curious about car lettered “American Bridge of New York”. what was it originally used for?
My guess is that it started as a baggage or express car, was then downgraded and used as a tool and storage car. The car looks like it might have been built in the 1850-1880 period.
It’s a very old, late 1800’s style, truss rod, wooden baggage car that has no trucks under it. Probably was scrapped and bought by the American Bridge Company of New York for storage. It’s also possible that they used it as an on-site tool/office car at bridge construction sites when it was still fairly new and serviceable.
Thank You.
American Bridge (now American Bridge and Iron) is/was a major bridge and steel mill major construction company currently owned (and probably in the picture also) by U S Steel now USX. My immediate thought was that at one time it was either a mobile engineering office car or a pay car where workers were paid. Note the large platform on the left end that would have allowed a line of workers to enter and leave at the same time while the other end platform is smaller. One or more teller cages in a bulkhead wall would have provided security. It could possibly have travelled to several sites before returning to Pittsburgh for a “fill up”. Also not the line of ingot buggies on the curving track to the left of the car. I’m not sure th date is correct however. Those hoppers look a lot bigger and newer than 1908 to my eyes.
Lucy was completely demolished in the late 30s, so it has to be well before then.
I remember seeing a picture of the first all steel railcar built in Butler PA. It was a hopper that looked an awful lot like those ones. And that would have been in 1902.
I reposted this photo on a PRR related board as I am continually amazed that there is anything about the PRR that is not known by its loyal followers. I received the following reply and while not about the car in question is still extremely interesting (to me any way).
You are looking at the Lucy and Isabel furnaces of Carnegie Steel near Etna,
Pa. Both blast furnaces are behind the stoves (4 ea) that serve each
furnace, which were prototypes for the modern blast furnace and produced
close to a thousand tons each, which were records for the time. The blowing
engine house is to right. Lucy & Isabel were located on the north bank of
the Allegheny River NE of Pgh. You can see the covered structure between the
stoves and hoppers that hosted the cars that directly dumped coke, ore and
limestone into bins that filled the blast furnace via the skip loaders and
buckets, both of which are out of sight. There are operators visible at both
shanties, and lots of smoke evident, so these furnaces are in operation.
The in-plant tracks in foreground are in atrocious condition, and the wye at
right is not connected, so I suspect they are in the process of upgrading the
facility in this 1908 shot. I sure hope they got a bigger shipping office!
Keystone Coal and Coke was a conglomerate of a number of smaller coal
companies in Westmoreland County, Pa., HQed in Greensburg, and served by PRR.
There are some that say that KC&C ordered lots of “clones” of PRR hoppers
(see below), and many believe, sold them to the PRR as times got hard, and
were incorporated into the PRR fleet, since numbers of many classes continued
to rise after orders for new cars had ceased. KC&C had not only numerous
mines, but also beehive coking complexes. Given their proximity to the blast
furnaces, which used huge amounts of coke, these might be coke service, and
empty, since you can’t see any heaps.
You al
BTW it probably is a baggage car. An RPO would have many small windows on each side, and probably only one large door rather than two.