Official RR Equipment Registers

[Attuvian]

I'd like to at lay hands on or view an ORER for 1952 or '53 without having to travel hundreds of miles or cough up half a c-note plus postage.  And if I can find one, will it include the MoW equipment for a particular railroad?

John

[Mike-Ike Man]

OERs list equipment for each railroad that is available for interchange.  MOW & cabooses are not listed.  For several years Passenger equipment had their own version of the ORER as did/does Intermodal equipment.

 

Gene

 

Gene

[IRONROOSTER]

I have a reprint of the January 1953 ORER (by NMRA, but no longer avaialble).

It does list passenger equipment and miscellaneous equipment to include cabooses, wrecker, tool cars, etc.  I didn't check if that's true for all railroads, but it is true for the Maryland & Pennsylvania RR.

Paul

[gmpullman]

I bought several OERs and passenger registeries and Builder's Cyclopedias from this seller on the Ebay. (Seems like they had more listings back when I bought mine. Maybe inquire if the seller has more coming?)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-1950s-Special-Collection-of-Official-Guides-Equipment-Registers-on-DVD-/371936475912?hash=item5699243b08:g:1q0AAOSwrhBZB1lQ

Two Official Guides, One Passenger Register and One Equipment Register.

These are .pdf scans and any page(s) can be printed if you want.

I have a handful of the real books but these are handy for reference use, searchable, and don't take up much shelf space.

Good Luck, Ed

[Attuvian]

Sir Rooster,

Could you check what it has for SP?  If it doesn't, then my search in other nearby years will likely come up with dry wells also.  Thanks ahead of time!

John

[DSchmitt]

You can get the 1950 and 1955 on CD from Wesrerfield

https://id18538.securedata.net/westerfieldmodels.com/merchantmanager/index.php?cPath=107

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[IRONROOSTER]

Attuvian

Sir Rooster,

Could you check what it has for SP?  If it doesn't, then my search in other nearby years will likely come up with dry wells also.  Thanks ahead of time!

John

 

For Sp, only freight cars are listed including narrow gauge freight cars.  There are no listings for cabooses, passenger cars, mow, or other types of cars.

Paul

[DSchmitt]

Book that has SP maintenance roster

https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Pacific-Historical-Technical-Society/dp/B006N36SZ4

Learned about book here ( Book not currently available from SP Historical Society) 

http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/03/modeling-some-sp-mow-cars.html

 

 

[Attuvian]

Thanks, guys!  Birthday's coming up.  Think I'll let my Dutch girl spring for the 50 dollars.  Will buy her off with chocolate, likely pre-nibbled.

[dknelson]

Attuvian

Thanks, guys!  Birthday's coming up.  Think I'll let my Dutch girl spring for the 50 dollars.  Will buy her off with chocolate, likely pre-nibbled.    

Is this her?

http://hoseeker.net/gallery/index.php?album=varney-and-penn-line%2Fvarney-freight-cars&image=Varney-RW-1-Old-Dutch-Cleaner-40-Reefer.jpg

Dave Nelson

 

[Attuvian]

Well, Dave, you can bet that if she IS chasing me with a stick, I'm certainly dirt!  Amazing how those Dutch girls can move in those wooden shoes .  .  .

[doctorwayne]

Attuvian

Amazing how those Dutch girls can move in those wooden shoes .  .  .

I've heard that the only reason for the wooden shoes is to keep the woodpeckers away from their heads.

Wayne

[Attuvian]

I'm sure there's some deft blue tile available with a Dutch saying that speaks to that issue.  There's millions of them.  Such as my current favorite: "Don't talk about yourself; we'll do that after you leave."

[kansaspacific1]

John:

I just went to the NMRA.org website, company store, and found a 1953 ORER that can be had for $25.95 non-member price.  I didn't check on shipping but was able to put it in my cart.

Hope this helps!

Chuck

[mbinsewi]

I just went to the NMRA store, and although they show a full list of years for ORER's, a seach only brings up 3, two from 1943 and one from 1953.  I searched for the 1967 ORER, and it wasn't found.

Just wondering, if out of the long list they show, only 3 must be available?

Mike.

[Attuvian]

Thanks, Chuck and Mike.  Paul (above, 2nd message) says that the 1953 issue does not show any MoW listings for Espee, just their interchange freight roster.  I'm trying to prototype some work units and want to get some realistic car numbers.  I'm hoping that most of their stuff then was boxcar or brick red, not the pukey, pale green that seems to have come later for at least a good portion of their stuff.  Yuk!

