Reminders of John Allen’s modeling

John Allen, as even younger modelers must know, built and publicized his Gorre & Daphetid Railroad layout (the name meant to be read as “Gory & Defeated,” a name he later regretted). It was often shown in the Model Railroader (MR) of the day, most notably in the back-cover ads for Varney products (about which more in a moment). And after John passed away, Linn Westcott of MR put together an excellent tribute book, Model Railroading with John Allen.

Awhile back, I wrote two posts about John Allen, hopefully with thoughtful considerations of his strong and weak points (one of them is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-can-you-say-about-john-allen.html ); and a second post to follow up can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/07/thoughts-on-john-allen-part-2.html ). 

I’ll briefly repeat the points I made in those posts: John was a pioneer in many ways, from weathering to realistic operating practices to realistic photography (John was a professional photographer) to fully detailed scenes on the layout, when all those things were rare. Just look at layout  articles or “Trackside Photos” in MR issues in those days, for confirmation. For an example, I’ll use one his Varney ads, which began to run on the back cover of MR in June of 1952. This one is from February 1954.

This kind of photo was utterly stunning in that era. The scene is detailed, and has figures in working poses, at a time when Campbell and other figures were mostly in very wooden positions. John made them himself with wax over wire armatures. The two Varney plastic box cars were not actually in John’s operating fleet, they are just there for the ad. Modelers in those days would pore over these ads and marvel at John’s modeling.

I’ve mentioned before, in the second of the two posts linked above, that I made a model to match one of John’s stock cars that was visible in a Varney ad, the relevant portion of which is shown below. 

This GD stock car is a Varney product, little changed by John. I chose to start from a Train Miniatures kit (a better model than the Varney, and having a wood running board). This model does show up occasionally in one of my operating sessions. 

Among John’s well-known “whimsy” models was a box car with lettering intended to be amusing, in the Allen mold. John’s model was built from a Central Valley 34-ft. box car kit, and hand lettered for the Superior Detritus Company. Decals for it are available today from SPD Train (see their site at: https://3dptrain.com/products/gbc-b011 . 

I am thinking of getting a set of these decals and lettering a box car, again for those occasional appearances in an operating session. I’d also have to devise a waybill or two . . . hmm, I’m getting some ideas . . .

Tony Thompson 

A look back at the Lompoc & Cuyama

When my layout was first built, it was in my basement in Pittsburgh, PA. I imagined it as a short line, running from the Southern Pacific main line which runs along the coast, at a real place called Jalama, then crossing the coastal hills to the Santa Ynez Valley and the towns of Ballard and Los Olivos. I also conceived an upper deck over one side of the layout, to have a bit of mountain climbing to reach Cuyama. 

That layout was among the ones featured for the 1990 NMRA National convention in Pittsburgh, and an article I wrote about it made the cover of the June 1990 Railroad Model Craftsman (article on pages 64–69). That cover is shown below, comprising a photo of the SP main line on the layout. Note that the cover artist added the inverted-kite shape of the L&C logo.

After careful study of USGS topo maps, I figured out a possible rail line from the SP junction to Los Olivos, then a line via Foxen Canyon to a junction with the Santa Maria Valley Railroad at Sisquoc, then up La Brea Creek Canyon and over the summit of the Sierra Madre range to Cuyama. (The railroad was imagined as intending to continue on eastward to Bakersfield, but never got that far.) By my modeling era, the line had been cu back to Alpine, where two mines were served. 

The track arrangement as I envisioned it is shown below. It was “E”-shaped, in a 16 x 19-ft. room. As noted on the drawing, Los Olivos  and Alpine never got built, beyond a track board and a single length of track, but I did built the upper level area at Piedras Blancas, with track leaving the L&C main line at Ajax Junction. 

Scenes along the layout in those days have been  shown at various times (you can use “L&C” as the search term in the search box at the top right of this post). But I wanted to show a few others that I enjoy. Here, for example, is SP Consolidation 2763 switching at San Luis Obispo. The upper level trackage at Piedras Blancas lies at upper right. 

