Boxcar Markings and Alterations

[rodshaw]

I've been having a look at the markings on my various freight cars and there's one pair that puzzles me. One of my 40ft boxcars is stencilled with NEW 2-55 on the left, and BLT 8-53 on the right. As I understand it, this means its weight was supposedly checked when new in February 1955, but it was built in August 1953.

 

Can anyone enlighten me? Or is it just wrong?

[Adrian Wintle]

That's what it says. I suppose it may not have been delivered/painted to the RR until 1955. The other option is that sufficient changes were made to make it a 'new' car, but it is unlikely on that short a timeframe. It could be that the car was reclassified in 1955, making it a 'new' car. It is also possible that the model manufacturer has a generic dataset for that car, but the road markings and the weigh date are part of their specific livery (i.e. it is just wrong).

 

Adrian

[The Bigbee Line]

I've been having a look at the markings on my various freight cars and there's one pair that puzzles me. One of my 40ft boxcars is stencilled with NEW 2-55 on the left, and BLT 8-53 on the right. As I understand it, this means its weight was supposedly checked when new in February 1955, but it was built in August 1953.

 

Can anyone enlighten me? Or is it just wrong?

I think the 'NEW' date can also refer to when the vehicle was last shopped.  I'm sure someone from over the pond will help.

[JWB]

There's a very thorough explanation of reweigh requirements on the site of the late S.A.McCall at http://www.hosam.com/aar/reweigh.html (Mr McCall was the real thing, and I'm glad his site has been kept.)  I can only think of a few explanations for why the BLT date would differ from the NEW date. One might be that the car was built for another railroad, but the financing fell through, and the car stayed at the builder for some period before it could be sold to another buyer. At that point, it could have been fully repainted for the new owner. The NEW stencil, as explained at Hosam's site, would only appear as a substitute for a shop abbreviation the first time a car was weighed. Another explanation would simply be a discrepancy in the model's paint. Irvin Athearn, however, in the earlier years sent a staffer out to photograph likely prototypes for Athearn cars, and the paint on the cars faithfully executed what was on the prototypes photographed. (I met the guy who did this many years later, and he showed me prints of the photos he'd taken for this purpose.)

[highpeak]

I think the 'NEW' date can also refer to when the vehicle was last shopped.  I'm sure someone from over the pond will help.

I spent some time looking through various issues of Railway Prototype Cyclopedia at articles dealing with rebuilds of cars, and the impression I got was that the most typical practice when a car had been through a thorough overhaul was for the reweigh date to show the code/date for the car shop where the rebuild had taken place.

In most cases the BLT date on the rebuilt car seemed to reflect the original build date (examples included some Pennsy rebuilds photographed at the car shop.) On the other hand, some cars had a RBLT date, either on its own or alongside the BLT date, so it would be unwise to think there was a hard and fast standard.

Source: RP Cyc vol 14 article on Missouri Pacific steel car rebuilds, RP Cyc vol 17 USRA single sheathed box cars and steel rebuilds

 

 

I think the OP's car is a manufacturer's error or shortcut as Adrian suggests.

[rodshaw]

Might as well show the article itself, a Bachmann model:

 

 

 

I've also noticed that one of my boxcars is marked NEW as of 1962, with no other dates, but has Conrail stencilling - they didn't exist till 1976.

 

Rivet counting? This is more fun!

[CloggyDog]

You'll find that many RTR offerings at the... lower... end of the market are 'foobies' - incorrect markings either wholly or partly wrong. Either that RR never had cars of that type (especially if it's a pretty generic RTR boxcar of indeterminate prototype), a wrong number series, incorrect dimensional data or (as you've discovered) the built date doesn't ring true.

 

You can get decal sheets of reweighs, dimensional data, etc from the likes of Sunshine models, Microscale, etc. And many resin kit's decal sheets come with a selection of reweighs.

 

On the real thing, every few years the car would be reweighed and the old location/date would be painted out and the new one stencilled on. No attempt to colour-match, so you could just overpaint the 'NEW 8-55' with a close-ish shade of green and apply a new date.

