Painting and lettering a brass tank car

In a previous post, I discussed some 1920s waybills from the Coudersport & Port Allegany Railroad, all of them for shipments of the Gray Chemical Co. of Roulette, PA. This company and the railroad that served it survived past my modeling year of 1953, so I wanted to take advantage of the fine decals for a tank car of this company, offered by K4 Decals (see their tank car range at: ttps://k4decals.com/collections/tank-car-decals ). That previous post can be found at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/08/waybills-part-116-early-prototype.html .

I dug around in my stash of tank cars, both kits and various brass cars I’ve collected, and came upon a nice Overland Models brass 8000-gallon AC&F car, catalog number 3130. It’s shown below. I don’t know for sure that the Gray Co. cars were built by AC&F, which this model represents, but decided to take a chance on that. The alternative, if the Gray cars were built by General American, would be an undecorated Tangent 8000-gallon car.

A more serious issue is that it is a typical riveted tank, but most if not all of the Gray Chemical tank cars were aluminum, and such tanks usually were all-welded aluminum, once aluminum welding was established. Before that time, though, aluminum-lined steel tanks were built. I decided the model could represent such an older car.

Obviously with a fully constructed brass model, no additional modeling was needed (with a minor exception I’ll come to). I will just show the steps I follow for painting and lettering a model like this.

My first step was to carefully wipe down the model to remove any oils, using paint thinner. I then sprayed the entire tank (above the bottom sheet) light gray. The strategy here was to paint the gray tank and not worry about overspray onto the frame, then carefully mask the upper tank that would remain gray, and spray the underframe, trucks and bottom sheet black. Here’s the first step.

Next came the masking. I have come to strongly prefer Tamiya tape for any modeling tape needs. It’s flexible and can be made to fit over projections and around corners; it sticks well and never allows paint to bleed underneath; and it comes off cleanly when you’re done without ever lifting any paint. I taped all of the tank above the bottom sheet, and left the ladders outside the tape.

The flat black was then applied, allowed to make a good start on drying, and the tape stripped off. Nearly everywhere, the separation line was sharp and correctly located. Of course, a few minutes work with a brush would correct any errors. In the photo below, you may notice that the brake wheel has been removed. It struck me as undersized, and that I should replace it. 

I wondered whether to paint the handrail black. Looking at Ed Kaminski’s fine book, Tank Cars, AC&F, 1865–1955 (Signature Press, 2003), and concentrating on tanks with light tank colors built during the 1930 to 1950s, handrails in body color, or in black, were about equally frequent.  I decided to stay with body color, but leave the ladders black. I can always hand-paint the handrails if a prototype photo surfaces showing that feature.

Next came decals. I used the nice K4 decals as provided, with many lettering groups already assembled on the decal sheet. Only issue I could mention is that the company emblem seems oversize; it barely fits on this 8000-gallon tank car, which was indeed the prototype size. An option would be to also buy an N scale sheet for a better-size emblem. Below you will also see the new, unpainted brass Cal-Scale brake wheel attached to the brake staff. (You can click on the image to enlarge.)

This completes the main tasks with this model. Kadee couplers were then applied, and the car was weathered. This was by my usual method of washes made from acrylic tube paint (see “Reference pages” at the top right corner of this post). I included some spillage on the done. Note also there is an “empty” placard on this side of the car.

Now to make some waybills for the Gray Chemical Company’s acetic acid, and this car can begin work on the layout.

Tony Thompson

SP Piggyback, Part 1: Pacific Motor Trucking

Southern Pacific introduced piggyback service, highway trailers moving on railroad cars, in 1953. As 1953 is my modeling year, I have held off from modeling what would be the earliest days of this service (later, of course, to grow to major proportions on SP and all railroads). But SP’s introductory TOFC route (TOFC =Trailer on Flat Car) was in fact the Coast Route, a very small segment of which is depicted on my layout. So I do have the era and location to model a little bit of SP piggyback.

I would like to describe both history and modeling of the early SP piggyback service, and I expect it will require several posts in a series, which is why this one is called Part 1. A strength of the SP concept for TOFC service was that they already had a healthy business in their subsidiary, Pacific Motor Trucking or PMT, which is where I will start.

