The Athearn ore cars are the old plastic MDC ore cars which replaced the early metal kits. As noted they’re “Upper Michigan” ore cars, I believe the rectangular ones are Milwaukee Road prototype and the ones with exterior braces are based on C&NW cars. Michigan cars are slightly taller and narrower than Minnesota ore cars. The DMIR never had any Michigan ore cars, but some DMIR Minnesota cars were bought by the C&NW in the eighties and used in the U.P.
Walthers has been making the Minnesota cars for quite a while now, and recently added Michigan cars too. The Walthers ore cars have good detailing but I had trouble with the trucks. I ended up adding one or two of the Kadee paper rings to add spacing and replaced the Walthers trucks with Life-Like ones which really roll well.
My layout is largely based on iron ore operations, so I have around 100 ore cars, maybe more. My new layout (under construction) is designed around running 36 car ore trains. Luckily I started getting them back when you could buy the MDC kits in the hobby shop for $3.25 each.
The Tichy ore cars build up great. I just add wire grabs. A few old wood cars in the mix would add interest. I use kadee couplers on 1 end of each car & use draw bars on the other end to make up pairs. jerry
Possibly, but I don’t know. I don’t have time to go to all those layouts and analyze their problems. I believe the Walthers cars trucks don’t pivot well, but that is just a theory. The MDC coupler pockets are problematic (not just on the ore cars - just because the molds are so old and worn out) and could be part of the problems. But don’t know don’t care, I just as soon avoid a problem instead of having yet another one to figure out. Even then the GFSM ore train is a unit train, and it definitely has more problems than all the other GFSM trains combined.
To add to the “unusual ore car loads” information, I remember seeing in Duluth, MN, in the late 1950’s, an ore car (NP I believe) filled with coal waiting to be unloaded at the downtown steam heating plant. I assumed an ore car was used because the curves were so sharp getting to the plant. In the 1960’s I saw, south of Beltrami, MN in the Red River Valley, a GN train of ore cars loaded with sugar beets. As I recall, the entire train was made up of ore cars, all loaded with sugar beets.
As I write this, there are 351 auctions on Ebay for HO scale ore cars - from single cars to twelve packs, with a whole lot of roads and colors to choose from.
ANYTHING, I repeat, ANYTHING you may want will be available on Ebay sooner or later. All it takes is patience and persistance…
So… maybe because of this thread it was probably fate that today – Jan 12, 2013 — from the Oregon & California Eastern duty roster I pulled Train #251/252. In simple terms none other than the ore train turn.
In Fairport yard, I boarded the cab of a quad set of GE U33C locos. The manifest said we were on the point of 80 loaded ore cars & caboose bound for the ore dock in Coos Bay. After the brakeman walked the train checking the air hoses and boarded the caboose, I did two toots on the horn and pulled the throttle to the first notch. Carefully taking out the slack and checking that all wheels on all the locomotives were turning, I called dispatch and got permission to take the main.
Unfortunately, I had to apply the brakes to stop the train as a manifest extra #503 was given permission to leave ahead of us. The Big Sky Blue locos braked smoothly and came to a stop just short of the yard exit. The ore cars obediently followed suit.
About 20 minutes later we got the yellow to proceed. Ran the yellows through Fairport, Dog Lake, and Sycan. Past the defect detector we were rolling up hill at 18smph.; No hot boxes on the ore cars. In Bly the yellow turned green as we were routed around the #503. Proceeding up over the summit, a UP passenger train (City of Los Angeles I think) was waiting for us to pass at Quartz mountain.
Over the summit was another green and the dynamics were applied as the ore cars decided they wanted to push instead of being pulled. Through the 2.5% grade they behaved well. Train #222 was waiting for us on the siding in Spraque and we proceeded on greens. In Klamath Falls instead of going through the yard or the tunnel, we were routed through on the primary siding. This is unusually because there is a power change from the road locomotives to branch line weight locos in K-Falls. Using the primary siding prevents it from b