IrwinsJournal.com Presents: The Unofficial Micro-Trains® Release Report Issue #255 – March, 2018 (Not affiliated with Micro-Trains Line, Inc.) Copyright ©2018, George J. Irwin. Reproduction prohibited. Please see legal notice at the end of this document. Hello again everyone… and let’s get right into the news and views for this month. N SCALE NEW RELEASE FREIGHT EQUIPMENT: 058 00 320, $28.95 Reporting Marks: HJH Co. 305. 36 Foot Wood Double Sheathed Refrigerator, Truss Rod Underframe, Vertical Brake Staff, Heinz. #7 in the Heinz Series (pre-orders taken April 2017). Brown with black underframe and arch bar trucks. Green and white Heinz pickle trademark on left. Red with white outline lettering including “57 Varieties” on left and “India Relish” and reporting marks on right. White end markings. Approximate Time Period: 1890s. Okay, so just what is India Relish? Well, according to the website Saveur.com, it was an 1889 invention of H.J. Heinz. “The original secret recipe, loosely based on traditional Indian relishes, featured a sugared and vinegared mix of pickled cucumbers, green tomatoes, cauliflower, white onions, red bell peppers, celery, and mustard seed, plus cinnamon and allspice.” The Food and Drug Administration took exception to the name—since India Relish was not actually from India. But the case against Heinz was dismissed when it was determined that the name was being used generically. I thought that this product was one of the 57 Varieties that was no longer available—but it is. It can be procured from at least that large Internet-based purveyor of items which is named for a large South American river. The ingredients have changed: Pickles, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cabbage, Distilled White Vinegar, Alum, Xanthan Gum, Dehydrated Red Bell Peppers, and a few other things. Blogger Dan Woeller “The Food Etymologist” that relish was around before Heinz was, and before sauerkraut. “An even older and perhaps more important condiment across American convenience cuisine is pickle relish. While today it’s not as popular as ketchup or even salsa, it was the first true American condiment, even though borrowed from Indian chutneys, and still ranks as top five in most used condiments. Relishes go back to the late 1700s, but gained popularity in the 1850s in America… Most believe relishes originated from the need to preserve vegetables for winter, and that its roots extend back to India, where chutney, India’s relish like condiment, goes back to the 1600s.” I’m going to stick with my 1890’s guess on the ATP. Clover House has dry transfers for a similar car, with yellow sides, however, not brown ones. They place that car as circa 1907. 1 116 00 070, $23.40 Road Number: 565700 (will be “N&W 565700” in website listings). Troop Sleeper, Norfolk and Western (Company Service). Green with yellow grab irons. White lettering including circa 1964 round “hamburger” herald at top left, roadname at bottom left and road number at bottom right. Approximate Time Period: no earlier than 1964 into the 1980s. How about this: this former troop sleeper gets a mention in the April 1970 issue of the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER). Okay, it’s not much of a mention—it’s in the group of only 63 cars scattered in the number series 564002 to 565899, described as “Miscellaneous” in a section of the N&W’s ORER entry that is also headlined “Miscellaneous Equipment – Non- Revenue,” but hey, it’s there. The Approximate Time Period for this car couldn’t start any earlier than 1964, as the herald which appears on the car was formally introduced in December 1963. That herald is sometimes referred to, including in these bytes, as the “Hamburger” version, perhaps to distinguish from the earlier and also round herald. And that herald was introduced just a bit prior to the N&W’s major, and complex, expansion with takeover of the Wabash, Nickel Plate, Pittsburgh and West Virginia and Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroads. The Wabash had picked up 64 surplus troop sleepers and converted them to various uses. The N&W inherited at least some of these following the multi- way merger. However, the new owner apparently took its time repainting these cars, as it did much of the other railroad’s equipment. Witness, for example, converted troop sleeper Wabash 5668, still in its former owner’s paint in 1969 in a photo in the Wabash/Nickel Plate/ DT&I Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. (A future MTL release, perhaps?) Meanwhile, a car painted how MTL modeled it can be found on Page 128—yes, the last page!