Friday, November 24, 2017

Friday 24 November 1944


Twentieth AF XXI bomber command flies its first mission against Japan from the Marianas with 111 B-29s.


The following tank cars loaded with Cumene arrive at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
UTLX
73026
UTLX
73871
UTLX
74111

The following tank cars loaded with Gasoline arrive at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
UTLX
28700
UTLX
36323
UTLX
71080

SP returns the following empties to ATSF
UTLX
17225
LC GASOLINE
UTLX
32501
LC GASOLINE
UTLX
38293
LC GASOLINE
UTLX
38460
LC GASOLINE
UTLX
38644
LC GASOLINE
UTLX
78047
LC GASOLINE
UTLX
7286
LC CUMENE
UTLX
22086
LC CUMENE
UTLX
77291
LC CUMENE

  

John Barry
North Bay Lines
Golden Gates and Fast Freights
Lovettsville, VA 

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Thursday 23 November 1944


81 Fifteenth AF B-24s strike bridges at Zenica Brod and Doboj.  13 heavy bombers drop supplies at points in Yugoslavia.

US 7th army under General Patch conquers Straasburg

SP returns the following empty to ATSF
OELX
3004
LC CUMENE

 Happy Thanksgiving

John Barry
North Bay Lines
Golden Gates and Fast Freights
Lovettsville, VA 

Wednesday 22 November 1944



205 Fifteenth AF heavy bombers strike marshalling yards at Munich while 214 strike alternates due to heavy weather.

The following tank car loaded with Cumene arrives at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
RPX
3502

The following tank cars loaded with Gasoline arrive at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
UTLX
37805
UTLX
75850
UTLX
77653

SP returns the following empties to ATSF

UTLX
77379
LC CUMENE
WEOX
238
LC CUMENE
UTLX
6996
LC CUMENE
UTLX
17396
LC CUMENE
UTLX
30449
LC CUMENE
UTLX
32577
LC CUMENE
UTLX
35652
LC CUMENE
UTLX
43900
LC CUMENE

Tuesday 21 November 1944


1100 Eighth AF heavy bombers strike synthetic oil plant at Merseburg/Leuna and 2 oil refineries at Hamburg.

The following tank cars loaded with Cumene arrive at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
OELX
3004
UTLX
7286
UTLX
22086
UTLX
77291

The following tank cars loaded with Gasoline arrive at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
UTLX
17225
UTLX
32501
UTLX
38293
UTLX
38460
UTLX
38644
UTLX
78047

The following tank car loaded with Ethyl Motor Fuel additive arrives at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe from North Baton Rouge LA for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
EBAX
623

SP returns the following empties to ATSF
UTLX
48627 LC Cumene


John Barry
North Bay Lines
Golden Gates and Fast Freights
Lovettsville, VA 

Monday, 20 November 1944

1st Japanese Kaiten suicide submarine attack (Ulithi Atol, Carolines)

The following tank cars loaded with Cumene arrive at Port Chicago on the Santa Fe for interchange to the SP and the Tidewater refinery at Avon, CA
UTLX
48627
UTLX
77379
WEOX
238
UTLX
6996
UTLX
17396
UTLX
30449
UTLX
32577
UTLX
35652
UTLX
43900
John Barry
North Bay Lines
Golden Gates and Fast Freights
Lovettsville, VA

1948 San Francisco Industries Map



Pete Hall won a copy of the 1948 SP San Francisco Industry Map several months ago.  He was gracious to share reproductions of his win and I picked up my copy from him at the Chicagoland RPM in October.  Here is an image of a small portion of the map that contains ATSF’s China Basin:



You can contact Pete directly at petehall6369@gmail.com to purchase a copy for your personal use.  I highly recommend doing so if you model California in the transition era. 

I have also created an Excel version of the Index from the map.  Here’s a portion of that:
INDEX
INDUSTRY
RAILROAD
47
SP
48
SP
49
J. A. ROEBLING CO.
SP-ATSF
50
FAY IMPROVEMENT CO.
SP-ATSF
50A
BRAUN-KNECHT-HEIMANN CO.
SP-ATSF
51
LOWRIE PAVING CO. INC.
SP-ATSF
51
DUNHAM, CARRIGAN & HAYDEN
SP-ATSF
52
WALIN-DAVIT BOAT CORP.
SP
53
SP-ATSF
54
J. BREUNER CO.
SP-ATSF
54
METAL PRODUCTS FABRICATION CO.
SP-ATSF
54
GIBRALTAR WAREHOUSE
SP-ATSF
54
AMERICAN RED CROSS
SP-ATSF
54
BUTLER BROS.
SP-ATSF
54
SF. WAREHOUSE CO.
SP-ATSF
54
U.S. PLYWOOD
SP-ATSF
55
SP-ATSF

You can download a copy of the Excel version from Google Docs at:


This Thanksgiving I am grateful to Pete and all the others who freely share their knowledge and reference materials.  I hope this gives you something to be grateful for as well.

Happy Thanksgiving

John Barry
23 November 2017
North Bay Lines
Golden Gates and Fast Freights

Lovettsville, VA

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Sunday, 19 November 1944


Today, the British Second Army captured Geilenkirchen in Germany. 

