Ore Cars

Back in 2015, I posted on an AHM B&LE ore car I found at a swap meet. I talked then about the cars' background as I knew it at the time, saying that I thought they ran mainly in Pennsylvania and Ohio, though they did wander onto the EL and PRR.

Just lately, because my interest in ore railroads continues to simmer, I got a DVD, C Vision's Vintage Ore Railroads. The second half covers C&NW and Milwaukee Road joint ore operations on Michigan's Upper Peninsula in the early and mid 1970s, when they were still using FM H16-66 "Baby Train Masters". In just a couple of scenes, the video showed some of these same B&LE ore cars re-stenciled with C&NW reporting marks but otherwise carrying the old B&LE paint and lettering.

This prompted me to pull out the car I'd gotten at a 2015 swap meet, which had since migrated to the purgatory box.

I did my usual thing that I do with AHM cars, tossed the trucks with the pizza cutter wheels and truck-mounted horn-hooks, installed body-mounted Kadee boxes with mounting holes drilled and tapped for 2-56 screws, and also plugged the bolster holes with plastic sprue material in order to drill them out #50 and tap 2-56 for mounting screws.

I masked off the sides, sprayed the ends and underbody with a more or less close match to the factory paint, and installed short-shank Kadee #153 couplers. I scrounged new trucks from the junk box.

I gave the sides a light respray with the body paint mixed with flat finish to blend things in.

The new car is on the left, an older one that I did with Champ decals 35 years ago is on the right.

The car will get metal wheels with my next trip to the train store. If I can find some CNW reporting marks in my decal files, I'll restencil them on this car, too. Based on the info in the C Vision video, here's an old Roundhouse ribbed ore car with taconite side extensions and Herald King CNW decals posed next to a B&LE hopper.

The B&LE cars continue to puzzle me. I have an ORER from 1984 that lists B&LE ore cars in series 20000-20982 with an overall length of 24 feet, which is the number series of cars I see in photos and on which the AHM cars seem to be patterned. A 24 foot length would make them capable of unloading on Lake Superior ore docks. However, the DVD shows them on CNW-MILW all rail trains, which makes me think the ORER entry is somehow in error, and these cars are in fact slightly larger.

Poking around YouTube, I found a channel by a guy who is having our brand of fun with the hobby and intermingling Roundhouse and AHM ore cars:

I keep building ore cars, but I haven't fully figured out how to work them into my operation. But I'm thinking about it. Focus on the piece of plywood just above the center of the photo and stay tuned.