highpeak

I would have thought you could quote some information under a Fair Use doctrine as long as you don't quote the whole set of accounts. Some information is at http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p27_work_of_others and http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p09_fair_use

I was looking for information about Micro Engineering weathered rail and found this video showing their track being made: Some interesting comments below the video. Anyway, in response to the comment about weathered rail, Micro Engineering make it alongside non-weathered rail. All it is is a chemical blackening. You'd need to clean it off wherever you planned to solder feeder wires to the rail. There is a discussion on the pros and cons of weathered rail at http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=64779. In my experience, ballasting and weathering track is where most of the time goes whether it's ready-to-lay or handmade.

Gap cut close to rail base: Tie plate cut from CV tie and sanded down very thin: While cutting and sanding tie plates might sound a bit tedious, it is actually quite mind-numbing. But I don't think it takes any more time than filling gaps with putty and sanding them, and the PCB ties would really stick out like sore thumbs amid the plastic ones if there was no tie plate detail at all. I have tried the tie plates from the Proto 87 stores but found that the rail foot of the Model Engineering code 70 rail I am using is too wide to fit them. I don't know whether they make different ones for code 83 that might work, but the sanding down method works for me, fiddly though it is.

I am using Central Valley turnout bases as a jig using an idea developed by Joe Fugate. On the copper clad timbers I cut the gap where it can be hidden by a plastic tie plate salvaged from surplus CV ties. The tie plates can be thinned down by rubbing them on sandpaper until they are "only wafer-thin Monsieur", then glued over the gap. The only snag is that on the copper clad ties there isn't the grain detail that the CV ties have, but it isn't really noticeable once the turnout is painted and weathered unless you look really closely. I think this method gives the strength of PCB construction with the detail afforded by the CV product. I'm not entirely happy with relying on glue to hold everything together, though the thinned barge cement does a decent job and I am happy with it on plain track with a few slimmed down spikes for good measure.

In 1953 General American Transportation Company introduced the Airslide covered hopper car. These cars, while bearing a passing resemblance to other covered hoppers then in use, featured a pneumatic unloading system developed in collaboration with the Fuller Company of Pennsylvania. At the bottom of the hoppers were strips of silicon-treated cotton fabric about a foot wide. Underneath the strips were steel U-sections into which low-pressure air could be forced. The air passed into the lading to make it flow to the discharge outlets. This greatly improved unloading times, according to an article in Railway Age in 1956 it took one man 2 hours 18 minutes to unload just over 50 tons of material from an Airslide car compared to two men needing over 5 hours to unload 35 tons from a conventional covered hopper. The unloading hatches could either be simple gravity devices or fitted with pneumatic connectors. Up top, the loading hatches were equipped with gaskets to make them air and waterproof to protect the material which was generally food products such as flour or chemicals such as carbon black. The most common colour scheme for the cars was grey, though some received aluminum, with black lettering. The roof was normally painted with black car cement and slate dust sprinkled in while the coating was wet to give better footing for workers opening and closing the hatches. BM5804 was built in 1957 and leased fromm GATC and originally carried GATX reporting marks. The cars were used to carry wheat and had the somewhat unusual lettering shown. The 1977 ORER notes that the series of cars was owned by GATC. The PC car with the ransom-letter style reporting marks was built in 1959 and leased to the PRR. The PRR designated them as class H40. If your skills at applying decals aren't very good, here's your prototype. This is a much later car, built in 1979 and a bit larger than the first two. It was leased to Tennant and Hoyt, flour millers, who clearly understood the value of an attractive paint job and were proud of the fact that Ralph Samuelson, inventor of water skiing, was born in their home town of Lake City. There was probably no room to note that Laura Ingalls Wilder was also born there. The Golden Loaf cars were very eye-catching and GACX48191 had made its way from Minnesota all the way to a bakery in Lewiston, ME. I believe the CP delivered the car to St Johnsbury VT for the MEC to haul it over the mountains to Portland, then the Portland-Augusta road switcher would drop it at Brunswick for the Lewiston Lower branch train to pick it up and deliver it. Seduced by the paint scheme I spent hours building an Ambroid kit for this car. No sooner had I finished it than Walthers produced their model, as is the usual course of things. Information from Railway Prototype Cyclopedia who ran articles on this type of car and on the predecessor Trans-Flo cars in volumes 17, 20 and 22.