Sunday, 19 November 2017

Notice anything interesting about the two dates?  I reopened Excel this morning after the computer re-booted overnight and notice that Uncle Bill’s minions had pushed some templates for universal calendars.  Since I’d just finished working with some period data, I thought, what the heck and downloaded the 12 month version.  Plugging my modelling year of 1944 into the handy dandy input cell on the first tab, I had a 1944 calendar.  Clicking on the December tab, I was surprised to see that my birthday (the 1st) fell on a Friday, just like this year.  Somewhere, deep in the cobwebs of memory, are recollections of year types and lists of identical years.  Too much trouble to keep track of.  But here is a versatile free tool that can help you generate a sense of time and period on your RR.


1944 matches 2017 from March on as this is not a leap year.  2018 will be a day to day match on dates throughout the year for 1945.  Happy Modelling!


John Barry
North Bay Lines
Golden Gates and Fast Freights

Lovettsville, VA

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Building a WWII ATSF Fleet VII Freight Car Fleet, the USRA 40’ Double Sheathed Box Car – Gilbert-Nelson results from the Jan 45 ORER



I’ve been working with the January 1945 Official Railway Equipment Register to come up with realistic numbers of representative freight cars for my California based railroad during the latter part of World War II.  I’ve been converting the image files on the Westerfield CD to a PDF and have been building an index/table of contents.  I am going a step further though, and compiling a listing of the car types operated by each railroad and private operator.  I finished the RR portion and came up with a total of 1,968,421 US railroad owned cars, excluding passenger, MOW and cabooses.  Canadian and Mexican roads are included in this total. 


I have yet to compile the data on the private car owners, which includes the refrigerators of PFE, FGE, etc.  Nor does it include the box cars of the private lines.  But it does give a basis for comparison of the box car fleets of my modeled era. 

Having read Tony Thompson and Charles Hostetler’s blogs and their posts on the Gilbert-Nelson freight car distribution, I wanted to see if I could figure out how many and which roads’ USRA Double Sheathed cars were active at the end of 1944.  My first thought was to start with the original owners, and somewhere on my hard drive I have photos of the article published in one of the historical journals that listed the proposed and actual USRA production and distribution.  I really need to get better organized, as I have not yet combined them into a usable PDF and I didn’t remember some of my other references.  Well, Google is my friend, (and yours too), and a search for “USRA double sheathed boxcar” led me to a page on Eric Hansmann’s blog, http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/a-guide-to-1920s-era-ho-scale-plastic-freight-cars/, that reminded me of the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia on my reference book shelf.

I don’t have all of them, as I came late to the game, but they are fantastic goldmines of data.  Using the table provided on pages 50 and 51 of Volume 16, I searched through my index to locate the owner’s Jan 45 entries in the ORER.  With that info in hand, I constructed the following table of surviving cars for my era:

USRA Double Sheathed Cars
Railroad
Series
Qty
Notes
ACL
43735
-
44234
493
Class 0-15 Ventilator
B&M
70000
-
70499
486

CB&Q
120500
-
120999
479

CRI&P
155000
-
157499
1669

CStPM&O
36100
-
37098
84
Even Nos Only
DL&W
44000
-
44799
431

DSS&A
16000
-
16049
49
Ex PM
GN
23494
-
24993
1450

GTW
465000
-
456249
185

KCS
15500
-
15599
94

M&StL
22000
-
22598
292
Even Nos Only
M&StL
25000
-
25898
393
Even Nos Only
M&StL
51000
-
51398
197
Even Nos Only
M&StL


Total
882

MP
45001
-
45250
230

NWP
1900
-
1999
100

CCC&StL
56784
-
56974
2
NYC Lot 402-B
NYC
234700
-
234945
242
Lot 386-B
NYC
278000
-
278999
667
Lots 394-B and 404-B
NYC
290000
-
290999
964
Lots 382-B, 395-B and 402-B
NYC


Total
1875

PM
80000
-
80499
1
XAB Double Door Auto Car
PM
80500
-
81999
4

PM


Total
5

SL-SF
127000
-
130499
1035
57 cars differ in dimensions, shares series with 2450+ steel rebuilds
SP&S
10000
-
10299
293

TH&B
4500
-
4799
297
(Canadian)
WAB
78200
-
80999
2635











12772
Total Active Jan 45 ORER




12279
Total USRA XM Jan 45 ORER




12475
US owned USRA cars

Several interesting points about this data:  The total number of USRA cars is approximately equal to the number of Ventilator or 50’ plain box cars in 1945, 12772 USRA, 12729 Ventilator, 13678 50’ plain box.  So if Nelson-Gilbert holds true, any late WWII modeler should have approximately equal numbers of 40’ USRA DS, 50’ single door box, and ventilator cars on the layout.  Right now, I have two 50’ SD box and no Vents.  I plan for a couple more home road 50’rs to fill in my missing Santa Fe classes, but didn’t have plans for any Vents.  I may have to invest in a few of the Westerfield vent kits.  The other thing that this reminded me of, is that the nice Bx-2 I picked up at an estate sale either needs to go to a new home, get re-lettered for one of the above owners, or kept as a known anachronism.  I could explain it as the roving car inspector found it hidden behind the shop on the XYZ RR in east Timbuktu. . .