What is Focus on Freight Cars?

There appears to be some confusion about the Focus on Freight Cars series such that I thought it a good idea to pen a brief synopsis of the books so that people have a better understanding of the scope and extent. The series is the brainchild of Al Hoffman, who found the negatives through his friendship with the late Michael Urac, who owned the collection of negatives. Al conceived the idea of the books and approached Richard Hendrickson about writing the accompanying text and captions for volumes one and two, that I subsequently published.

The passings of Richard Hendrickson and Michael Urac left the torch to be carried by me, albeit in my lesser capacity than Richard, given his encyclopedic knowledge of freight equipment.

An extremely common misconception about the books is that they are the result of careful sorting and culling of subject matter. In reality, the books include only photos in the collection and none that are not part of the collection. This is one of the appealing qualities of these works; the images have not been published in any other format, with a few exceptions where they were shared for use in prototype data sheets for freight car kits and similar uses. To reiterate and reinforce, only what is in the collection is included in these books. The books are not intended to be interpreted as an all-encompassing study of freight equipment. They are merely what was captured by the photographer. One of the great values is that since the photos were to be used to create model kits, they include many exceptional detail images that are of great value to modelers and researchers alike, in addition to the general freight car "portraits" (my emphasis as I believe these detail photos are the great value of these books).

Segueing from the previous paragraph, it bears reiterating that the work collectively is not intended to be the definitive look at freight equipment of the era. A common query is why such and such a car from a specific railroad is not included. The reason is simple: if there is not a photograph of a car in the collection, it is not included. The reasoning is that basic. There are no slights or omissions intended.

Wordy Wednesday - Illinois Central 176000-series Single Sheathed Box Cars

Zanesville, Ohio, Paul Dunn photo, Howard Ameling Collection

In 1927, the Illinois Central received 500 cars each from Pullman Car & Manufacturing (predecessor to Pullman-Standard which was the result of the merger of Pullman with Standard Steel Car) and Mt. Vernon Car Manufacturing Co. The cars were of single sheathed construction with zee-bar structural members arranged in a Howe truss configuration. They had fewer ‘panels’ per side, with only four diagonals total. Other specialties included Hutchins Dry Lading roofs, Youngstown steel doors with Camel no. 50 fixtures, Dreadnaught steel ends (three main corrugations in the top panel over five in the bottom), and cast steel sideframe trucks (the prototype's trucks are most, but not exactly like, the 40-ton ARA trucks with Barber Lateral Motion detail from Tahoe - TMW-114 and TMW-214). One other notable feature was that the side sills were angles, rather than the more common channel sections. The cars were initially assigned to the 176000 series, but after the war were renumbered into the 16000 series.

Dunsmuir, California, September 4, 1954, Will Whittaker photo

HO scale models were offered by Sunshine approximately 20 years ago. They were quite good, featuring ‘board-by-board’ patterns. At this year’s Chicagoland RPM, the gift to early registrants was a set of parts to replicate these cars using an Accurail 7100 undecorated box car kit as the foundation. The parts include ends, door rollers, underframe parts, AB brake components, and other details. One note is that the crossbearer bottom cover plates have a single row of rivets in the parts set while the prototype had a double row. Although I do not have drawings, this is perhaps due to the use of pressed steel crossbearer shapes that were arranged flat back to back (again, this is purely my supposition).

These cars were included in Focus on Freight Cars, Volume One, pages 26-27.

It is my goal to complete all four of the recent gift kitbashes from the 2016-2019 meets to display at next year’s event. The cars are the B&O M-15K rebuilt Wagontop box car, Chicago Great Western 1937 AAR box car with Carbuilder’s ends, Fruit Growers truss rod reefer, and the IC single sheathed box car. Let’s see if I can keep to that timetable.

Illinois Central car diagram

"The Jack Burgess Files" no. 4: Great Northern single sheathed box car GN 31181

All photos by Jack Burgess, Newark, California, October, 1968

It is interesting that for all of its composite box cars, with new cars being received into the mid-1940s, the Great Northern had only one class of 40' single sheathed box cars. The cars were assembled/built at the GN's St. Cloud shops in 1927 using underframes furnished by Pressed Steel Car Company. The cars were placed in the series 31000-31499.