[I have written before about PMT, in a three-part series in the SP Historical & Technical Society magazine Trainline, in the issues for Spring and Summer, 1995, and Winter 1996, which were issues 43, 44, and 46, so will only summarize here.]

SP began to compete in the trucking business in the Los Angeles area in the 1920s, and one of the original SP subsidiaries was the Pacific Electric Motor Trucking Company. At first, PEMT hired local draymen for the trucking, with PE providing freight houses and rail service across the LA basin, then local draymen at destination providing delivery. At that point, PEMT was acting like an express company, providing no transportation itself, but organizing and contracting for it, and providing a single bill to customers.

Once they began to offer out-of-town rail service, for example to Santa Barbara via SP, the business took off, and was soon renamed PMT in February 1930. They quickly became truck operators themselves, with original trucks and equipment painted the dark red familiar on Pacific Electric equipment. Again, this was nothing like piggyback, just package service by truck, to and from freight houses (but now in PMT equipment), and rail service using baggage cars. This soon expanded to a Los-Angeles–-San Francisco route.

As the service grew, SP decided to operate special trains and use dedicated box cars, which initially were Dark Olive Green but soon acquired the famous pre-war “Overnight” scheme of an all-black car with orange lettering and body stripe. This was discontinued as a non-essential service during World War II, but revived as soon as the war ended, still with all-black box cars but  now with an even more famous paint scheme. (photo courtesy Bruce Petty)

What made this go was PMT, still providing pick-up of packages and taking them to an SP freight house, just as in the earliest days, then to be loaded into Overnight cars, and at the other end, delivering those packages to the recipient from a freight house. In other words, it was the same door-to-door service originally conceived. It remained primarily an LA–San Francisco business, with guaranteed next-day (“overnight”) service.

Naturally PMT equipment was decorated to show the SP connection, and in the 1930s became Daylight Red and Orange, as in the GMC box truck shown below, which would have been used for in-town pickup and delivery (SP photo, courtesy Paul Koehler). In addition, PMT owned flat-bed trucks, stake trucks, tank trucks, and a wide variety of other truck equipment, used for inter-city trucking as well as the Overnight door-to-door operation. There were lots of equipment photos in my Trainline articles.

The inter-city work was mostly done with semi-trailers of conventional design, most of them with doors on the right or curb side for in-town delivery, along with end doors for freight platforms. The photo below is a 1940s publicity photo to emphasize the rail connection, shown here as a box car at a freight platform (SP photo, courtesy Steve Peery). The tractor here is a GMC, typical of SP’s long closeness with Chevrolet and GMC motor vehicles, pulling a 22-foot trailer.

Although most PMT tractors were conventional ones like that shown above, PMT did operate a fair number of cab-over tractors. Often they were Internationals, as in the photo below, which shows a 1946 Model D-500 tractor at Los Angeles (SP photo). At right is a dolly which will enable a second trailer to be attached, forming what was known as a “Western double.” The curb-side door is evident.

For a color view of these “Daylight” scheme trailers, the view below near 5th and King streets in San Francisco should suffice. This is an Alden Armstrong photo of Train 132 departing for Los Gatos; power is Class P-7 Pacific no. 2476. The side door PMT trailer is in the freight shed area, with SP’s Grocer’s Terminal building in the distance.

This gives the PMT background. I will continue in following posts with a description of the beginnings of the SP and PMT piggyback story, and of course modeling,

Tony Thompson

Forty-foot automobile cars

Many modelers think first about 50-foot cars if asked about automobile cars. (The AAR definition until the middle 1950s was that any double-door box car was an “automobile” car, regardless of whether it was equipped to carry automobiles, or was ever assigned to carry automobiles.) And indeed, the 50-foot cars were the predominant type. But there were substantial numbers of 40-foot automobile cars also. 

Initially, many of these 40-foot cars were indeed assigned to carry automobiles. But as the size of automobiles increased after World War II, more and more of the 40-foot cars were re-assigned to general merchandise service, and auto racks were removed. They were then classed as AAR XM type instead of XAR or XMR.

