i’ve been photographing stuff in altoona for a while now, but it’s been about a year now since i started rounding up all the CNW rolling stock i could find. and i’m proud to say i’ve photographed well-over 100 freight cars at this point. and i’m still gathering some more up. here’s my current collection:
http://lord_atmo.rrpicturearchives.net/archivethumbs.aspx?id=19943
anyone else into shooting pictures of rolling stock out there?
Yeah, I’ve got tons of fallen flag freight car photos. Those are the only ones I use my film on.
ah i just use my only camera on all of it. just today i found a more uncommon grey round CNW hopper. i’ll be uploading those pictures soon.
what i’m currently after is more zito boxcars. i have only seen one so far (unless you count the many in my past) and it looked pretty cool. just as i remembered them to look
You have a couple of mis-identified covered hoppers toward the bottom of page 10.
Getting CNW stuff isn’t as easy as one would expect. UP has unloaded so much of the freight-car fleet (including many series built fairly recently, not just the old junk), probably due to leases that don’t make financial sense to them.
You’d be surprised at who’s got some former CNW cars–some of which are hardly recognizable.
Great job Atmo. I enjoyed looking
thank you very much. i just added to that collection today
those mis-labeled images were the result of me saving 2 pictures under the same file name. those were originally pictures of a boxcar and a gondola. but the 2 hopper shots replaced them. no matter, it has been fixed. and thank you very much for pointing this error out
glad you all enjoyed
Sounds like the Rock Island cars after the RR went under. Don’t think any of the new owners repainted them, because I saw that garish blue everywhere for years afterward. Some of those cars got to locations far, far away from the Rock’s locations.
Not really–a lot of the CNW cars have been rebuilt or given fresh coats of paint for new owners. There’s a series of Pullman Standard covered hoppers that were shortened (center bay removed) and repainted–their numbers are the giveaway (those were shortened, too–first digit removed!).
Those low-numbered MMA box cars, including the one painted in red, white, and blue, and numbered 1? Ex-CNW (originally ROCK!).
The Kansas City Southern 60000 series, box cars with an added section at the eaves to give them more height? CNW 163000 series, in order.
Plenty of others have gone to various lessors (NOKL, HLMX, HS, EEC, and so on).
the hoppers are easy to spot too. most of them never had their numbers changed. just the reporting mark. a few have the logo covered too, which is also very easy to spot
something very interesting rolled through last night. i think amtrak must be selling their old boxcar fleet off because this one i saw was of AMTK styling, but had a leaser reporting mark
Nice pictures! I like them. Well I shot Rolling stock. But it’s usually SOO. I got like a ton of white SOO boxcars. I’m not sure if any where the color mark cars because most have so much graffiti on them I can’t see the reporting marks . But I did get a Brown SOO boxcar here in town. Now that was rare.
oh i bet. and thanks. i’ll keep a lookout for brown SOO boxcars. i look for other rarities here. CNW autoracks are so uncommon here. i’ve only seen one so far. hopefully i’ll see more soon. so far nothing soo yet. just CP hoppers with SOO marks
Well I know allot of the Brown ones made it to WC. But the bad ones got there doors pried off and used as wood chip boxcars. This brown one must have been a really new one, because the brown ones where when SOO had that color mark system a while back. You would have to ask Soo Line fan for more info. I’m not quite sure. I have also seen a SOO 7 Post Fon du Lac in CP colors, no picture. I would like to keep a look out for the really rare ones. Like the solid red ones with White lettering, and the White ones with Red lettering. But I’m not sure if those are gone so…yeah. I have also caught a SOO caboose too.
Here’s the Caboose:
Here’s the Pair I saw the brown boxcar in:
Here’s the Brown Boxcar:
very impressive. i’ll photograph any SOO rolling stock up here too if i catch any. i used to focus on CNW and MoPac, but MoPac got boring and repetitive, so i stuck with CNW and went from there
well i was eating at a restaurant with the fam tonight. one that happens to be right next to the CN up here. and i heard a horn in the distance and bolted to the tracks. there i caught 2 SD40-2s and a manifest of 79 cars.
where am i going with this? well among this train was a brown SOO boxcar. unfortunately i didnt have my camera with me. i was upset too. i wanted a shot of it. there was a white SOO boxcar there too and a CNW malt hopper even
i have several pics of SOO, BC rail , and a CN cabooses in Raleigh, NC I found about 4 brown soos, 2 white, i ungrafietied red cn, and 2 BC rails.
I’ll try to post them a-sap.(asap)
Sorry I missed reading your post about the “Amtrak-styled” box cars. Yes, those CEFX 71000-series cars are former Amtrak express cars, same numbers, now used in flour service (at least around here). They relettered about 100 of the cars in the 71000-71199 range.
I will occasionally see a rarity when I am out… I don’t pay much attention to rolling stock, usually… However, I did see a former Penn Central boxcar on a BNSF mainifest about a week or two ago. The car was rusty, and beat to death, and had a fair amount of grafitti on it. Despite the mess the car was, the green paint, and the “Penn Central” logo were still visible.
Back in Soo Line’s “Colormark” era (and for many years afterwards), the white sides and red doors were indicative of a box-type car (this included insulated box cars and even mechanical reefers) that were equipped with cushioning devices (on Soo, it was mostly end-of-car cushioning). The brown box cars, often built at the same time as some of the white ones, had no cushioning. This distinction between cushioned and non-cushioned cars disappeared at about the same time as the italic “Soo” logo was adopted.
well it’s indeed been a while, but i need some help.
rrpicturearchives is where i post all my rolling stock photos. however, when i enter the data for them in, it asks for both the AAR and CNW classes. i can find the AAR classes easily due to looking at other entries, but i cannot find the CNW classes anywhere. i bought the final CNW rolling stock roster at trainfest and it also lacks this information. does anyone know how to find this out? i would love to make my rolling stock roster as complete as i can. but this has been bugging me for quite some time now
oh and while we’re on the subject of rarities, i found this after catching the 261/2816 doubleheader in Winona:
MILW relics all around!