PRR flatcar usage

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

This goes along with the flatcar question I posted a few weeks ago but is more RR-specific. I’m looking for suggestions/ideas as to what the PRR would specifically have transported on one of their flatcars. And, to possibly simplify things, this flatcar will be pulled by another RR rather than the PRR.

Thanks for your help…

Tom

2

you couldn’t go wrong with loads of steel plate. i made up a bunch of loads using sheet styrene painted a blue/gray color with a bit of bright rust around the edges. the loads are removable so the empty cars can run the other direction on their way back home. go to to one of the rail car photo sites and look at the flat car loads for ideas for the blocking and tie downs.

large castings and machinery would also be appropriate but those commodities would never come close to the volume of steel plate.

grizlump

3

Looks like this: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1607672

4

And something a little more exotic: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?id=290116

or: http://www.mountvernonshops.com/F31.html

5

Back in the days of the Espee it was common practice for “forest product worthy” cars, to be corralled and routed empty to and where they were loaded with forest products and routed back to the home road. Your PRR flat car loaded with say steel plate or whatever for , when unloaded it could have been assembled into a train of empties for and loaded with maybe lumber, or poles, etc. and routed back to a PRR customer.

Have fun, Rob

6

See TOFC/COFC at Pennsy TrucTrains: An Overview (Keystone Crossings).

Note “TTX founding” on March 17, 1956: “Trailer Train Company goes into operation; stockholders include PRR, N&W, St. Louis-San Francisco and Missouri Pacific.”

Also on November 1968: “It is now post-PRR-NYC merger into Penn Central. TrailVan becomes designation of TOFC/COFC service, replacing PRR’s TrucTrain and NYC’s Flexi-Van.”

Use the search at the webpage bottom for more on PRR flat cars.

7

The book “Pennsylvania Railroad Flat Cars” by Gatwood and Buchan has about 105 pictures of flatcars with loads. Neat book. The most unusual load was the Liberty Bell.

All of those loads were going somewhere; “most” of them were going offline.

Ed

8

The last PRR flat car that I saw, and I am thinking this was in the early to mid 1990s, had no load at all. It was a spacer car for a overlong load being shipped on the C&NW from the Bucyrus International plant in South Milwaukee WI. The load was so long it needed spacer flat cars on either end of the TTX flat and one of them was a PRR flat, presumably an old 53’6" car, and the deck was all beat up. Perhaps it was exclusively in spacer car service by that time.

Keith Kohlmann wrote a two part article for Railroad Model Craftsman on the Bucyrus industrial railroad and the loads it shipped and still ships, and the Bucyrus Company has posted those articles on its website. While no PRR flat is shown (there are NYC L&N and other non-C&NW flats as well as home road C&NW flats in the pictures) I can tell you that PRR flats were in the very same service. here are the links:

http://www.bucyrus.com/media/24690/rrmc%200406%20pgs74_83.pdf

http://www.bucyrus.com/media/24687/rrmc%200506%20pgs74_77.pdf

I built a “Bucyrus-like” shovel load “inspired” by Keith’s article out of deodorant packaging plus a bit of a plastic hanger dress socks come on, together with a fragment of the inside of a dental floss container. The goal was for it to cost me nothing to build. Scroll down:

http://www.mwr-nmra.org/region/waybill/waybill20101spring.pdf

Dave Nelson

9

Pretty much anything that could be transported on a flatcar. The PRR was big enough that they had just about any type of customer you could want.

So pick whatever you want to put on the flat car and it will work.

10

Thanks for the info and pics, fellas. It’s been very, very, helpful.

Tom

11

Hi Tom,

In 1950, flat cars (including log cars) only made up about 3% of the national freight car fleet. According to Richard Hendrickson, normal AAR car interchange rules really didn’t apply to flats, and they were treated as a national pool of cars, just like boxcars. So you can load ANYTHING on a Pennsy flat, simply because the load doesn’t have to originate or terminate anywhere near the PRR.