I often photographed trains at what was then Jalama (now re-named Shumala with a re-purposing of the layout as an SP branch line). Here, for example, is a train departing for Ballard, with L&C caboose 54 on the rear end. Some will recognize this as a brass model of a Yosemite Valley caboose; for a somewhat  amusing detail about these cars, see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/08/whimsy.html ). 

Just ahead of the caboose is an L&C box car, also with the inverted-kite logo. The double-sheathed wood box car, L&C 194, was scratchbuilt.

During those days, I built a lot of that layout (though there was certainly a bunch more to do), and the peninsula in the middle of the “E” shape became the core of my present layout. But occasionally I still think fondly about the short line I once modeled.

Tony Thompson 

The AAR publicity photos

 Back in the 1950s, the AAR (Association of American Railroads) issued a set of large-format photo prints (8.5 x 11 inches) on heavy paper to schools and to the general public. I’ve never seen a complete set, though many people seem to have a few or a handful. I am told there were 60 photos total, all numbered (highest number I’ve seen personally was 55). The great majority are in fact publicity photos contributed by individual railroads. They are interesting in a number of ways, and I thought I would show a few.

The lowest numbers are very early images of different kinds (no. 4 is the famous photo of the two engines nose to nose at Promontory in 1869, with people everywhere). What I have always found amusing is that to avoid  publicizing individual railroads, whenever lettering is visible, it was replaced (sometimes a little crudely) with the legend “East & West Railroad.” It is a particularly entertaining detail when the original railroad is blindingly obvious, like this one (you can click to enlarge): 

 Similarly, a steam photo, showing filling a tender, is quite obviously a Norfolk & Western Class A 2-6-6-4, with its engine number, 1203, visible on the cab, but of course with the “East & West” name on the tender. The locale certainly looks like Roanoke Shops. 

But in many ways the more interesting views to me include the ones showing aspects of freight service. A good example is this photo showing loading of a meat refrigerator car with hanging meat. The Swift Company label is on a couple of the visible carcasses.   

Another interesting example is this view (supplied by United Fruit Company) showing a banana ship alongside barges of refrigerator cars. Two of the reefers are visibly lettered “MDT,” so in this instance the AAR did not feel compelled to replace the initials with “E&W.” The same goes for the inset photo, showing banana handling, with a Northern Refrigerator car in the background. 

Lastly, I liked this photo of a railroad stores building, with material stored outdoors, under cover but open to the air, and on interior shelving (the inset photo). This is something rarely modeled but an interesting challenge, and an “industry” that can ship and receive a wide variety of cargo.  

These are just a few of the AAR photos in the set, but should serve to show the range of interesting views that were included. And school children and others who viewed them hopefully obtained some idea of what railroading was all about. 

Tony Thompson 

The Athearn metal reefers

In several posts over the years, I have commented on (and in some cases restored) some of the old Athearn metal freight car kits. You can readily browse these past posts by using “Athearn metal” in the search box at right. Today I want to address the refrigerator cars sold by Athearn as metal kits up to at least 1957.

One place one can readily see Athearn catalogs and similar information is the HO Seeker website (at: https://hoseeker.net/athearn.htm ). I show below a page from Athearn’s 1948 catalog, containing the reefers then offered (note additional road names at the bottom).  The same cars were listed in Athearn’s 1952 catalog. By the 1957 Athearn catalog, most freight cars were offered in plastic, but the metal reefers were still in the catalog.

A few years ago I showed my restoration work on one of these metal cars, a Western Fruit Express car, and the underbody and other features were illustrated (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/12/restoring-ancient-athearn-metal-model.html ). Clearly shown were the stamped metal underframe parts and side and end details.

Today I want to talk about another of these cars, this one lettered for MDT (Merchants Despatch Transportation). I show the model below. The original model had black ladders on both sides and ends, black brake hardware on the B end, and black ice hatch covers. Some of these parts have been painted boxcar red on roof and ends, but the brake rod is missing.

What do we know about the prototype? There exists an excellent book on the subject, Roger Hinman’s Merchants Despatch (Signature Press, 2011). Chapter 19 of the book describes the steel MDT cars, and includes this photo (Sirman collection). This is the first of 475 cars, built at Despatch Shops during July to September 1947, numbered 9000–9474.

