Colors & Markings of the 2014 Shake & Take Santa Fe Cars

Santa Fe re-built its Bx-2 class double sheathed USRA box cars into steal sheathed versions resembling the 1937 AAR box car during 1938-42.  Small differences in the rebuilt cars as different lots were converted over time resulted in the Bx-28, 31, 32, 33, and 36 classes depending on the year rebuilt.  Physically, Bx-28 and 31 were shorter cars with 10’ Inside Height and Running Boards at 14’8.  The Bx-32, 33 and 36 were slightly larger cars with 10’4 IH and Running Boards at 14’11.  The 2014 Shake & Take parts are for the shorter cars.  One subtle difference between the otherwise identical Bx-28 and 31 is the shape of the underframe extensions.  The 28 had triangular brackets while the 31 and later cars had trapezoidal brackets. The other major difference is the Bx-28 got new ASF Cast Steel trucks which raised its capacity to 100000 pounds where the Bx-31 retained its original Andrews trucks and remained an 80000 pound car. 

As delivered all the rebuilds would have come out of the Topeka Shops with overall mineral brown finish, including the wood running boards and a black anti-slip roof.  The Bx-28 rebuilt from USRA Bx-2s in 1937 would have had 9 inch A.T.&S.F. reporting marks, 7 inch numbers in series 138500-138699, and a 3 foot cross and circle herald.  Cars remained in this plain paint until repainted with one of the Slogan schemes.  The Bx-31, rebuilt in 1939 in number series 148000-148199, would have been delivered in the same plain scheme but with A.T.S.F. reporting marks.  Not the subject of S&T 2014, but the forthcoming parts for the taller rebuilds would have been delivered with versions of the Slogan/Map scheme.  Colors remained the same, reporting marks continued with no & but periods, A.T.S.F. for the rest of the USRA rebuilds.  Bx-32 and early Bx-33 rebuild got the Style 2 curved line map.  Later Bx-33s had the early version of the straight line map without the word “Ship”.  Bx-36s had the later straight line map with the word “Ship.”  The map cars had the original slogans: The Grand Canyon Line, The Scout for Economy Travel West, The Chief Famous Daily Streamliner West, The Super Chief to California, and El Capitan Coach Streamliner West.

Slogan assignments as delivered:

Bx-32

148200-249 Scout

148250-349, Grand Canyon

148350-399, Scout. 

Bx-33

145000-099, El Capitan

145100-199, Super Chief

145200-299, Chief

145300-399, Grand Canyon

145400-499, Scout

Bx-36

148400-549, Scout

148550-699, El Capitan

148700-849, Super Chief

148850-999, Chief

149000-149. Grand Canyon

Repaints:  The first was probably the addition of “Buy War Bonds” to 368 of the Bx-36s over the existing paint in 1942-43.  Bx-36 was only Santa Fe box car to receive this additional War Slogan.  After 1944, the periods were removed from the reporting marks, yielding ATSF when repainted after that date.  Some Bx-28 and 31 may have received the straight line map and slogan if repainted prior to 1947 as Bx-31 37004 did with a Grand Canyon slogan and map when fitted out for Chrysler rear axle loading in 1946.  25 cars, 37000-37024 were so equipped.  Their marked capacity was reduced to 75000 and they had the short white rectangle with circle indicating parts racks.  37004 had a black route card board below that marking on its door and ATSF on the second rib and 37004 on the third rib of the top group of five on the B end.  Eight years later, when refitted for Chrysler-De Soto rear axles, 37001 received a Ship and Travel scheme.  Its capacity was lowered to 73000 and the end marks were in the spaces with ATSF above and 37001 below the two ribs in the end extension.  In 1959, Santa Fe discontinued the train slogans and adopted a large Circle and Cross Herald to the left of the door with Ship and travel to the right on both sides of the mineral brown cars.  Surviving cars repainted after that date received that very modern scheme.

Roof color changed from black car cement to mineral brown with anti-slip granules added in the mid-50s.  Richard Hendrickson stated that the black continued to be used by many shops till their supply was exhausted.  So its conceivable that you might find a large circle cross with a black roof but it would have been unusual.  