— of the Norfolk and Western Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment. It is not, however, a bingo; it’s Road Number 565621, as found in Frankfort, Indiana (on the former Nickel Plate, yet!) in July 1985. Structurally, it still looks very much the same as it did when in the employ of the United States Army, and still has those Allied Full Cushion trucks, which were banned from interchange service all the way back in the mid-1950s. The green paint is considerably faded from the hue that Micro-Trains used, which borders on “where do I plug this in” bright. The Color Guide gives the series of these cars as 565600 to 565621 and confirms their Wabash heritage. Need a bingo for this car? Me too. It’s in glorious black and white over at the archives of the Norfolk & Western Historical Society ( www.nwhs.org ). On the N&W this was called a “camp car.” It was found in Decatur, Illinois in March 1968. Look for photo NW01683. 2 130 00 240, $37.95 Reporting Marks: NS 387. Bay Window Caboose, Windowless Sides, No Battery Box, Norfolk Southern (original). Gray with red and white zebra striped ends. Black underframe and trucks. White end rails. Black lettering including roadname across top and reporting marks left of bay window. Red “N” and black “S” to right of cupola. Approximate Time Period: 1969 to present for this particular car (see text). Since at least 2009, this caboose has been preserved at Spencer Shops, formerly a key repair facility for the Southern Railway and now the home of the North Carolina Transportation Museum. Photos of the car at the museum, found on RRPictureArchives, show the key delta plainly: it has a window on either side of the bay window, while the MTL 130 body style has windowless sides. MTL’s car copy describes this car and five others numbered 386 to 391 as constructed from boxcars by the Southern Iron and Equipment Company (SIECO), which is perhaps better known as the manufacturer of significant numbers of Incentive Per Diem boxcars. I’d hoped I would find photos of these cars in service, and I didn’t have to look very far. George Elwood’s “Fallen Flags” site ( www.rr-fallenflags.org ) has images of the 386, 387 and 389, all lensed by well-known rail photographer Warren Calloway. They were all taken at Raleigh, North Carolina in 1969, 1970 and 1971 respectively. The end zebra striping extended to the roofline on the real cars, which also had a running board—now that’s different on a bay window caboose. These cars don’t appear in the ORER for April 1970—the Norfolk Southern didn’t list company service equipment in its entry. And of course, this time we refer to the “original” Norfolk Southern, the line that connected Charlotte, North Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia and existed independently from 1942 to 1974. The Southern Railway picked up the “old” NS in 1974 and, as we know, did some legal maneuvering to reuse the name for its 1982 merger with the N&W. 135 00 091 and 135 00 092, $29.90 each Reporting Marks: BN 64003 and 64018. 70 Foot Well Cars, Burlington Northern. Red with mostly white lettering including reporting marks on left and small herald right of center. White on black COTS stencil on far right. Approximate Time Period: 1991 (build date given by MTL) to early decade of the 2000s. Given that Micro-Trains has already done six well cars in this paint scheme in Z Scale, this is a copy and paste opportunity, right? Not really. Quoth MTL: “In early 1991, Burlington Northern received an order of 16 single Husky-Stack cars from Gunderson…” So, no, as the Z Scale entries (540 020 catalog numbers) represented cars from multi-unit sets. 3 The 1991 build date helps, of course. The July 1992 ORER has the 16 cars described as “Flat, Double Stack Pack” numbered 64003 to 64018. The vital statistics were: inside length 48 feet, inside width 8 feet 8 inches, outside length 71 feet 8 inches, extreme height 4 feet 9 inches— unloaded, that is—and capacity 154,000 pounds. The group was already down to 12 cars in the January 2000 ORER under the BNSF registration. Just two remained as of the October 2004 Equipment Register, neither of which were the numbers MTL selected. RRPictureArchives has a 1991 photo of sister car BN 64015, in which are stacked two BN America containers. It’s an oblique shot taken in fading light, but it will have to do. 181 00 040, $26.80. Reporting Marks: UP 499030. 50 Foot Steel Boxcar, Single Plug Door, No Running Board, Short Side Ladders, Union Pacific. Orange sides, aluminum roof, ends, underframe, trucks, and couplers. Black lettering including roadname and reporting marks on left. Slogan “Ship and Travel and Automated Rail Way” with red, white and blue shield herald on right.