[IRONROOSTER]

The NMRA store is a little messed up.  When I checked under books in the members store, it wasn't there.  Since you found it in the non-member store, I did a little poking around the members store and found it under Surplus Books - Library, $15 for members.

Both 1943 and 1953 are for January.  They are the only 2 reprints the NMRA did in hard and soft back versions.

Paul

[7j43k]

IRONROOSTER

They are the only 2 reprints the NMRA did in hard and soft back versions.

 

But, but, splutter, but...

The ORER was only ever printed in SOFT cover.  At least as far back as 1926, my earliest copy.

The Prototype Police will NOT be happy.

 

Seriously, though.  The ORER's are not terribly durable, especially when they're pawed continuously by model railroaders.  So perhaps the hard covers are a (dare I say) an improvement.

 

Kupla ORER stories:

Years ago, a guy bought all the back copies of the ORER from the publisher.  I still have his flyer.  Some buddies and I made a shopping list--every 5 years, I believe--and plunked our bucks down.  I bought a couple of old ones (like the 1926) just so we could have a continuous set.

Other story:  one of the members of an old model railroad club I was in worked for Stauffer Chemical.  He'd show up at the club with all the old copies of the ORER.  That explains my heavy "investment" in the '80's ORER's.  Sheldon King.  Nice guy, by the way.

 

It's getting really hard to lay ones hands on ORER's, these days.  If you're interested, I recommend checking out the Westerfield collection on disk:

 

https://id18538.securedata.net/westerfieldmodels.com/merchantmanager/index.php?cPath=107

 

It ain't the real think, but it IS a bit easier to store.

 

Ed

[dknelson]

I'm glad I secured an ORER for my chosen era's cut-off year.  It is a valuable resource.  That, and Car and Locomotive Cyclopedias for the cut off year and selectively for the decade or two before hand.  Combined, they resolve so many issues about appropriate rolling stock.  I am not super fussy about that but it is good to know when I have stretched plausibility to its limits.

Dave Nelson

[NittanyLion]

I've got my 2008 ORER, which is close enough for my 2008-2012 window.  I wish it was "unprototypically" hardcore, because its so huge it can't support its own weight on the bookshelf!

[kansaspacific1]

John:

I couldn't find my copy of the 1953 ORER until this morning, and looking through it, I remembered that is only lists interchange freight equipment, not MOW equipment which would have been seen only on the home road.  NO MOW information for any listed railroad, not just the SP.

I must be getting older to have missed something so obvious.

 

Chuck

[dehusman]

The purpose of an ORER is to publish the sizes and capacities for interchange cars in revenue service so that customers and other railroads would know the capacities and dimensions of foreign rail cars.  MOW and other equipment is usually restricted to home road and is not loaded for revenue service.  Passenger cars aren't used for revenue freight shipments by customer.  Therefore both passenger and MOW cars aren't in the ORER. 

The hard copy ORER has generally been replaced by the AAR's UMLER (Universal Machine Language Equipment Register) that is a computer database of the dimensional data.  It is more comprehensive and has a lot of the company owned and passenger equipment in it.

[Attuvian]

Dave and Chuck (and everyone else who posted here),

I have a much better understanding now of the scope and function of the ORER.  And I have discovered that the lovely Dutch girl of my 40-year romance has ordered for my BD a copy of the SP Car Roster of Jan 31, 1956, an old, out of print SPHTS publication.  This volume purports to contain all their MoW equipment and is precisely what I need for my project!  Though I'm looking for what they had in '52-'53, I'm sure that most all of it was still around three years later and anything new (a strange term indeed for MoW units) will be readily apparent by their build/mod/acquistion dates.  Now if I can just get a lead on colors . . . .

Thanks for your interest.  Extra chocolate rations are authorized through Friday midnight.  You are not required to share!

John

[IRONROOSTER]

kansaspacific1

John:

I couldn't find my copy of the 1953 ORER until this morning, and looking through it, I remembered that is only lists interchange freight equipment, not MOW equipment which would have been seen only on the home road.  NO MOW information for any listed railroad, not just the SP.

I must be getting older to have missed something so obvious.

 

Chuck

 

Look at page 75 - Maryland & Pennsylvania R.R. CO.

It has a section titled Miscellaneous Equipment (Not used in Commercial Service).  The section includes MOW equipment.

There's also a section listing their passenger cars.

And a note that  says: Freight cars owned not used in Interchange Service.

Paul