I'm assembling a Branchline Blueprint 50' welded AAR boxcar lettered for the Savannah & Atlanta Railway (#952). The box label states a 1962 built date and that it's painted and lettered in the delivery scheme. What I wanted to know is whether an AAR boxcar of this vintage would have come with or without a roof walk?
The assembly instructions allow you to do either option. I tried searching online for some prototype pics but haven't been able to find any of this somewhat obscure roadroad.
Thanks for any input you might be able to offer me.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
new freight cars ordered after 4/66 an/or delivered after 10/66 were required to be built without roofwalks and with low hand brakes.
Every car is subject to the rules in effect as of when it was built. Until the regulations changed in 1966, full height ladders and running boards were required. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/231.27
Rob Spangler
Thanks, jc and Rob. Exactly what I was looking for.
a bit more info 1974 roofwalks were started to be removed , 1982 roofwalks banned.
Another query because of what you added, jc:
Thanks,
NEW would be updated whenever the car was reweighed. BLT is the date the car was built.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
tstageWould cars generally be repainted or partially repainted when items such as roofwalks came off?
Not necessarily. A lot of cars with modified safety appliances survived until scrapping with the paint they had prior to modification. The ladders may or may not be touched up after being modified. Little or no attention may have been paid to other parts of the car unless abolutely necessary. Brackets for running boards, and mounting locations for things like ladders tended to be left as-is.
If the paint was in really bad shape when the car went in for modification, it may have been repainted, but there were plenty of very rough looking cars that weren't.
Since the OP was talking Savannah & Atlanta, here's an example of a modified car in service as of 1978. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1738293
There are some patchouts, and new items like consolidated stencils and U1 inspection symbols, but most likely not much else.
tstageWould a NEW date only be added if the entire car were repainted?
The NEW date corresponds to the light weight the car had when built (or rebuilt and recapitalized as a new car). If the car were re-weighted at any point, the light weight stencil would have a shop code and date in place of the NEW date.
If the car gets repainted without being reweighed, the NEW date would be re-stenciled on the new paint job. For example, PFE repainted a lot of cars in the 1970s, and SP and UP repainted even more after the court-mandated breakup of PFE in 1978. Many of these cars continued receiving new paint into at least the 1980s while still having NEW on the light weight date.
"NEW" on a freight car refers to the car's weight when it was new, not to the car's age. As Randy mentions, that's covered by BLT.Depending on the era, most cars required re-weighing at set intervals - in the late '30s-era of my layout, that was every 30 months.Sometime around the due date, the car would be re-weighed, regardless of where it was located. It might be by a scale of the owning railroad, but it could just as easily be on a scale of any common carrier in North America. If the latter were the case, that railroad would send the owner-railroad a bill for materials and labour - I'm quite sure that this was a fixed rate continent-wide, and the accounting departments would figure out who owed what to whom, as Road A may have done 250 of Road B's cars, while Road B weighed 265 of road A's cars - road A would be billed for 15 re-weighings, while the rest would cancel each other out. Naturally, there were usually many more than just two railroads dealing with one another.If the re-weighed car's LT. WT. (Light or empty Weight) had changed by more than 100lbs, the old weight figure was painted over, and the new weight stencilled in its place. That change also precipitated a change in the number following the LD. LMT. (Load Limit).The LD. LMT. was based on some arbitrary figures linked to a car's carrying capacity, and the total of the LT. WT. and the LD. LMT. had to match (in most instances*) that number for the car in question.The arbitrary number for a 40 ton car was 136,000, for a 50 or 55 ton car 169,000, and for a 70 ton car, 210,000.* the exception was for cars on which the owning road had reduced the Load Limit due to structural deficiencies or other limitations, and this situation was denoted by a star symbol stencilled immediately to the left of LD.LMT. Such cars could have the LD. LMT. figure changed only by the road owning the car.The car's weight could change due to repairs or revisions made to the car since its last weighing (different brake gear, new floor or lining, replacement doors, etc.)
Once the new weight (or the original weight, if it remained unchanged) was determined, the NEW was painted-over and that area stencilled with the date that the re-weighing had been done, followed by the symbol (letters, numerals, or a combination of both) representing both the road, and the particular scale of that road, where the work had been done.
BLT. dates can change, too, but only if a car is re-built. To be considered as re-built, alterations must have been made to the underframe.For example, a 1500-car lot of 1921-built single sheathed wooden boxcars with steel fishbelly underframes is in rough shape, and the owning road wants to upgrade 500 of the best of them for continued service, and scrap the rest. They could remove the entire superstructure, including the floor, along with the brake system, couplers, and trucks and fit it with the latest brake gear, current standard for couplers and trucks, an all-steel body and new nailable steel floor, and when the 500 apparently new cars get stencilled, the BLT. date will still reflect that 1921 date.