The two D&H boxcars snapped in the early 80s were both originally built by Pullman-Standard for the Reading. The D&H acquired the cars in 1976 as part of the complex series of transactions that reorganised the bankrupt Northeastern railroads into Conrail. The cars are classified as XL according to the AAR Mechanical Designation codes. XL signifies a boxcar that is equipped with devices to protect the load. This page http://espee.railfan.net/aar_1989.html gives an overview of the designations in use in 1989. The notes in the 1977 ORER mention "end of car cushioning" and DF loaders. The end cushioning device is fairly obvious, and the Reading car advertises its DF (Damage Free) features. While nothing you would really need to model unless you wanted to have the doors open, the D-F features are of interest and were described well in vol 15 of Railway Prototype Cyclopedia. DF loaders were developed by Evans Products in the early 1940s. The system consisted of angles that ran at various heights from the floor along the side of the car from door post to corner post. Removable angles could be positioned across door openings if needed. Cross bars and transverse bulkheads could be locked into the angles and moved along the angles up to the lading to restrain it and reduce damage. The Reading cars appear to have been equipped with four angles up the side of the car to cater for different sizes of lading. In the thread on graffiti F-Unit Mad mentions his preference for the late 70s/early 80s scene because of the lack of graffiti. I don't recall seeing any graffiti on boxcars similar to the "artwork" that adorns most cars today, you might see a bit of scribble (not the markings of car men) but boxcars generally appeared as the two shown above, usually not completely filthy (although you could find some really shabby examples) but definitely showing the signs of use. By the late 70s most cars had the various stencils and plates referred to in a previous post. The wheel dots weren't applied to new cars after 1978 and the ACI plate was discontinued earlier, but they were not removed from older cars until they were rebuilt or repainted. Paint patches were becoming quite common as flags fell and equipment was sold off. Old paint schemes could still be seen long after the road was but a memory. The yellow car shows up the usual scratches, dings and rust quite well, especially the scrape marks caused by door.

Running boards and high mounted handbrakes on new boxcars were banned from late 1966 and by the 70s the railroads had been busy removing running boards from older cars. But you could still see the odd car with running boards. The CP car above still had its running board in place when I snapped it in late 1979 in St. Johnsbury VT. By then running boards on boxcars really stood out from the herd but you did see the odd one. The car had been given an ACI plate, barely visible in the dirt to the left of the door and a faded yellow dot signifying that the wheels had been inspected and were not part of a faulty batch of wheels that the FRA felt had experienced a high failure rate in service. It has not been stencilled with the consolidated stencil that was appearing on cars in the 70s. This thread http://www.hosam.com/mod/rsdet.html has information about the dots, the ACI plate, the stenciles and so on.

Here is a hopper equipped with side discharge hoppers dropping ballast on the Belfast and Moosehead Lake in the late 70s. This is not the same kind of hopper as the NHIR car but it has what look to be similar discharge doors. The cut of ballast hoppers had been picked up by the daily freight train from Belfast to Burnham Jct and dropped the ballast on the return trip. Maine Central had some side dump cars. This rather shabby example was sitting at a loading dock in Lewiston in the late 70s, presumably waiting for a load:

Quite a few covered hoppers got deroofed and converted to ballast hoppers in the 70s. Morrison-Knudsen designed discharge doors that were self-clearing and could deposit the ballast either side of the rail head. It looks like that New Hope and Ivyland is equipped with them. They were a patented design, as I recall M-K would either rebuild cars for you or sell you a kit to do it yourself. Speaking of kits, E&B Valley offered a ballast car version of their AC&F hopper.