One interesting use of such cars in the Far West was lumber service. Indeed, the 40-foot double-door car was a preferred car for lumber service, including bundled lumber and plywood, along with loose lumber. My own modeled railroad is the Southern Pacific, which certainly had such cars, as did the Great Northern and Northern Pacific. But when cars were in short supply, cars of almost any railroad would be pressed into service, including the XMR types, which had auto racks that could be secured against car roofs for merchandise loading.

Here’s an illustration (C&O Historical Society photo at Ashland, Kentucky, about 1940), of a 40-foot automobile car loaded with lumber and being unloaded through the side door (note that only one is open).

A traffic example I found among the McCloud River Railroad papers (when working on Jeff Moore’s book, The McCloud River Railroads, Signature Press, 2016), was empty 40-foot double-door cars from Baltimore & Ohio, New York Central, Wabash, Grand Trunk Western and Pennsylvania, along with cars from Western railroads, delivered from the Great Northern for loading by the McCloud River Lumber Company. As I said, when car supply was short, railroads used whatever they could get.

On my layout, lumber is delivered on team tracks either on flat cars and gondolas (rough lumber) or in boxcars (finished lumber). Naturally I include 40-foot automobile cars for these cargoes. One example, playing off the prototype photo above, is a Pere Marquette double-door car, shown below paired with a flat car of rough lumber on the team track in my town of Ballard. (This model is a 3D-printed one-piece car by Eric Boone, as I describe awhile back: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/04/a-3-d-printed-freight-car-part-3.html .)

I of course vary the cars assigned in this service, as you see below, with a pair of cars being switched at Shumala on my layout. These two are, at left, an Accurail car, custom decorated for the CNW Historical Society, CNW 57892, and at right, an old C&BT Shops car, with upgraded details, B&O 298613. If I recall the waybills at the time these were in an operating session, the B&O car carried finished lumber and the CNW car, plywood. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

I shouldn’t give the impression that off-line cars are what I mainly use for finished lumber. Southern Pacific rostered a number of 40-foot double-door cars, and these too show up on my layout in forest products service. Below is SP 64015, Class A-50-13, a Sunshine resin model, on the team track in my town of Santa Rosalia, with a truck already positioned alongside for unloading of the box car.

I continue to use cars like this for loads other than automobiles, though of course auto traffic was quite an important revenue source for railroads. The point is that the cars were suitable for other cargo, too, particularly, as I mentioned, for lumber in the Far West.

Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 117: more on the history

I have been writing about waybills, both prototype and model, for a decade or more, and the Part number in today’s title conveys that span of interest. In this post, I will take up a minor but (to me) interesting aspect of the appearance of the standard waybill. 

A background point that seems to surface from time to time is the question of when a truly “standard” waybill form emerged in use. Certainly as early as the formation of the AAR (Association of American Railroads) from its predecessor the ARA (American Railway Association) in 1934, there has been a standard form, slowly changing in minor ways over the following decades. 

And it’s equally true that a few decades earlier, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was no standard, and individual railroads’ paperwork  varied considerably. What happened in between?

The AAR was formed from the ARA in 1934, as stated, but also folded into it at that time was the  Railway Accounting Officers’ Association, previously an independent group. That group, the RAOA, had promulgated the waybill forms prior to the formation of the AAR. But until recently, I really didn’t know much about the RAOA.

I have previously, in this series of posts, often referred to the roughly annual volumes issued by the AAR Accounting Division (the successor to the RAOA), entitled Railway Accounting Rules. It was included among a variety of resources I recommended for background on model waybills (see, for example: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/02/waybills-18-resources.html ). 

Recently I came across an interesting document, a reprint of the RAOA Interline Accounting Rules book for 1922. It was scanned from and reprinted by the Cornell University Library. I bought a copy on Amazon (if you Google “Railway Accounting Rules,” it will come up, along with AAR volumes at least as late as 1985, and dating back into the 1930s).

This is a softbound book, 6 x 9 inches in size, containing a 74-page report that for the first time, spelled out mandatory rules for interline accounting, possibly including waybill forms as newly mandatory. In a forward to the document, the RAOA stated that, in the past, voluntary conformance to RAOA standards by railroads has largely been successful, but that it was time to make the rules mandatory.

