Tuscarora Valley Market Car #207

[kstrong]

Tuscarora Valley Railroad market car #207, built on a Bachmann box car. Full details can be found here:
http://www.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=37979

It's currently in the process of being painted, hopefully to be finished by this weekend; bottles and diapers not-withstanding.

Later,

K

[Ray Dunakin]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is a market car?

[toenailridgesl]

Really impressive. Good ideas come out of this conversion, especially laminating the sides to add width.

[kstrong]

Ray... "Market cars" were used primarily in agricultural regions to transport farmers' produce to market. Think of it as a farmer's market on wheels; or at least the truck which carried the farmer and his goods to the market. Generally, a single farmer wouldn't have enough produce to fill an entire car, but enough farmers along the way to the "big city" could.

I hadn't heard of them either, but as I dig deeper into eastern narrow gauge history, I'm discovering that it was surprisingly common for a railroad to have at least one or two such cars on the roster. In many cases, they were listed as box cars, so unless they showed up specifically in a photo, one would never know they existed.

Later,

K

[vsmith]

Nice job, and thanks for the little history lesson on this type of car.