Note here that the cars as built had white side hardware, except for black ladder rungs, door latch, under-door kick plate, and horizontal parts of grab irons. Small blocks of dimensional data are placed in the lower corner of each end of the side.

The end shown above is a typical postwar Improved Dreadnaught end, and remarkably, Athearn took a shot at making such an end in pressed metal: 

This isn’t a very good version, since the relief on all the ribs is minimal, particularly the intermediate ribs, but clearly they were intended to be represented. The brake wheel is pretty poor, though not as poor as the plastic version Athearn would later produce in the millions. At least it looks like an Ajax. And note also the excellent sill steps, used on nearly all of the Athearn metal models.

Give the historic character of the model, I decided simply to add ice hatch latches (see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/07/maintaining-refrigerator-cars.html ), replace the missing brake rod, and leave most of the other hardware alone. It’s nice to have a representative of the MDT steel fleet on my layout, and especially nice to have a model designed 70 years ago still running.

Tony Thompson 

The 14th anniversary of this blog

My first post to this blog was on December 8, 2010, which makes today’s post a completion of 14 years of this activity. As of today, this is the 1730th post in this series, which seems a little unreal to me, but it must be true, because both Google and I keep track, and amazingly, I wrote them all. Whew! Certainly never expected all this back on this day in 2010. 

As I often do in the annual reflections, I have looked at the page view data provided by Google, the host for my blog. In the early years of the blog, it typically received 150,000 to 200,000 page views a year. More recently that has moved above 300,000 a year, and for this most recent year, it is at 385,000 page views. My total for the 14 years is now just a hair above 3 million page views. This is nothing compared to an internet “influencer,” but seems like a fair amount for a model railroading blog. 

The graph below is Google’s data for the past year (you can click on it to enlarge). I have no explanation for the areas of spikes in page views, but one can readily calculate that the daily average for most of these years is in the range of 500 to 1000 views a day. The two numbers at right are the page views (3.01 million) and the number of comments (2753). The drop at far right is because December isn’t complete.

Over the years, I have often received comments and questions in Google’s Blogspot process (that’s the 2.75 K number above), which appear at the bottom of each post, and that’s fine. I do respond to them. I have also frequently received questions or comments by separate email to me personally. Some of those have even generated entire posts in response, which shows that these communications can be quite substantive. They are part of what makes the blogging process interesting and fun for me.

One noteworthy event of the year was my completion of requirements for the Master Model Railroader award of the NMRA. I completed the last three achievement certificates last June, and have now been awarded the plaque as MMR  #772. I offered commentary on this, and showed the biography of me that was published in the NMRA Magazine in November, in a previous post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/10/personal-master-model-railroader-772.html ).

The plaque was delivered to me in a surprise move at an operating session at Steve Van Meter’s layout. Here is a photo of the operators on the layout that day, with the plaque being held by me and Earl Girbovan, to my left, who is now the Pacific Coast Region’s Achievement Program Manager (taking over from long-time stalwart in this job, Jack Burgess).

From far left, the folks in the photo are: Richard Brennan, Jim Radkey, John Wiley, John Sutkus, me, Bob Osborn, Earl, Mike Stewart, Andy Schnur, Steve, Bob Rosenbauer, and Jeff Allen. The person standing behind Andy and obscured by him is Seth Neumann.

Here is a better view of the plaque itself, alongside my John Allen award from PCR’s Coast Division, as it is placed in my layout room:

Meanwhile, operating sessions on my layout have continued. On the present version of the layout, that is, the one I’ve remodeled and completed here in Berkeley, the most recent pair of sessions (for comments about them, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/11/my-latest-operating-session.html ),were the 95th and 96th sessions. I continue to feel, as do many layout owners, that the layout really comes to life and best expresses my ideas for it, when visitors operate it under my direction. I hadn’t thought this or expected it, years ago when I started work on a layout, but it’s true. And it definitely is satisfying.

The same remains true for the blog.It’s almost always fun to dream up topics, figure out what’s needed to describe and illustrate them, and then to compose a draft of each one. Sometimes the inspiration just flows, and a draft needs hardly any revision; more usually, a draft may need to be polished and refined numerous times to bring it to what I wanted to say. But it remains enjoyable.

