Hello. Looking for a reference for steam era private owner freight cars esp related to Maryland, prototype railroads under construction 1890 to 1940 esp equipment used for same, acid tank cars. Thank you for any help.
You’re asking for a LOT all in one run-on sentence here. You’re essentially asking, “I’m looking for information on the US Army from 1800 to 1900 and especially guys from Milwaukee.” Can you narrow it down for us a bit?
As a partial answer, the ORERs will give you a START as to what cars were running in a specific month of a specific year, including all private owners. Of course, most “official headquarters” are listed as NYC or Chicago, so that won’t be much of a help in determining which owners were really from Maryland. But it’s a start.
I dont know about private owner but Northern Central, Ma and Pa, Baltimore and Annapolis and any number of smaller roads that were combined into the bigger roads will be something.
You mentioned Acid Cars. I think you have a specific industry or company in mind, Do you know more about it?
You could check Equipment Registers for your period. Pvt owned cars would have reporting marks ending in X. They’re in their own section (in the rear of RR owned cars). Two that I can think of off hand for your area would be Berwind, a coal operation in Pa whose 50 ton coal cars show up in pix of PRR trains and, I imagine DuPont (HQ in Delaware) probably had some plus a maritime shipping line (West Indies Fruit???) had a bunch of 40’ box cars.
I think any number of private shipyards or similar facilties in Baltimore might have owned railroad equiptment if only for extremly shortline… heck… material handling in a few acres.
Walthers had a 4 paper back book set on freight and passenger cars lettering sets. I am not sure if it is still available. The books started back in the early 1900s (if memory serves me right) and moved forwards. The books were dated as the first book dealt with the oldest cars and moved forward.
Each book showed a car’s side view and gave the Walther’s decal set numbers and the color scheme of the car. I am not sure if Walthers still makes decals. But if you know what you need you could check other decal makers for what you want, or have a set or sets made.
I have or had a set of these books and can’t find them now. I may have sold them.
True, but how do you tell where those listings are in the ORER? Cars that are allowed for interchange ARE listed in the ORERs, but cars that are restricted to home rails usually aren’t. And with most corporate headquarters for railroads listed as some large city (Chicago, NYC), how do you know where those cars are really stationed?
A good example is Federal Barge, which was a national organization that switched INLAND port facilities along major rivers. Their primary facilities were St Louis, New Orleans and Peoria, but their HQ is listed as Chicago (where they did NO work).
Private name cars have the same problem. It’s likely that GATX or URTX had tank cars designed to carry industrial acids, but it’s not so easy to figure out who those cars were leased out to. It CAN be done, but usually by people who are “freight car geeks”.
Quote: “…how do you tell where those listings are in the ORER? Cars that are allowed for interchange ARE listed in the ORERs, but cars that are restricted to home rails usually aren’t. And with most corporate headquarters for railroads listed as some large city (Chicago, NYC), how do you know where those cars are really stationed?”
For true stay-on-private-trackage such as in-plant cars, mine cars, etc. you DON’T find them in ORER. You will have to depend on photo sources, local material, etc.
IF you have a photo of the side or end of a car with the REPORTING MARK, such as KLAX 10, you use the “index of railroads and private car companies” in the front of the ORER. At least that’s what I have in my April 1954 ORER. The index has both names and “marks” listed alphabetically. I chose the example of KLAX because my personal initials are KLA and I thought it would be neat to have an authentic prototype cars with my own initials on it. KLAX is the reporting mark for H. Earl Clack Company, which owned 8 tank cars for handling petroleum to its bulk oil distribution facility. This particular listing only has the owners corporate location, which is not much help for where it ran.
However, I looked up the company in a reference for investors, Moody’s Industrial Manual 1955 p.2209a and learned that H. Earl Clack, had 200 wholesale and retail petroleum outlets, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Husky Oil Co. acquired Dec.1, 1954. Husky also had oil properties in Texas, Louisiana and 5 other states, refinery at Cody, Wyoming, steel plants Omaha & Boise and leased 400-550 tank cars.
I also found a Clack website and and a museum: H. Earl Clack Museum & Gallery, 300 Third Ave., P O Box 1054, Havre, Montana 59501.
For many private owners, the ORER lists not only corporate contact points but, more important for RR operations, HOME POINTS for cars, poi