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Prototype information about freight cars
I purchased the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society’s steam era freight car modeling & HO Scale Freight Car Kits "encyclopedia - 651 pgs!) about 10 years ago. Since I am trying to model a eastern road dated 1927-1933 this has been a valuable resource. It was labeled “a work in progress” and very informative. I suspect the railroad.union.rpi.edu site would probably be the source for this published material now days.
I purchased the RPI treatise on steam era freight cars nearly 15 years ago when it was advertised in MR. It’s a broken up gathering of a ton of information from cars in the 1920’s through around 1940 or so. It is a massive tomb; it has badly reproduced pictures; but enough information to make it invaluable to me. My railroad depicts railroading as it was on September 11, 1940 ( a date selected long before the twin towers were dropped). Pictures and information in the reproduced Freight Car Guide of either 1940 or 1941 reprinted in its entirety by Kalmback is a good source (forgive me; the Car Cyc was one of those years; the Locomotive Cyc reprinted by Kalmbach was the other of those 2 years). The Model Railroader Cyclopaedia of both 1938 and 1940 (Kalmbach books from long ago) contain helpful information for those strictly in the steam era as well. If enough modellers brought enough pressure on Kalmbach; they might consider putting those books on DVD like they’ve done with all the issues of MR through 1990