A note on data blocks.  On the pre-map cars the data was arranged vertically above the Class designator just to the left of the end ladder on the right side of the car.  When using a map or slogan, the data was divided into three blocks starting at the left side of each of the three middle panels on the right side of the car.  Repack data appeared on the right side of the center panel, Class designator appeared on the end panel or slightly overlapped the seam to the second panel from the end.  None of the photos in the CSRM collection that I have seen so far have the build date for any of the USRA rebuilds.  A photo of a Bx-13 steel rebuild does have its original 5-31 BLT date.  Not sure why, but this BLT date is consistently missing in the photos I’ve seen of Bx-28, 31-33 & 36.

No photos today as I don't have permission to publish the CSRM photos.  But details are available of the brackets on the Bx-28 and 31 as well as a number of builder's photos from the Topeka Shops.  

References:  R. Hendrickson, Santa Fe Railway Painting & Lettering Guide, Vol 1. Rolling Stock, SFMO, 1990.

Sunshine kit data Bx-32-33, 36 reissue.

Sunshine kit data Bx-28, 31

California State Railroad Museum Collection, Bx-28, 31, 32, 33, 36 Photos



John Barry
Cameron Park, CA
Flag Day
14 June 2014

Santa Fe Forms

Ever wonder which form was for what purpose?  The Santa Fe had a system.  Most large organizations do and they also have an index so you can find the right form.  Santa Fe’s index eluded me for many years as I did not know what exactly to look for.  An on line discussion with some fellow modelers yielded results last year when John Moore of Albuquerque asked me if the List of Blanks was what I needed.  A couple sample pages later and I was convinced that it was indeed that index that had so long eluded me.  John generously loaned me his 1947 and 1958 editions. 

The Form 1091 Standard, List of Blanks in use by lines of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway System, is described in its 1947 edition as Description of Printed Forms.   And what a description it is.  Everything you can think of that had to have a standardized format is in here.  From Train Orders (Form 933 Standard) to Train Sheets (Form 1546-F Special for the Valley Div 3^rd District), Freight Waybills (too many to list here but one is Form 1829 Regular, Preferred Movement), Locomotive Service Report (Form 1161 Standard), to Instructions to Station Freight Agents (Form 500 Standard).  All this and a whole lot more including car cards, accounting documents, shippers notifications and everything else needed to run the railroad.  The forms evolved over time, with some becoming obsolete and deleted with others added as needs changed.  You can see this in the addition of Consigned Empty Freight Car Card (Form 1851 Standard) and deletion of Meat Card (Form 1390 Standard) between the 47 and 58 editions. 

More on this useful document later.  PDFs of the 47 and 58 editions can be found on the ATSFRR.ORG website at http://www.atsfrr.org/resources/BarryJohn/47%20Form%201091%20Std%20Form%20Index.pdf and http://www.atsfrr.org/resources/BarryJohn/58%20Form%201091%20Std%20Form%20Index.pdf

John Barry

12 June 2014

Cameron Park, CA

  

Santa Fe Equipment Survey II-Contents

            In my earlier post on the Santa Fe WWII fleet freight car distribution I mentioned the source document was a pair of equipment surveys preserved in the California State Railroad Museum.  You can see the initial distribution data here:  http://northbaylines.blogspot.com/2014/05/building-wwii-santa-fe-fleet-iv.html

            What I didn’t have at that time was a copy of the table of contents.  That describes more succinctly the wealth of data available than can I in paraphrasing it.  Page one of the 1944 TOC is presented below.

Page two follows.

The 1944 update includes the complete 1939 report and the TOC reflects both editions.  You may click on either to get the full size image.  I will be posting further analysis of the data in future posts.

