January 25, 2021
#415
Gentle reader,
In the days of yore, last Century, many children around the world longed to have a model railroad set to play with.
My family never had one, my brother and I liked cars, so, in the 1960's our parents surprised us one Christmas with an Aurora Model Motoring HO slot car set.
However, near the end of the last Millennium, we bought a simple figure 8 HO train set for us and the kids to play with.
Where we lived, the basement had a large laundry/utility room and since we already had HO slot cars and now trains, I devised a set of two "tables" made from four foot by eight foot plywood with one inch by four inch barrier walls all the way around.
The bottom table had hinged legs on one end and the other end rested on a workbench top. The upper table was designed to "nest" right on top of the bottom table. To play with slot cars, only the bottom one was lowered. To play with trains, both were.
I created a series of ropes and pulleys so that one could raise and lower one or both tables. When they were raised, they were up against the ceiling. Which is what you see here:
That is our daughter who is now 33 with three children. You can see the ropes and one of the four smaller pulleys which were in each corner of the tables.
Here are some of the new and older cars we bought at hobby shops or the annual train show.
When we moved from that townhouse to our present home, we did not have a room which we could dedicate to our HO activities. So, the trains, track and structures were stored in the attic for several years.
After the kids moved out and stopped moving back in, one of the two shelves I built for the two of them stayed here. It held a number of things over the years, finally I dedicated the top four shelves to display the rail cars and locomotives. I put a plexiglass cover over the front of the shelves to keep little (grandchildren) fingers from trying to pick up the train cars. I had hoped that we would someday make space for trains or cars to be played with.
Where I placed it, it was too wide for the wall behind it, but I dealt with it.
I was focused on the Porsche poster for another article, so the locomotives are out of blurry. I have NO idea what that white wavy thing is at the top right in the photo!
Since we have been buying, collecting and racing 1:64th scale diecast cars, we have amassed more than 2000 of them.
Nancy did not have a place to display hers and I, after redoing this room to make it more user friendly and aesthetically pleasing, I decided the shelf needed to go. Giving it to her filled the need for both of us.
The locomotives took up the entire top shelf, so I started with them. After removing as much dust as I could using a combination of a Swiffer 360 and canned air (which is really a refrigerant) I began photographing each one.
Soon I realized that with Nancy downstairs preparing a place in the family room
for the shelf, I just needed to get them off of it, clean the shelf, then get
her help getting it to the family room.So this is all of the cars which we still posses. A total of 84. The vintage ones were Nancy's fathers as was much of the track. I tried to arrange the many box cars like a spectrum of visible colors. The length differences surprised me. Having worked on subway cars for 35 years, all seven types were the same length: 75 feet.
The oldest ones have wear and weathering and plain old dirt. They also have more details than newer ones, including sliding doors.
This "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" is unique to me in that both the locomotive AND the tender are powered.
You can see the metal wheels on the tender and the wires to it from the locomotive. All of the steam rolling stock are solid metal and some quite weighty for their diminutive size. That's 9.8 ounces. Once I employed my lighted magnifying glass and realized this was a PRR* locomotive, it solved the mystery of why one of the tenders has no standard coupler on the front of it and the other PRR locomotive does have that type of coupler.
*Pennsylvania Rail Road.
The PRR locomotive's weight, below.
The following set of photos is the other PRR locomotive, which we do not have a tender for. The lettering fonts being the same is what caused my initial confusion.
The camera had focused not on the middle of the cars, but further back.
Here, you can see the dust I did not notice until editing these pictures and the lack of a standard coupler on the front of the tender.
Which is why I was delighted when I saw the keystone with PRR within it on the other locomotive for which this tender is now mated. Unlike in these photos.
The combined weight of the mismatched pair.
Since Nancy's family was from Virginia, it would make sense for her dad to choose local (if no longer in service) railroads.
It is interesting to me that the back of this locomotive has no access point to get coal from the tender. Might it be a yard locomotive?
And here is it's weight.
I abandoned the photographing of individual vehicles after these engines and concentrated upon finishing removing most of the dust and carefully packing them away. Again. The steam and largest/newest diesel-electric locomotive starting and the left end. The B&O pair are both locomotives, but the farthest car has no real cab. Again, I could tell the age and/or quality of similar looking locomotives by their heft and material used to make them.
We bought the Amtrak set at a train show. Two much older passenger cars to match the steam locomotives. The Chessie caboose is missing a truck and the Virginian hopper is missing both trucks.
We had a bunch more cabooses, but must have sold the rest. All of the "cabeese" above in a 2009 photo.
Union Pacific box car is the largest by far, and it's silver roof stands out. The worn paint of the one in the middle show's it was her dad's.
Two coal cars with a gravel car in between. A triplet of tractors and two logs cars. The one to the right of those tilts to let the logs roll off to the side of the tracks.
I'm not sure what kind of car the top left one is. The beige colored piece is designed to rotate upward on pins, but one is broken off. A pair of Santa Fe semi trailers predate containers being shipped by rail. The maintenance cars you will see more of below. The flat car is quite heavy due to a sheet of steel beneath the floor.
The different lengths of the red boxcars is quite evident in this group. Top row starts with that flat car, then another tractor car, sans tractors, I don't know what the low-walled cars are called and four hoppers between them. On the brown one, the doors open. Tankers with five being of similar size, but different designs and the really long one being for Exxon products.
And the last of the boxcars, again showing size disparity.
As promised, the maintenance cars. The Santa Fe crane car is really interesting. I had two loose axles and the solo truck from the Chessie caboose, so I put them on the car above.
Note "Virginia & Truckee" on the dark red one. But it refers to the other Virginia, as in Virginia City, Kansas.
You can see the log cars and three tractors in this photo and the side of some of the diesel locomotives. A closer look at the B&O diesel pair and the super long Illinois Central Gulf locomotive. The rest of the diesels, the "Midnight Special" reminds me of the locomotive in that silly Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor film Silver Streak. It bothered me that the name of the fictitious railroad was Amroad, it seems to me Amrail would have worked better. A long view of all 84 of the cars, sans the two truck-less ones.
This series of pictures are all from 2009. It gives you better views of many of the cars at angles not seen above.
Cattle cars.
The green/black Burlington Northern locomotive is all plastic and SO lightweight as a result. Cheap, for sure.
A San Francisco cable car, a vintage-looking electric street car and one of her dad's box cars that has seen better days.
All four of these were his.
The Forest Lumber tilting car, above.
Again, the length difference between older tankers and the much newer EXXON one.
I am a box keeper, so I am certain, somewhere in the attic are all these boxes safely stored.
Various cars and engines arranged upon the carpet when it was much never than now. Whew! Well, that is it for now. The cars, all 84, are all safely padded and packed into sealed boxes in the attic awaiting that day, probably after we have left this mortal coil, when younger hands than ours slice the tape and open the boxes to see what is inside.
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Thanks!
Scott & Nancy
January 25, 2021
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