The Ambroid Western Union Material Car

I've been fascinated by the Ambroid 1 in 5000 line of wood craftsman kits since they first came out in the 1950s, and ovwr the years, I've built a number of them. One of the most interesting is the Western Union Material Car, which according to a web link was reviewed in Model Railroader in 1959. I found one maybe 25 years ago partly finished at a swap meet, and I finished it and brought it up to operability with added weight, decent trucks, Kadees, and so forth.

Here is a shot of the prototype 7559 by Christopher Palmieri. My understanding is that this particular car was set out for many years at the Boston and Maine yard in East Deerfield, MA.

Here are several other prototype photos:

It looks like no two of these were exactly alike, differing in window placement, truck style, etc.

From browsing the web, I ran across an article by W E Crippen in the Western Union Technical Review for October, 1961, "The End of an Era":

Prior to 1914, "line gangs," as they were called, were housed either in hotels or in railroad owned boxcar outfits that were equipped with such bare necessities as double-deck bunks, pot-bellied stoves, wash bowls, oil lamps, and other appointments in keeping with the time.

By 1914, many of the original pole lines were in need of repair because of deterioration or because the ever increasing wire load had become too great for the old pole lines to carry. Thus was undertaken the beginning of a heavy reconstruction program that was to last until the latter part of the 1920's and the start of the depression. The program reached its peak between 1925 and 1930.

At the start of this program, The Western Union Telegraph Company foresaw the benefits that could be derived from having the line gangs housed in outfits that could be set out at any location at any time or that could be moved to emergency areas quickly, at a much lower cost than if they were housed in hotels, some of which might be long distances from the jobsites.

. . . a camp car shop was established at Chattanooga, Tennessee as a headquarters for all outfit remodeling, maintenance, and supplies. This shop flourished and was busy continually until about 1930, when it entered upon a decline in activity that continued until a few years ago when the servicing of outfits was no longer required. (The camp car shop was then converted into a shop for manufacturing and assembling equipment to meet other and present day requirements.)

At the peak of the heavy reconstruction period, between 1925 and 1930, there were about 120 of these outfits scattered throughout the United States. By that time, the type of railroad cars used and the arrangement of the associated equipment had been fairly well standardized. These later models consisted of two Pullman cars about seventy feet in length (one sleeping car and one dining car), two boxcars (one tool car and one material car), and a steel tank car (water car). In fact, No. 10 recently sold at Portland consisted of two Pullman coaches, two boxcars, one tank car, and associated equipment.

The outfits were gradually sold off between the 1940s and about 1960, with the material cars staying on for some additional years. I'm not sure exactly what service the material cars were in in the years after the outfits were sold. At least one of the material cars was sold to the Soo Line:

Notice that this Soo Line car has a fishbelly center sill like the Ambroid car and the prototype 7559, but the other WUTX prototypes have straight center sills. After I found the Ambroid car at the top of this post, I found and restored a second car, which I now intend to repaint boxcar red and letter for the Soo Line car in these photos.

Ertl Collectibles HO Freight Cars

When they came out in the 1990s, I passed over the HO freight cars from Ertl Collectibles. This post at a site called Intrernet Modeler gives some background. What it misses is the reason I initially passed them over -- the gondola at least was a knockoff of a Maine Central prototype that was done as a urethane kit that was available from the onetime store at the Rensselaer club. It may have been a certain snobbery on my part that kept me from taking the line more seriously at the time.

More recently, I saw these cars in use in photos of layouts posted on Facebook now and then, and they looked remarkably good. They were quite well detailed for plastic models of the time, they were very well painted, and they were recognizably different from run-of-the-mill cars by Athearn and Roundhouse. So I began to look for them on eBay. At this point, It's hard to find vintage cars with all the pieces on eBay for less than $15-20, while current cars from Accurail are about $20. I've found Ertl cars in this general range. It's possible that their original prices were high for the 1990s market, so there's a lot of new old stock out there.