The cars were delivered with square corner Dreadnaught ends with three primary corrugations in the top panel over five in the bottom. As delivered, the cars were equipped with unpowered, shaft-style hand brakes. In later years, they were fitted with power hand brakes of both Ajax (seen here) and Universal types. Ladders were used on both the sides and ends.

The Murphy XLA or "Pivoted, Flexible" roof was used throughout the life of the cars, as illustrated here.

As delivered, the cars were equipped with wood doors. Beginning in the 1940s, the GN progressively replaced the wood doors with Youngstown Steel corrugated doors. The wood doors featured a large, front-facing goat emblem. With the replacement of the doors, a smaller emblem was placed between the structural members.

The GN, along with the Seaboard Air Line, was a fairly strong user of the unusual Dalman-Andrews truck, as illustrated here. Note the snubber in the spring package (second of the four springs from the right).

Almost as unusual as single sheathed 40' box cars on the GN, were single sheathed box cars with four diagonal "zee-bar" structural members per side that were arranged in a Pratt truss. The ARA design used "hat" section structural members in a Pratt truss, but the vast majority of similar box cars with "zee-bar" members employed the Howe truss. For early photos of this car, as well as detailed photos of ARA and Howe truss cars, see Focus on Freight Cars, Volume Nine from Speedwitch.

Sunshine Models produced HO scale resin models for these cars as kits 77.1 and 77.2.

Focus on Freight Cars Freebie

While going through the head end, passenger, and locomotive photos in preparation for Focus on Freight Cars, Vol. Eleven, I found a single freight car photo mixed in with the aforementioned subject matter. That part of the series is closed, unless the remainder of the freight car negatives turn up at some future date. However, I thought I would share the photo that was uncovered. It was Union Oil of California 8018, a three compartment car built in May, 1916 (near as I can discern, although the image is not perfectly sharp) by General American. It is a pre-1917 GATC design, with different bolsters than used on the 1917-design cars and slightly higher running boards (note the metal pieces on top of the center sills at the draft gear, used to raise the height of the running boards). It is typical of cars built prior to May 1, 1917, with a single row of rivets where the radially arranged tank sheets overlapped. This car has double rivet rows in two places; on these double rows, the row closest to the center of the car is where the tank sheets overlap and the rows closer to the ends of the car are where the center compartment's tank heads (ends) are located (thank you to Dan Smith for the correction). Dan also noted that this car had seven tank bands. I will add that the three bands where the dome are located are "yoke-style", splitting and circling the dome. The ones located at the domes at the ends of the car also have steps on their faces, a common trait on early GATC design cars. On this car, the center compartment ("B") was 2,057 gallons capacity, while the nearest compartment ("C") was 2,984 and the far compartment ("A") was 2,982 gallons capacity. The double rivet rows are spaced relatively close to each other because of the disparity between the capacities of the center compartment versus the two outer compartments. Enjoy!

Note: this post has been edited to correct an error in the original posting, as described above.

It's still magical

Pacific Fruit Express R-30-14 32983 from the Michael Urac Collection

I spent most of today in a darkroom, printing photos from the Michael Urac Collection as I am diligently working to get another volume of Focus on Freight Cars put together. It is the first time I have printed photos from negatives since my last year of high school. In a word, it was magical. I had forgotten about how exciting it is to put the paper into a tray of developer and wait in anticipation until that blank sheet springs to life as a photo. 

How you may ask, did I do it, given that I am smack dab in the middle of moving? I joined a community photography center - PhotosynthesisCT. If you have old negatives, be they of freight cars or anything else, I urge you to see if you have such a resource in your community. Alternatively, you could also break out that old Nikon and throw a roll of Tri-X into it and see what magic you can create. Go for it; it's a lot of fun...

P.S. as a little teaser, I'll let slip that the photo shown above will be in Volume 3 of Focus on Freight Cars.