Tony Thompson

Restoring an old Ulrich hopper car

I was recently browsing in my stash of old or unused freight cars, and came across an Ulrich metal hopper car from my teenage years. Among other things, it has Devore couplers in Devore draft gear boxes. The wire grab irons and lettering looked pretty good, so I decided to see what could be done with it — and to check whether it was a model of an actual prototype. Back in those days, there were relatively few commercial freight car models, and many were lettered for pretty much any popular railroad. 

(I have worked on a number of old Ulrich HO scale freight cars over the years, and have reported some of the projects in past blog posts. To find them, if you’re interested, use “Ulrich” as the search term in the search box at right. The Ulrich company, founded in the late 1940s by Charles J. Ulrich, was a mainstay of HO scale modeling the 1950s, and later became part of the Walthers line.)

Below is the model. Aside from the heavy sill steps, cast onto the white-metal car sides, it doesn’t look too bad. The model, unlike Ulrich hopper cars in later years, did not have cast-on grab irons at the right of each car side, but had free-standing Athearn metal ladders, not a bad idea under the “three-foot distance” rule. This is an immediate clue that this is an early Ulrich hopper.

Is this prototype? It sure is. Norfolk & Western built 12,500 cars like this in the 1930s, and the Ulrich model is a definite match. Below is a prototype photo (N&W photo), showing the first of these cars at Roanoke in 1936. You can just see the angled heap shields, just like the Ulrich model. Incidentally, anyone with even a faint interest in coal hoppers should own Bob Karig’s superb book, Coal Cars (University of Scranton Press, 2007), where I found this photo.

In 1953, the year I model, there were more than 8700 cars of these dimensions, though Class HL is not called out separately. That certainly means that an N&W hopper chosen at random might well be a car like this model.

Now I expect that at least some readers will be thinking, “What on earth is he thinking about, coal hoppers in California?” And in some ways, that’s true. But coal was certainly used in a number of ways in California at the time I model, as I discussed in an earlier blog post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/02/coal-in-california.html ). 

As mentioned in that post, little coal was ever found in California, and none of it very good, a natural result of California’s geologic history (marvelously explained for laymen in John McPhee’s excellent book, Assembling California, 1993). Accordingly, lots of it was imported, usually by rail, and sometimes from far away: thus an N&W hopper could be okay.

For those not familiar with the Ulrich models, they had cast white metal sides, ends, interior braces, and hopper gates, with sheet brass slope sheets. Thus it’s not surprising that the model weighs over 3 ounces, above the NMRA recommended weight for this car length. The model has metal sprung trucks, nice looking but with pre-RP 25 wheel flanges, so I will replace the entire truck.

The familiar Ulrich hopper kit of later years had a cast metal underframe, so that the assembly process would be as shown in the instruction sheet below (from the HOseeker website, https://hoseeker.net/Ulrich.html ). It is clear how the parts go together, and it makes a sturdy model. But this is not my model. (You can click to enlarge if you wish.)

My hopper, instead, happens to be the original Ulrich hopper, which had a pine center sill and balsa bolster/slope sheet supports. It also has applied ladders instead of the cast-on grab irons seen in the directions above. The directions for this somewhat different kit (sides and ends are like the later kits) is shown below (again, HOseeker). The wood parts are in the drawing at the top of the directions.

I will disassemble the underframe parts that support the draft gear, replace the balsa with styrene, and modify to accept a Kadee coupler box. I’ll describe that work in a future post.

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 Transport 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 Pacific Motor Transport 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

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

 

Early HO scale couplers, Part 2

 In my first post on this topic, I described a number of the early couplers available in HO scale, from the Varney dummy coupler (an accurately shaped and sized coupler), to the other extreme, the Mantua loop coupler, and the good-looking but not very reliable Devore coupler. You can read that post here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/early-ho-couplers.html .

If you do read that post, you’ll find a discussion point by my friend Arved Grass, stating his belief that the initial Kadee metal coupler was the model MK. As I replied, that’s not true. It certainly is true that the MK coupler was the first Kadee magnetic coupler, and it was first advertised (as far as I can determine) in the December 1959 issue of Model Railroader, or MR.