John Barry

Cameron Park, CA

4 June 2014

Building a WWII ATSF Fleet-V,Locomotive Assignments and Tonnage Ratings

            The Santa Fe assigned its locomotives to the various divisions around the system and tracked their performance.  As much as we rail fans loved steam, the data collected by the operating and mechanical forces showed that the diesel was an economically superior machine.  Periodically, this data would be assembled into a form that the directors and stockholders could understand and use as a basis for making informed decisions about future expenditure plans for the railroad.  I am not sure of the precise purpose of the Equipment Survey assembled in 1939, nor the update of 1944, but the data included is sufficient to justify significant expenditures for new cars and locomotives.  The copies of these two documents preserved in the California State Railroad Museum have the unintended legacy as a gold mine, no, make that a platinum mine of information for the Santa Fe modeler of that era. 

            Today’s post will touch on some of the line and locomotive data found in the Equipment Survey.  The Survey contains statements describing the operating lines of the Santa Fe, the equipment typically assigned and it’s capacity on each line segment.  The document covers the whole of Santa Fe’s main line system, with main lines defined as principal freight and passenger routes.  It lists the classes of locomotives principally assigned to freight and passenger service on each segment and shows their capacities over that segment.  Of particular interest to me is the Barstow-Oakland line.  The Arizona Division controlled the Barstow-Bakersfield segment prior to 1949.  The Valley Division controlled that segment after 1949 and the rest of the line.  Freight and Passenger operations are presented separately in the document and the format of Eastbound and Westbound ratings is reversed in the two sections of the original.  I did not notice this initially, and had the headers wrong on the first version of the transcription.  I offer this aside as a caution to any who may extract further information from the originals.  I have transcribed the tonnage ratings and car capacities from the original for the Barstow-Oakland line as shown for 1944.  The data is also there for 1939 and would make an interesting comparison, but I have yet to do that work.  For simplicity sake, I will refer to the Barstow-Bakersfield segment as the Arizona Division and the rest of the route to Oakland line as the Valley Division.

            The Valley Division was pretty flat with a small grade on the west end with a summit in the tunnel just west of Glen Frazer.  The Arizona Division was a mountain and desert railroad with a significant grade east of Bakersfield with a summit at Tehachapi with Barstow about 2000 feet higher than Bakersfield.  As such, equipment assigned, capacities and schedules differed significantly between these two territories.  The Arizona division employed 3700 class Mountains in passenger service to carry the northern sections of the Scout, trains 1/2, and Grand Canyon, trains 23/24 over the Tehachapis.  They used either 3800 class 2-10-2s or four unit FT diesels to get the freight over the hill.  The FTs had significantly greater hauling capacity on Tehachapi’s mountain grades than the 3800s.  Both classes were able to haul trains limited by siding lengths down hill.  The Valley division was the province of the Pacific, not just the ocean to which the district ran, but the Whyte classification locomotive.  Where the 2-10-4 Texas, 2-10-2 Santa Fe, and 2-8-2 Mikado handled most of the freight duties on the rest of the Santa Fe, on the Valley, the Pacific did it all.  Aside from the diesels 5, 8, & 9 assigned to the Golden Gate trains 60/61/62/63, five 3400 class Pacifics handled the Scout, Grand Canyon and extra sections.  Several 3500 class Pacifics backstopped the 3400s and handled the extra wartime traffic.  1226, 1309 and 3500 class Pacifics were the regularly assigned freight power moving traffic to the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, Bay area industries, and to the inside gateway interchange with the WP at Stockton for points in Washington and Oregon. 

            The differences between the FT and steam on Tehachapi were profound with the FTs able to carry an additional thousand tons with the same number of helpers.  This and their lack of water consumption proved their worth in the deserts and mountains.  On the Valley, the differences between the various steam classes were not profound, and the various Pacific classes had similar ratings through the flatter territory.  You can see and down load the PDF transcription of the Barstow-Oakland Tonnage Ratings here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Ussn0SB6pfb1lNUFpTYVdGZlE/edit?usp=sharing

John Barry

Cameron Park, CA

4 June 2014

Building a WWII Santa Fe Fleet IV – Equipment Survey

Much has been written by many about free rolling box cars, freight car distributions and the proportion of home road to “foreign” cars.  Based on a multitude of sources the literature suggests a ratio of more foreign than home cars.  Thanks to a fortuitous discovery at the California State Railroad Museum Library last week I can report some actual numbers month by month from January 1934 to December 1943.  The end date of the available data 12 months before my chosen modeling datum of the January 1945 ORER. 