The straight sided covered hopper with two compartments dates back quite a long way. Possibly the earliest example of covered hopper built for a specific purpose was built by American Car and Foundry in 1911 for Anheuser-Busch to haul brewer's malt. A number of roads built covered hoppers in the 20s and 30s to protect loads such as cement that needed to be kept dry and free from contamination in transit and reduce the loading and unloading costs compared to bagged loads in boxcars. What could be considered the breakthrough design appeared in 1932 from AC&F. It was a fairly large (for the time) 70 ton capacity car with two compartments further divided about the center sill to give four hopper compartments discharging through four bottom outlets. The design would be imitated with various differences by 8 builders and be a fairly common sight into the 1980s. Maine Central used three different builders for their covered hoppers delivered between 1940 and 1957 in batches of about 15 cars at a time. The cars were used primarily for cement traffic at the cement plant in Thomaston on the Rockland branch, though some were assigned for lime traffic out of Hinckley on the Skowhegan branch. The first couple of batches MEC bought from AC&F in 1940 and 1942 were slightly smaller than the original design at 1,790 cu ft compared to 2,050 cu ft. They were about 3' shorter and recognisable by the small triangular opening between the compartments and the shape of the side sills at the end. This design, with some variations, was fairly common in the east, the L&NE being one road that had similar cars. These cars had been relegated to service duties by the late 70s. The final batch of AC&F cars arrived in 1947 and differed slightly from the earlier batches as shown. The original capacity was 70 tons but at some point the cars received different trucks and gained an extra 7 tons capacity. The builder's photo and 1953 ORER both show 70 tons but the lettering on the car and the 1977 ORER both show 77 tons. The next batch of cars came in 1952 from Pullman-Standard and differed little from the AC&F cars: The following year MEC turned to Bethlehem Steel for another 15 cars. These cars were slightly shorter than the previous delivery and were fairly easy to distinguish with no triangular opening, a slightly fishbellied side sill and different loading hatches among other features. MEC2461 was unusual in having picked up some graffiti, most of these cars by the late 70s were too filthy for anybody to scrawl anything on them. The last batches of cement hoppers came from P-S in 1954 and 1957 and offered a slight higher cubic capacity at 2,003 cu ft. Intermountain do two different versions of the AC&F car that offer a nice degree of detail and refinement. Kadee make a very good version of the P-S car, and offered a MEC version lettered MEC2491. I saw it at the Springfield show and thought it looked familiar. The brake piping is very fine for a RTR car. Other manufacturers (Atlas, Bowser) have covered these cars, but I think the Intermountain and Kadee offerings are a bit more refined albeit more expensive. MDC has had a P-S car for a long time but it would take a lot of work to bring it up to the standard of the Kadee offering. That said, it's a route to an approximation of the Bethlehem Steel cars if you don't like the idea of hacking a $30 car around. I've tried to show that there is considerable variety within this type of car. Other builders had their versions, the ones built by Greenville were very distinctive with a fishbelly side sill similar to but more pronounced than the Bethlehem Steel car. Sources: Railway Prototype Cyclopedia vol 15 (Greenville cars) and 27 (AC&F cars). There have been various articles in most of the modelling magazines over the years, although some of the modifications are rendered obsolete by the more recent trade offerings.

There is further discussion of the fate of the MM&A in the Portland Press Herald: http://www.pressherald.com/news/Fate_of_bankrupt_Maine_railway_hinges_on_buyer_.html And some speculation on the fate of the Moosehead subdivision on railroad.net at http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=151119&start=345 It would be interesting to know what one half of the Irving family (the oil side) is saying to the other half (J. D. Irving which has railroad interests, lumber etc). Separate corporate entities, but it's still family.

Starting price for the MM&A is in: http://bangordailynews.com/2013/12/13/business/wall-street-investment-firm-emerges-as-potential-buyer-of-montreal-maine-and-atlantic-railway/

That's about how I got started. I still have the engine and one of the coaches. The big step forward was the purchase of a transformer. After that most Christmasses saw the arrival of another engine as our layout grew.

Good photographs on that RCTS link, including some better idea of what the buildings look like if you revisit your decision to go with newer construction.

I'm not sure when the 582 was built, most of the wooden cabooses dated from around 1909 to the late 20s. MEC's preferred builder seems to have been Laconia from 1909 to 1912, then they had a batch from AC&F in 1914 and after that built cabooses themselves in the Thompson Point shops in Portland. The 582 was a home built job. I would imagine they all ended up with steel underframes, certainly most of the pictures on the Mountain Subdivision after WW2 show helpers behind the caboose which I don't think they'd do with an old wooden frame. These pictures show the steel center sill. It's handy having access to a car that you know isn't going anywhere!

Cabooses could be quite long-lived since they generally weren't interchanged. MEC had some very old buggies that hung around for a long time and from a distance looked newer than they were. The plywood they nailed over the sides could be mistaken for metal (at least when the paint was fresh), but when you looked closer and saw the truss rods you realised this was quite an old caboose. The truss rod I beams were quite interesting:

The 70s were quite an interesting period as far as running boards were concerned. By the end of the decade, very few cars had them left, I remember they were quite noticeable when one came by in a train. As Dave has noted, what was outlawed was running boards and the way older cars were altered varied. Some roads simply removed the running boards and left the handbrake where it had always been, up high. So at the B end of the car, everything looked the same as it always had. At the A end, there being no need to climb up high, the ladders really served no purpose and were cut down. In other cases roads did a more thorough job and the handbrake was lowered as this picture shows (I've posted it elsewhere but it may as well be in here because it might be of use to somebody). Notice where the retainer valve ended up, you can just about make it out next to the step underneath the brake wheel.