But years earlier, the Kadee metal coupler head had been introduced, with a variety of coupler shanks, with model numbers from 4 to 7 (and later to 10), all called “K” couplers, not MK (probably “K” stood for Kadee). These had a straight trip pin, as you can see below (ad from page 12, October 1956 MR). I imagine the “good lookin’ ” phrase was with reference to the Mantua loops.

Or for a view of several cars with these straight pins, there is this photo (page 46, October 1957 MR):

And just to cinch the point, here is Kadee’s announcement of their new Model 10 or K-10 coupler (the same one shown above) for Athearn’s plastic freight cars, but in a very clear drawing (page 16, July 1957 MR):

In the previous post about early couplers (link in top paragraph of the present post), I had misremembered what the Kadee uncoupling ramp was like. I thought it was a converging throat to push the pins together. Actually, it was the opposite: a diamond shape that pushed the pins apart to uncouple the couplers. It could be raised electrically. Here’s a photo (page 41, May 1957 MR):

There were the familiar types K-4 and K-5 “for general use,” as the ad below says, along with several other types for specific rolling stock, up to type K-8 (ad from page 7, May 1956 MR):

But finally they did introduce the “Magna-matic” coupler, the one we have used ever since. As mentioned above, I believe this is the initial announcement in the December 1959 MR, page 25; it isn’t obvious here, but this coupler has the curved trip pin that is so familiar now.

So the straight-pin Kadees were all “K” models, and didn’t become “MK” (as shown above) until the end of 1959, when the above announcement was published. In what I hope isn’t  excessive clarity, this should now be a complete story.

Tony Thompson

Early HO couplers

Looking at some freight cars I’ve picked up at swap meets, and seeing the variety of couplers on some of them, led me to reflect on these components in the early years. The standard of practically all HO modelers today, the excellent Kadee coupler, was just arriving on the scene before 1960, and was different from today’s version.

In the 1950s,one had three kinds of choices. A number of kit makers gave you dummy couplers, some of them poorly shaped, which were white metal castings. But Varney gave you a black plastic dummy which was scale size and shape. These are so good looking and accurate that I have installed them in contest models, just for appearance, though of course they aren’t very suitable for layout use.

If you operated with these couplers, you had to lift one of the cars to be coupled, and lower it down to engage the coupler on the other car. Not a big deal, but hardly prototypical, and it slowed down all switching moves.

For operating couplers, what seems to have been the original design was the Devore coupler. These were white metal, and had an operating rod that was designed to look like an air hose. When the rod was raised, it freed the knuckle to open, much like the prototype coupler pin. Note that this is the “new 1950” coupler.

These could be remotely uncoupled with a physical ramp, a slight incline which would put upward pressure on the rod and open the knuckle. When it worked, this was nice. And when knuckles were open, two of them would automatically close and couple when brought together.

The problems were several-fold. First, when one of these was really operating right, it was quite a pleasure to use. But for every one like that, you had a couple that weren’t consistent, and sometimes didn’t work well, and at least one that was stubborn and hardly ever cooperated. Also, as they were white metal, you had to paint them, and paint hardly ever improved operation. After a time, this coupler was sold by Devore to Model Die Casting, and for a number of years was included in Roundhouse kits.

Devore, incidentally, made all kinds of other castings and even freight cars. I have one of their 36-foot depressed center flat cars, and still have its original box. I posted awhile back about restoring this car for operational use (see the post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/08/restoring-devore-kit-part-2.html ).

But for the serious operating modeler, there was a far better choice than dummies or Devore couplers: the Mantua coupler. This was a hook and loop design, made of brass, and it too required a ramp; but its operation was entirely dependable and consistent. Its operating pin, under the coupler box area and thus largely invisible, simply raised the hook and allowed uncoupling.

From beneath an installation, you can see the single screw used for attachment, and at a slight angle, the large operating pin. Here the hook part is barely visible, seen within the loop.

From above, the coupler could be painted black, minimizing its rather grossly unprototypical appearance. Here, the hook part is more visible. Still, for many modelers, the appearance of this was really not okay on otherwise realistic models.

