The Evansville Packing reefer has made the long journey from Florida to the Eastern banks of the Mississippi. Its a bit cold and snowy here so I am sure this poor reefer is wondering what happened to it. Upon arrival it is being switched in the yard and will be set out for a local that will run this weekend.



Some of our rail served customers are sure looking forward to some of that fine ham.

MIke,

Just keep the "Minuteman" photos coming! Call that your contribution. It works for me!

Now, about those F-3s. How about a K-8 or a B-15c or even an R-1 with the speed lettering?

Pete

in Michigan

Friday morning March 7th 1951, 6 am: Freight OA4 arrives in Hartford Yard with the morning train.



The conductor of OA4 Bob Hannagan comes into the Superintendent's Office and says: "Bill, there is a strange looking car in the consist that you ought to check out." Bob says:"he's never seen a car quite like this in all his 27 years of railroading." I said:"Show me." So we walk the train until we get near the strange car.




I took off my hat and scratched my head and I told Bob: "I've never seen any car like it before myself. Wonder if this is somethin' the Chicago boys dreamed up for 1951." We go up and inspect the car and Bob says: "Look, someone has cut off all the ladders to the roof. Now, how in the heck are we supposed to get up there to used the brakes?" I go to the "B" end of the car and find that the brake wheel has been lowered and you can reach it by standing on the lower part of the ladder. I says to Bob: "Bob, looks like someone has already thought about that for you. Look." Bob scratches his head and says:"Well, I'll be danged". I told Bob to have the yard crew pull out the car so it can be inspected.



The car is pulled from the train and put on track 4. As we looked at the car we notice that it has been in service for quite a while. I says to Bob: "Bob, where is this car supposed to be going to?" Bob says: "It's supposed to go to the Gra-Rock Bottling Company in Wethersfield for loading." I told him: "After the car inspector looks it over and clears it, put it into NX21 the Valley Local later this morning." Bob says:" Okey Dokey boss. Boy are they in for a surprize." I said: "Yep" and turn to walk back to my office.



Car inspector Tony Fennelli came into my office and said: "Boss, that's the strangest car I have ever seen on this railroad." I told Tony: "Yep, everyone is saying that. I think the boys in Chicago have too much time on their hands." We both laughed and Tony says: "It's got some low couplers, so I'll have B.H. Brown and his boys take it to the RIP track , jack her up and put some spacers in." I said: "Tony, go ahead and do what you need to. We'll just hold her up until tomorrow's Valley job. It's empty for loading anyway." Tony said: "Okey Dokey boss." turned around and left my office.

Here's a photo of the car after repairs were made.




So the car will go on the NX21 local when my ops session is run later this month. (Crispy, the car is fine. Nice job on the weathering. I put a couple of spacers in over the trucks to bring up the coupler height. IT was too low. It's not perfect yet but I have to go to the hobby shop and get some more Kadee spacers for myself on Saturday. I finish getting the car into NMRA specs for you. So, don't worry about it.)

Bill

Bill, Crispy is thrilled with your story. This is a great learning experience for him as he now appreciates that things like the ladder height have changed over time. Thank-you for writing it the way you did. Thanks also for taking care of the coupler height, I'm usually quite good a checking these things, but for some reason this one escaped. It is most likely under weight as well since if the coupler height was not taken care of the weight was not either. Don't worry about that though. I suspect that Christopher put this on the layout before we did the checks, which is not unusual as he likes to run his completed models.

Not a problem. I had fun with the story. Like I said I still have a few cars that need the Kadee washers myself before I put them in service. I'm glad crispy liked the story. It will continue....id="size3">id="blue">id="Arial">

For many years I weighted cars to the NMRA standard. It is, after all, a STANDARD! Then I realized that my "big" steam locomotives could pull only about four cars and the caboose up a 2% grade. I weighted the locomotives, and got up to around seven cars. Somewhere in the last year or so, and probably on the Forum, I read a comment to the effect that if you need to keep adding weight to a car to make it track, you have a Track problem, not a weight problem. I have pretty decent track, so I dropped the first ounce of the NMRA standard, weighted the cars accordingly and found that my steamers can now pull a respectable eleven or twelve cars and the buggy up that grade. :up:

And yes, I am well aware that I am committing NMRA heresy, but it works....

