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. . .