The general concept, and we've been over this ad nauseam on this thread, is multiple layers of security instead of one layer. Yes, the trap point wouldn't prevent the train from moving. Yes, it would mitigate (in this instance), the consequences. Is that a bad thing? No, it's not a foolproof approach to the problem. If your safety culture tends to encourage coverups, you have other problems to confront.

Andrews? Vulcan was another cast truck with separate journal boxes. RP Cyc vol 4 has a good overview of truck types. Bummer on the caboose sides. One of the drawbacks to your workplace is the inability to utter words of self-criticism. Not sure I would have the self-restraint required.

I used to take a sandwich, packet of crisps and something to drink in my grandad's old WW2 gas mask bag! There was a tea shop just down the road from the entrance to the station yard where you could (if I remember correctly) buy things like a Kit-Kat. It looks like it's now a "luxury holiday cottage" http://www.wrigglytin.co.uk/aspx001/article.aspx?CID=5, a couple of interesting old pictures from bygone days.

I had to read that twice, I thought it said a P4 summit.

I think what you are doing here is brilliant, and probably is going to have a positive impact on the outcome of the treatment. Good on the hospital for letting you do it. And good work too. Those old wooden kits are a nice change of pace from plastic! I think my greatest achievement in modelling was finishing a MEC "Paul Bunyan" pulpwood rack, I think it was made by Northeastern. The kit was quite a bargain as there was enough wood to build two of them. Needless to say, the car's twin brother still resides in the box as raw materials.

I've been through every book I've got that has pictures of Millers Dale and there really aren't any good pictures, certainly nothing like the pictures you can find of the buildings on platform 1 which of course still exist at least in part. The structure on platform 4/5 for the Buxton branch passengers was a mostly wooden affair that would have needed replacing by the 80s. The buildings on platform 2/3 were substantial stone affairs that probably took a bit of knocking down, so they might have survived. But they were really too big for the purpose (I think some of the space was occupied by people like PW Inspectors, a dim and distant memory tells me that my pal's dad who was in charge of the PW for quite a stretch south of Millers Dale had an office somewhere on the station), so could have been replaced by something more economical. BUT! Remember that you are in the Peak District National Park and the Park Planning Board would have wanted a say in whatever you planned to put up there! You would almost certainly have had to build something in local materials, no cheap bus shelters. And Buxton folk won'y want to wait for a connection in a bus shelter, Millers Dale in winter could be a bit wet and breezy. If you were going to Buxton, the branch line train would be waiting for you, but if you were going away, you would have to wait a few minutes for your connection. The branch train would usually stop in the up slow platform, and then reverse smartly out of the way before retreating into the bay. There was usually about 10 minutes between the arrival of the branch train and the arrival of the up connecting train. Anyway, I found the following (which you have probably seen already, but just in case...): British Railways Past & Present vol 23 Notts and Derbys has a picture of 92077 on a railtour in platform 1, you can at least see how far the dividing wall on platform 2/3 extended towards the barrow crossing Foxline Scenes from the Past vol 2 has a shot of a down freight going through on the fast line, you can see the buildings at the down end on platform 2/3 (gentlemen's toilets) Foxline Scenes from the Past vol 7 has what would be a useful shot of the buildings (plate 82) if the picture had been reproduced at all well Then and Now: The Monsal Trail has a number of pictures of Millers Dale, just a glimpse of the down end of platform 2/3 from the opposite angle of Foxline vol 2. There is a good picture of the Buxton platform building, and a very atmospheric shot showing some of the canopy detail on platform 1 I don't think any of those pictures would really let you develop an accurate model of the buildings though you could come up with something reasonably representational. I still like the idea of a tastefully done modern structure in stone though. While thinking back to trainspotting days, a number of the up trains would be too long for platform 1 and would have to draw forward, so no need to fret over your HSTs not fitting the platform, that wouldn't be anything new!

Per this page, adherence to the MUTCD signs didn't actually become mandatory until 1966 http://signalfan.freeservers.com/road%20signs/stopsign.htm so the yellow sign could have lived on for some time after the 1954 change, I am sure there were other priorities for spending money on than a sign in a dingy industrial district. One interesting note in there is that the signs used to be much lower than they are these days.

The 1954 supplement to the 1948 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices specified a change to white letters on a red background. A red background/white letters was the initial proposal but was changed to yellow in 1924 because yellow was more visible at night. The sign was octagonal, the shape being an additional recognition factor.