Pete

in Michigan

Simon, Bill and Pete...I've been following along with this story. Lots of fun for sure! It's funny, I take pride in how my trains run and sometimes a friend will bring a specific freightcar for our train ops to show off to the group. We'll put it in a train...and...you guessed it...a "service interruption" would occur. That's the term some B&M employees referred to when a derailment occured. Well, we'd stop the session and get the work train out to clean up the site. Adds to the operations for sure.

After breakfast this morning I dropped around and had a chat with the Hudson Highlands' Putney station agent. He informed me that the HHRR's SB-1, the Brewster Turn, was going to drop a car at American Tool & Die shortly. Now Putney is one of my favorite railfanning sites but this was such a beautiful autumn morning, I figured I'd go out to more rural Slade Jct. to photograph a roll-by, then drive back into Putney to document the set-out.

At Slade Jct. I worked my way down the hill into the shallow cut that holds the HHRR's interchange track with the Housatonic RR, as it offers a nice shot down the tracks at on-coming HHRR traffic. This morning SB-1 was headed up by one of the road's big rear-cab consolidations, a change from the lighter camelbacks that usually handle this turn. Got off a nice approach shot with the big guy belching plenty of smoke.



I then had to work my way back up the hill to a better vantage point for my run-by shots. Took me a bit longer than I figured in the slippery wet grass and the train was moving faster than I had expected. So...my second shot only captured the tender and the first couple of cars. That lead car, from the Saybrook Northern, caught my attention right away as an example of one I hadn't seen before on the HHRR.



A home road car and a Pennsy boxcar were next in line as I got off the shot.



SB-1 was surprisingly short this morning for the motivepower that had been selected to pull it, so I can only figure there must be a heavy load scheduled for the return trip. That Pennsy box was followed up by a D&H covered hopper, an old New Haven boxcar and then the caboose.



Now it was time to scramble back up to the top of the hill, get in the car and make my quick run into Putney.

CNJ999

Well, because of the slippery footing in the dewy grass of the hillside, it took me decidedly longer than I had anticipated to clamber back up to the road, to where I had parked my car. Even though I hurried a bit on the drive, by the time I got into Putney, SB-1 had already uncoupled from its train and was moving to set-out the Saybrook Northern boxcar at American Tool & Die. I took up a vantage point on the embankment on the opposite side of the Route 55 underpass from AT&D and started snapping away.



Got a nice shot of Ken Seeley, the brakeman on SB-1, directing the crew in the placement of Saybrook Northern #58076 at one of AT&D's loading doors.



In just a few minutes, HHRR SB-1 had dropped the Saybrook car, re-coupled to its train and was gone, leaving the #58076 to be off-loaded by AT&D personnel.



I'll have to keep an eye on this one and see if I can catch its being picked up again, sometime soon.

CNJ999

John & Bill,

I've really enjoyed reading about the arrival of these first cars on your layouts! The pictures are great, too. :up:

AMEN!! Thanks for posting, guys! Great shots!

John, that's some of the best scenery I've ever seen!

Pete

in Michigan

Bill & John, . .Thanks for your scenarios and pictures. Bill, it would be nice to see your New Haven unit paired, and run on the Jersey Highlands layout. And John, those are extremely beautiful Fall pictures for an interchange operation.

Hi John,

Your HHRR is a great looking railroad. You've done a very nice job with the scenery.[^]

Can't wait till I get to that point on the Nashville Road. Right now, it is pretty much a "Plywood Pacific!"

Ain't that the truth! I'm sitting here looking at really cool scenery and wondering when (or IF) I'll ever get out of the carpentry phase and into the scenery phase!

Maybe if I spent more time on the layout and less on. . . . [:-hypnotized]


Nice shots!

Pete

in Michigan

Looks like we are off to a great start for this round of interchange! Some great pictures!

I finally got around to opening Andy's box and getting the boxcar out. I was hoping to get some pictures but things did not work out as I got called away from the layout to mediate a sibling dispute and never made it back downstairs.