The first Kadee coupler in the late 1950s looked much like its later appearance, but with an important exception: the operating pin was long and straight, sticking down below the coupler, and the reason was that a ramp was needed to operate it: a converging pair of, usually, wires which pressed the two coupler pins toward the center and opened both couplers. 

Even so, the new Kadee was very dependable and reasonably similar in appearance to a prototype coupler, and quickly made inroads among those who wanted to be able to operate freight cars. The later introduction of magnetic rather than mechanical ramp uncoupling was a further improvement.

Today, we are accustomed to extremely reliable operation of Kadee couplers, and when they are installed throughout a fleet, Accumate couplers, but back in the early days, choices were more complex.

Tony Thompson

The Timken promotional freight car(s)

Sometime in the mid-1940s, the Timken Roller Bearing Company purchased one or more freight cars, applied roller-bearing trucks, and painted it (or them) in vivid paint scheme(s). One report is that these cars were exhibited at one or more railroad fairs, others that they were moved around the country on various railroads for publicity purposes. 

Certainly one of the cars was exhibited at the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1948–49. Below is a photo of the car at that fair, from an internet site (you can visit it at: https://www.railarchive.net/rrfair/rrfair4869.htm ).

It is hard to get much more specific than what you read above. About 20 years ago, Bob Weston wrote, on one of the on-line forums, this comment: “The Timken Roller Bearing Company painted several freight cars in color schemes to promote its products. I've seen pictures of two boxcars in different schemes. Or was it one boxcar in two schemes? One car was done in conjunction with the Akron, Canton & Youngstown RR, I believe it was numbered 600. There was also a gondola painted in red and white and blue. I’ve also heard that a tank car may have been painted for the Timken Co.”

The photo above proves that there was at least one car, a 1937-AAR design box car built for Timken in a one-car order by AC&F. It was evidently originally painted green, but soon became yellow with the wide white stripe and Timken logo. It was then numbered TRBX (for Timken Roller Bearings) 88, but one source references a TRBX 81; or maybe there were two cars. The car which became AC&Y 600 was transferred after 1950 but before 1953. (The Timken plant was in Canton, Ohio.)

Back in the days of Athearn metal car kits, there was a model of a Timken box car, though Athearn first advertised the version with red instead of yellow sides. Note in the page below, from the 1948 catalog, that Athearn mentions “You’ve seen this car in all the national magazines – now have it on your layout.” (Catalog page from the “HO Seeker” site: https://hoseeker.net/AthearnBrochuresAds/brochure1948pg1.jpg ) The car number appears to be 88.

There is evidence that the red scheme was at least something promoted by Timken, whether or not it was applied to an actual car; below is a 1947 ad from Railway Age (maybe one of the “national magazines” mentioned by Athearn). These cars have three-digit numbers. Note that the white stripe is lower in this artwork than in the Athearn model photo above.

Athearn’s red scheme car was joined later by an Athearn metal model in the yellow scheme, as you see in the Internet photo below, also numbered TRBX 88. The roof is supposed to be black.

By the 1953 catalog, Athearn offered not only the yellow and red schemes, but also a silver Timken box car scheme. That was included in their 1954 catalog as well, but by 1957 all Timken cars were absent. Here’s an internet photo of an Athearn model in the silver scheme:

Athearn also did one of their 12,500-gallon metal tank cars in the yellow scheme, and I have one of them. These were never pictured in an Athearn catalog, but they were listed in the catalogs from 1948 through 1954, inclusive. In 1957 Athearn had dropped them from the listing. Like all the Athearn metal tank cars, they have nice two-rung sill steps and free-standing tank hold-downs.

These Athearn metal cars are from the modeling era when imaginary paint schemes were still rare, so I give them some credence. 

It is interesting that on the web one can find a couple of paintings by a prolific artist named John F. Gould. These might have been commissioned by Timken. They show dramatic views of Timken rolling stock, though I have no idea which or how many cars really got painted this way. Below is one example (the fifth car back is a tank car). To see the variety of Gould’s work, you can visit https://johngouldart.com/gallery/ .

So I can’t find firm information about how many or which kinds of freight cars may really have worn these Timken schemes, nor how long they lasted. I only operate my Timken tank car occasionally, and only in through trains. But I’d like to know more.

Tony Thompson