            What led to this discovery?  The search for the original numbers of the Bx-11 and 12 cars rebuilt with extended height roofs.  I was trying to find the records of equipment changes of when the cars were renumbered into the higher number series that had the correct, rebuilt dimensional data in the ORER.  I did not find that, yet, but have a better idea of what to look for.  Craig Ordner at Temple, I have an inquiry in preparation.  Katherine Sanchez of the CSRM Library, located a possible source and pulled it for me last week.  When I visited last Friday, I was initially disappointed as the desired information wasn’t included in the volume that I had time to view.  What I did find, though, was fascinating and way too much to digest in a few hours. 

            The CSRM holds two volumes of a Santa Fe Equipment Survey, May 1, 1939 and revised to July 1, 1944.  Fits my era to a Tee!  A brief summary of their contents include listings of freight, passenger, and locomotive equipment: descriptions of freight cars, passenger cars & locomotive classes; assignment of switching locomotives to locations by class; projected equipment retirements and purchases; charts showing line profiles & helper districts, and the subject of this post, tables of system & foreign cars on line and system cars off line. 

The summary page of freight car descriptions is shown here;

As mentioned above, the two page data table covers 1934-43, month-by-month broken down for Automobile, Box and Refrigerator Cars as shown here. I've transcribed the numbers as I found them except for the one highlighted in yellow.  The original reads 8291, an apparent typo, since the totals of Feb and Apr of that year are the same and consistent with an on line total of 3291.  No record exists of procuring 5000 Auto cars in one month and disposing of them by the next. 

A second table shows the total of the three types and the number of foreign cars borrowed each year for peak loading.  A summary chart of the ATSF cars off line and Foreign cars on line is here.

More analysis to follow, but a first look says that the number of foreign cars on the Santa Fe was much lower than previous assumptions in the model press, at least for the years 1934-39.  The numbers increased significantly as the country came out of the depression and entered WWII.

More in future posts.

John Barry,

Cameron Park, CA

The curious case of the relocated doors

I spent some time at the CSRM Library over the last couple weeks looking at box car photos.  Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard the refrain that if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.  Well I’m here to tell you Joe, it just ain’t so.  Case in point Santa Fe Fe-24 13077 photographed at the Topeka Shops on 26 November 1954.  True, it’s past my era of 44, but the file was there and it is Santa Fe . . .  The car was an example of the rail industry going the extra mile to meet the needs of it’s customers in the Auto industry.  Modified at Topeka for Fisher station wagon bodies from former Chrysler-Desoto body cars, this was given a raised roof, not unlike the aircraft parts cars during the war.  Several other photos are in their collection of raised roof Fe-24s and they look like Fe-24s with a side extension stacked above the side walls.  The roof on 13077 looks the same as the others in the class with the extensions.  But here is where it gets curious, the sides look different.  I looked at a dozen other Fe-24s and they all had the same panel configuration of 4 to the left and 7 to the right of the double door opening.  This is the same pattern produced by Charlie Slater as masters for the Sunshine Fe-6-20 kits.  The side sills differ, but the two door 50’ steel cars of Fe-6-25 all share the same 4-7 riveted side panel configuration, EXCEPT 13077.  This car has 4 1/2 panels to the left of the doors and 6 approximately equal panels to the right.  Counting the roof panels reveals that the doors are moved to the right compared to a standard Fe-24.  Details of the large reinforcing tab running below the doors also show it moved to the right, with its far right end slightly overlapping the sill tab just inboard of the bolster.  On other cars, there is a foot or two gap between the under door tab and the small cross bearer tab. 

A Very Unique Car.

I will have to get permission to post a copy of the photo.

