Since this series has been something of an incentive for me to pull out model intermodal equipment I hadn't been using, I'm going to continue with a couple other equipment categories.
The first is a Coach Yard brass model of a Santa Fe mail container flat. These were converted from heavyweight passenger cars in 1960 and 1962 and numbered 220-226.
This is actually the first time I ever took this out of the box, although it had been in my closet for 20 years or so. I think the main obstacle was that nobody ever made decals for the containers. However, it shoudn't be that much of a task to print up the decals with black lettering on decal paper using my computer printer. Maybe I need to get on this!
I believe these ran mostly on the San Francisco Chief in the 1960s. The Santa Fe in the 1960s had other flats that carried early Railway Express Agency style containers, and I think these could be found in mail and pggybck trains as well.
Next is a Walthers 1950s piggyback flat with a Classic Metal Works UP trailer. It took this series to get me to put the two together, but I now have to figure out exactly how I'll use them.
Last is a bigger issue and a different kind of intermodal. Here is an Atlas flat for municipal solid waste containers.
This kind of container seems to be used mostly in the New York-New Jersey area, but it's by no means the only kind of container in this sort of service. In my part of the country, several types are in use, mostly for "dirty dirt" transfer of contaminated soil to landfills in places like Utah. Another type is simply old 20-foot containers with the roof removed and replaced with a tarp:
Note that the flat car seems to be the same, with similar reporting marks, as the Atlas model. But more common are containers that don't seem to have commercial model equivalents:
Containers like these can also be found in regular well cars.
More nice finds in your train closet!!!! Thankfully Empire City doesn't accept solid municipal waste! This intermodal op has sure got us digging out trains and adding more projects to the to-do lists. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteVery nice cars. I do like the unique mail car. Never saw anything like it. Rock Ridge sends all solid waste to another country, like Ohio. Containers on flat cars are still seen here in the east.
ReplyDeleteInteresting collection of rolling stock! I've never seen one of those Santa Fe container flats made from a passenger car. I hope you do create some decals for it. I'd like to see that. I'm familiar with the solid waste cars. I've seen them running on the River Le when I last visited UpState NY a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteVery cool segment and intermodal equipment. The Santa Fe heavyweight conversations look very interesting. Your information on the “dirty” dirt containers is quite timely. I saw a whole block of cars with those containers on flat cars, heading west on the Moffat line this weekend.
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