the article related to a modeler’s guide to transition gondolas was a chart of typical gondola loads for the Minneapolis & St. Louis railroad. The chart was prepared by a certain railroad from its mechanicial superintendent. It contained a listing of gondolas by reporting marks, road number, AAR type and lading.
I would be looking for a similar chart prepared by Southern Railway related to loads used in 50 foot PS1 boxcars according to their reporting marks and/or road numbers. I have been told before that PS1 boxcars would carry every kind of load or material known to man and that particular railroad. Is there any kind of documentation like this gondola list provided in the December 2009 issue of Model Railroader which would state loads and road numbers for Southern Railway 50 foot PS1 boxcars? Where would one obtain this type of documentation? This newbie would appreciate any and all expertise concerning this matter. Thank you for your time.
Well best chance I think would be the historical society for the railroad your looking for.Someone posted a link on here for the Southern but I cant recall where.
You can also try e bay looking for Southern paperwork. I have found a ton of Rock Island stuff on there with a couple of items from station agents.
You have to realize how extremely rare that information is. Railroads don’t really keep those statistics. Somebody had to pull those statistics from someplace else to get them. They also aren’t by manufacturer’s car model. So if you were looking for a particular car class, such as a RDG Pullman Standard 52’ 6" gondola, there would be nothing on that list.
In order to get that type of information you would have to find a source of waybill information that gave car numbers and commodities and then know what number series SOU 50 ft PS1 boxcars were then hope that among the records there was at least one SOU 50 ft PS1 boxcar number recorded . Very, very, very rare information.
Railroads also don’t keep track of cars by manufacturer’s type, they keep track of them by their number series or class. If you asked somebody who worked for a major US railroad what was carried in a Trinity model 5750 covered hopper, even if they had access to the billing information, they wouldn’t know which cars were Trinity 5750 model cars unless they dug through the mechanical department records. That information just isn’t carried in the normal records. The people concerned with what goes into a car could care less who made the car. A 50 ft boxcar with a 8 ft door is a 50 ft boxcar with an 8 ft door. They have no way of differenciating whether it is an ACF or PS car. You will have to research shipping records, then cross reference that with roster information.
For example, I have a 1930’s conductors wheel report book. It has lists of the cars in a train and many of the commodities in the cars. But I have no knowledge of who made the cars or what type of car they are other than an extremely general box or hopper, etc… I would have to cross reference that list with an ORER to find what the car type was (twin hopper vs triple h