My most recent find was one of the flat cars. This is a 40-foot car with a K brake, so its prototype dates from about the 1920s through 1940s,and the paint schemes seem to reflect this. Here is the car, a Cotton Belt version, serving as an idler for my Sheepscot pile driver, which is one potential use for these cars on a more modern layout.

I've discovered several things about these cars. One is that the Kadee clone couplers are plastic, and the knuckle spring is a single plastic finger that loses its springiness fairly quickly. It should be replaced with Kadees. However, getting the coupler box cover off without damaging it is a challenge, and anyhow, all model couplers really need to be mounted with screws to allow replacement or adjustment down the road. So the boxes need to be drilled out #50 and tapped 2-56, with matching holes in the covers drilled #43. This will help make the car operable, as will replacing the plastic wheels with Kadees or equivalent.

The flat cars don't have any added metal weight, which means they also need loads to bring them up to an operable weight. The decks are removable and held in place with two small screws under the chassis, which makes weathering the deck easy. Since the paint schemes and details of the cars put them in the 1920s-40s period, potential loads on a more modern themed layout would probably best involve railroad maintenance items like diesel engines, track materials, and so forth. Another use would be to convert them to log cars with log bunks and log loads.

Below is one of the Ertl gons, this one lettered for the Jersey Central.

This has a Chooch 7055 40 foot scrap load installed. This fits easily, a little bit short for the inside length of the car, which is 42 scale feet. The gon also generally dates from the 1920s through 1940s, but it has a nicely detailed AB brake system, and the available paint schemes seem to date more from the 1950s.

This style of low-side 40-foot gon seems to have been common in New England, the Pennsylvania anthracite coal fields, and the Southeastern US. The Ertl road names generally match railroads in these locations. Unlike the flat cars, the Ertl gons have metal weights, but like the flat cars, you need to do some work to install Kadees and metal wheels.

Model Engineering Works Die Cast Caboose From The 1950s

Many years ago I found a small logging caboose of die cast zinc alloy at a hobby shop. I gradually converted it to use Kadees and shimmed up the trucks to get the couplers in line.

A web search brings up a reference to a Model Engineering Works ad for this car from 1953. It has a prototype that ran on the Grasse River Railroad in upstate New York.

After I painted it, I found I had to do more work, including drilling out the truck screw holes in the bolsters to handle 2-56 screws and tap, which led to some dings in the paint. I still have to do more work adjusting the play in the truck screws so that it stays on the track reliably. Then I'll touch up the paint and add lettering. But the phtos suggest it didn't have glass in the windows.

I vaguely recall seeing a photo of one of these on John Allen's G&D, but I haven't been able to find anything in the photos I've found on the web. It's entirely possible that nobody ever got these to run well.

Sheepscot Pile Driver Conversion For The Walthers Crane

Some years ago I ordered a Sheepscot Scale Products pile driver conversion kit for the Walthers crane. Sheepscot for a time offered a number of kits from materials including cast metal, etched brass, wood sheet and strip, and cast plaster. I found a donor Walthers crane at a swap meet and assembled the kit, but I never got around to painting it.

I finally did paint it this past week:

I'm still not sure how I'll letter it. I've found a few similar prototype pile drivers on the web:

The Kato Pocket Line Steeple Cab

The Kato Pocket Line N scale steeple cab electric loco is an intriguing model and probably about the least expensive powered unit in any scale. A web search shows a price range between $35-$45.

Unlike some other cheapo locos in that price range, this has a state of the art coreless motor, and it runs very well. However, Kato warns that running it on DCC without a decoder will damage the motor, so outise of a first test to see how it does on DCC, I've run mine on straight DC. It will run on DCC, but it gives out a loud screech, which doesn't sound good. Given the coreless motor, it runs very well on straight DC. There is a YouTube video on DCC conversion using Z scale decoders like the Digitrax D126.

I'm not satisfied with the pre-molded plastic colors. The easiest solution would be to paint it all black, and some of the closer prototypes in the US were this way:

Even painitng the pantograph black would be an improvement.