The 1922 date of this document is in agreement with suggestions I’ve seen, that during the time the federal government took over direction of railroads, due to the traffic emergencies during World War I, in the form of the USRA (United States Railroad Administration), that a standard form was introduced. That form then continued after the dissolution of the USRA in March 1920.

Among the interesting discoveries in this document is the appearance of several mandatory forms of waybills, including the standard freight waybill, entitled “R.A.O.A. Standard Form 98.” Many years later, the AAR version of this form was still Form 98. And most of the information called for in this form, and its location on the form, exactly match forms 30 and 40 years later

The overall appearance of this form is certainly much like later ones, but the proportions of many of the blocks to be filled in are quite different. And I was surprised to find no perishable waybill form in this book. Evidently in 1922, procedures were in use that adapted the regular freight waybill Form 98 for use with perishables.

Incidentally, in a previous post about waybills, I showed several early 1920s bills from the Coudersport & Port Allegany Railroad (at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/08/waybills-part-116-early-prototype.html ). Noticeable on some of them was this legend in the upper right corner, just as we’d expect:

For comparison with the above waybill, below is the Form 98 from the AAR’s 1951 Railway Accounting Rules book. If you click on the form to enlarge it, you will see that in many places, dimensions are provided so that users can correctly print their own forms. But of course these dimensions were not included in printed forms.

It is also of interest to examine what waybill form may have been in use prior to 1920. I have not seen any prototype waybills from the 1900–1920 period, but have found a “sample” form, from the Freight Traffic Red Book of 1920, in its Appendix, which is shown below. This is fairly different from the RAOA Form 98, above, and the extent to which it may have been used is not known to me.

Note though that the central division between shipper and consignee information is here, as is the description of cargo at the bottom, car weighing information at right center, and car identification at the top. The identification of the company preparing the waybill, at top left, is odd in that it isn’t a preprinted name, perhaps aimed at infrequent shippers.

To go any deeper into the history of these forms might require examination of the Annual Reports of the RAOA from the ‘teens and twenties, which I don’t feel terribly motivated to do. Maybe the knowledge we have will have to rest right here.

Tony Thompson

 

The Hendrickson USRA box car, Part 2

In the preceding post, I summarized the history and background of the Georgia Railroad’s USRA box cars and introduced the partially completed model, starting from a Tichy kit, which I inherited from Richard Hendrickson (USRA = United States Railroad Administration, World War I era). In this post, I describe continuing progress on the model. Here is a link to the previous  post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/another-hendrickson-project.html . 

I completed the underframe that had been begun by Richard, adding the AB brake gear along with the brake rodding. I decided not to model any of the brake piping, as it would not be visible in a side view (for more on this approach, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/08/simplified-underframe-brake-gear.html ). 

Next I turned my attention to the car body. In the previous post (link in top paragraph), I mentioned that the Georgia Railroad had, during the rebuilding, replaced the side grab iron rows with ladders. But the original steel ends had been build with stiles and grab irons, and these were left in place. Below is a detail from a 1960s Wilbur C. Whittaker photo, which documents this. (You can click on the image to enlarge it, if you wish.)

For my end ladders, I did the same, drilling the stiles and adding drop grab irons. These were included in Richard’s kit box with other parts, so are likely Tichy grab irons. Below is shown the A end, before adding the placard board and sill grab irons. 

Next I turned to the car sides. In the box with other parts were some very nice resin placard and route card boards, obviously not part of the original kit, and also a brass sprue of bracket grab irons. I happen to know the history of these; Dennis Storzek had them made as investment castings, using a sprue of plastic bracket grabs as the original, and he gave a few sprues to Richard. Light flash on a few rungs was easily removed. These grab irons match those added to the prototype Georgia box car, when it received steel sides.

I installed the grab irons into drilled holes with canopy glue, and used the same glue for the placard and route card boards. Kit sill steps and ladders were placed also. Now the sides were complete.

Finishing up the addition of details, and paint and lettering, will be described in a future post.

Tony Thompson