I have a photo (which photobucket is currently incapable of letting me access) of an X-29 boxcar still in existence and accessible to me. While it's been repainted numerous times in numerous paint schemes, it's very obviously based on the original 1924 design and yet bears a 1934 BLT. date. Unaware, at that time, of the parameters governing the definition of "re-built", I built three models of the car as it might have looked at one time...not necessarily 1924, though. The car's original number was stencilled on the inside of the doors, and appears to be 54491. Some investigation revealed it to be from a 700 car lot constructed by Pullman between Nov. of 1929 and Jan. of 1930.I did know, from the current owner and from the car itself, that it had been converted to an express car sometime later in its existence, and that's the version which I modelled. The car number for that service (6866) was also stencilled on the inside of the doors.
Like the prototype, it has high speed trucks (locking centre-pins on the real one), quick-application passenger-type brakes, steam and signal lines, and a full array of grabirons, on the sides and ends, not seen on ordinary freight cars. It also has sill steps below the Youngstown-style (definitely not original) doors.
While the models turned out well, that 1934 built date still puzzled me, and on a later visit (armed with more knowledge, gleaned mostly from books), I crawled under the car to check its underframe.
Sure enough: the original car's underframe would have had a single wooden stringer on each side of the main frame member, but this one had two steel stringers on each side, indicating a truly re-built car. I was tempted to change the models.....but it probably would have made a mess - all three are the same car, two of them gone to good friends, and neither care that the frame is wrong.
Wayne
Wow, Wayne! I think this is the first time I've ever seen you post something...and NOT include a photo.
tstage Wow, Wayne! I think this is the first time I've ever seen you post something...and NOT include a photo. Tom
Yeah, Tom, it's pretty rare, I guess.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I usually try to include both the words and pictures. I think, though, that even if the pictures were available, the word count for this one would not likely drop much at all.
Folks will likely have to put up with the photos only 'til the end of 2018, though, as that's when my "pass" for photobucket will expire. I haven't yet decided if I'll seek other options, write even more-lengthy posts, or simply fade away.
doctorwayneFolks will likely have to put up with the photos only 'til the end of 2018, though, as that's when my "pass" for photobucket will expire. I haven't yet decided if I'll seek other options, write even more-lengthy posts, or simply fade away. Wayne
I hope not, Wayne. I always appreciate your contributions to a thread. This one being no different...
Re the original post/question...unless I missed it, you didn't state what year or period your layout is set. Sounds like if it's 1962-66 you'd for sure want to do the car as built. If you're modelling a later period, like the 1970's, it's possbile the car had still had the roofwalks, or had the roofwalks removed but still retained the original paint. 1980's or later, the roofwalks wouldn't be there.
BTW freight cars could retain their original paint a long time. I photographed a Great Northern boxcar, still in original late-sixties big sky blue paint and "GN" reporting marks, in service in 1990.
Stix,
The S&A AAR boxcar is not for my layout but for a friend. He's modeling the SCL in the early 70s.
doctorwayneFolks will likely have to put up with the photos only 'til the end of 2018, though, as that's when my "pass" for photobucket will expire. I haven't yet decided if I'll seek other options, write even more-lengthy posts, or simply fade away.
Oh dear -- and I assume that means that the photos will also disappear from Wayne's many older posts as well. That would be a real loss to the Forums. Kalmbach should offer to subsidize Wayne's photobucket costs!
A minor bit of running board trivia for the OP. If you look at the 1966 Car Builder's Cyclopedia (which of necessity shows plenty of cars built prior to 1966 itself) it shows that the very earliest hi-cube 86' auto parts boxcars had runnings boards ('roof walks')! And yeah, the brake wheel was way up near the roofline too. The rule required them when they were built. A meaningless exercise but a rule's a rule. I suppose a few modelers are precise enough as to date modeled that they have had to retro-fit running boards and high brake wheel platforms on their Athearn auto parts boxcars.
Cars of that extraordinary height (and thanks to cushion underframes, extreme distance from the cars to which they were coupled) really forced the issue on running boards.
It is true that running boards -- even some wood ones -- survived on older cars right up to (and according to dates on some of my slides, remembering that rules are made to be broken) a little bit beyond, the final absolute drop dead date for their removal.
It is also true that sometimes the tell-tales (which assumed use of the running boards) over main lines and some sidings remained in place long after they were no longer needed.
Dave Nelson
j. c. a bit more info 1974 roofwalks were started to be removed , 1982 roofwalks banned.
From interchange service. (BTW, I thought the date was 1978 for interchange service.) Rare, but I still see once in a while, a box car now relegated to MOW non-revenue service with a roof walk. The last time I remember seeing box cars with roof walks in revenue service was the early 1980s. They were some ex-RI 40' box cars in grain service on the CNW. Within a few years, both the cars and elevators still shipping by box cars would be gone.
Jeff
jeffhergertj. c. a bit more info 1974 roofwalks were started to be removed , 1982 roofwalks banned. (BTW, I thought the date was 1978 for interchange service.)
(BTW, I thought the date was 1978 for interchange service.)
The initial date set for compliance was 1974. When that proved impractical, it was pushed back to 1983. Owners could seek deferrals for non-compliant cars after that. Modifications could begin any time after the regulation change in 1966.