 

Somewhere on the net is a useful guide to the location codes for many RRs (possibly in the files area of the Steam Era Freight Car list, or possibly on the Steam Era Freight Car site - google either) - the car would be reweighed by whichever line it was on at the time, part of the pooled nature of general service freight cars. 

 

Tony Thompson did a piece on his excellent blog a few years back on reweighs: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/reweigh-article-from-rmc.html 

[highpeak]

Thanks for the link to Tony Thompson's piece.

The RP Cyc article referenced (vol 12) on that page is a very interesting overview of the reweigh requirements (which is well summarised by Tony Thompson) but also goes on to cover the scales used and various pieces of rolling stock relevant to the checking and maintenance of the scales.

With the vogue for small switching layouts I am a little surprised a scale track hasn't shown up. It would be quite a talking point with the gauntlet track. Most scale tracks were double-ended sidings, which might limit the appeal on a minimum space layout.

This was the scale track at Rigby yard in Portland, ME:

Scales had to be checked quite frequently, this is a fairly typical scale test car. The car was through piped but had only hand brakes to avoid wear on the brake shoes altering the weight of the car. Test cars normally travelled next to the caboose and introduced a speed restriction for the train. On the Maine Central, the test car could not be hauled at over 30mph.

Walthers had a model of a scale test car a few years ago, and there was an article in Railroad Model Craftsman in September 2012 describing the scratch building of an interesting little Lehigh Valley car.

 

[BR60103]

A few years ago, I saw a scale car on the CN being carried on a bulkhead flat.

[rodshaw]

Good grief - so the reweigh rules mean that basically none of your freight cars (except maybe tankers) should have dates marked on them which are more than four years before the period you're modelling.

 

That's a nice little project - but I'm not sure I'll be doing it!

[Adrian Wintle]

Good grief - so the reweigh rules mean that basically none of your freight cars (except maybe tankers) should have dates marked on them which are more than four years before the period you're modelling.

 

That's a nice little project - but I'm not sure I'll be doing it!

 

After 1967 preiodic re-weighing was no longer mandatory and cars were only re-weighed when shopped.

 

Adrian

(per the very useful timeline on the Bluford Shops website http://www.bluford-shops.com/bluford_93_026.htm )

[highpeak]

 

Good grief - so the reweigh rules mean that basically none of your freight cars (except maybe tankers) should have dates marked on them which are more than four years before the period you're modelling.

 

That's a nice little project - but I'm not sure I'll be doing it!

Think positive! Reweigh dates help you establish a timeframe, unless you are more up to date as Adrian observed.

This assumes you can read the damned things in the first place without putting the optivisor on.

[rodshaw]

 

Think positive! Reweigh dates help you establish a timeframe, unless you are more up to date as Adrian observed.

This assumes you can read the damned things in the first place without putting the optivisor on.

 

I suppose it would make a nice little project...even if you're modelling a later period, the dates on your older freight cars would need looking at.

[rodshaw]

Found this discussion on a US forum about freight car codes, albeit specifically discussing Santa Fe:

 

http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/archive/index.php/t-131995.html

 

At the bottom is this link to a list of shop codes, though it's dated 2009 and maybe inappropriate for earlier decades:

 

http://fcix.info/ref_sheets/ref008.pdf

[CraigZ]

Good grief - so the reweigh rules mean that basically none of your freight cars (except maybe tankers) should have dates marked on them which are more than four years before the period you're modelling.

 

That's a nice little project - but I'm not sure I'll be doing it!

 

Well, unless you're going back into the late 1940s when the reweigh periods were even closer together

 

Reweighing models is pretty easy...I use Microscale Trimfilm in several colors and use spare decal leftovers from various car kits to make the changes.  Those, along with chalkmarks (Sunshine made decals or use a very sharp Prismacolor artist's pencil) give cars individuality.  On this NC&StL car you can see the changed LD LMT and LT WT data, the reweigh station - BG which was Beech Grove at Indianapolis on the New York Central - and on the far right end  down low the repack data.  All these are on Microscale Trimfilm patches which is MUCH easier than trying to paint those little boxes!