John Barry,

Cameron Park, CA

11 May 2014

Building a WWII ATSF fleet III-Automobile Cars

Santa Fe had a large fleet of 4395 AAR class XA cars in January 1945 plus 298 Fe-24 class cars equipped for passenger service.  About 40% or 1902 cars were 40 footers the rest, large 50 foot cars.  126 forty foot and 356 of the fifty foot cars had operable end doors as listed in the ORER.  I state it that way as a number of cars retained their end doors that had been sealed at some point in their careers.  The numbers here are derived from the Santa Fe ORER listings in the Jan 1945 ORER.  I previously posted a link to my Excel spread sheet transcription in my first post in this series.  I have adopted Tony Thompson’s methodology of using a defined fraction of the ORER fleet as a representative sample for my modeled fleet.  The base number I have chosen is one modeled car for every 250 in the ORER.  I figure I will need about 1200 cars overall and that I want to have 1/3 home road cars and that gives me a good sample.  That gives me a target of eight forty foot and nine fifty footers plus a passenger Fe-24.  OK, that’s the starting point for the analysis, but the XA and BX cars were not truly free rolling like the rest of the box car fleet, much being in captive service or limited express service. 

I’ll tackle the express service first.  Like Lays potato chips, one green and gold Fe-24 is not enough.  I have no evidence of express cars on the Golden Gates, but they were used on the Scout and Grand Canyon.  Not every train had them, but a car would not show up day after day, different cars are needed.  So, at least two passenger lettered Fe-24s. 

Extended height cars.  Santa Fe rebuilt a number of cars with higher roofs during the war and assigned them to carry aircraft parts.  Richard Hendrickson describes many of those assignments in his excellent book on Furniture and Automobile Cars, in stock on the ATSF Railway Historical and Modeling Society web site at http://www.atsfrr.org/store/bookFrt.htm.  Richard states that 40 of the Fe-8s were used to load A-20 fuselages in Detroit and carry them to Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo.  So here is an example of where you are modeling makes a difference in what you see.  Modeling the El Segundo branch, you need a bunch to spot at your aircraft plant.  A bit further south on the Surf Line, you need other aircraft parts cars for the parts to and from the San Diego plants, but not the El Segundo assigned Fe-8s.  If you model Cajon, you need more than the system wide fraction, as they would be frequent travelers to the LA basin but you need the San Diego assigned cars too.  Raton, maybe not, but maybe some.  Flint Hills and the Belen cut off, yes, but maybe not as many as Cajon as some of the traffic might be on Raton.  If you model the Alma or Howard branches, you might see one on a passing main line train.  Tehachapi and the Valley Division to Stockton, you would see the cars moving assemblies between SoCal and Washington state  And if you are west of Stockton with no aircraft plants or industries making large aircraft parts, you don’t need any as they were in dedicated service elsewhere.  So for my line that models the west end of the third district, I don’t have to worry about finding those cool Westerfield kits of the extended height cars.  A bit of a disappointment for this pilot, but hey, one of the advantages of modeling your fleet on the prototype is figuring out what NOT to buy.  And if you are like me, you already made a lot of this is cool purchases over the years. 

Regular Auto cars.  I think I may need more than the proportional fleet share as I am modeling the Richmond Ford plant and Chevrolet had a large truck plant in Hayward on the SP.  A large number of XAP cars would have been in dedicated parts service carrying jeep engines, seats, bodies and other parts from their eastern suppliers to the plants.  And like the aircraft parts cars, they would be turned immediately back to the suppliers for the next load to keep the production lines humming.  A great two cycle waybill, but multiple cars are needed to account for the travel time to the source.  Of course, Santa Fe wasn’t the only road in the pool, but the foreign cars are the subject of another post.  And the XARs would have delivered military vehicles to the San Francisco Port of Embarkation in Oakland for shipment overseas and moved assembled trucks from Hayward and Jeeps from Richmond East.  With this heavy vehicle traffic, I am thinking that I may want to double the proportion of  non-aircraft loading double door cars while zeroing those taller cars.  For sake of simplicity, I will exclude all cars over 10’6 inside height which is a total of 180 Fe-8, 13 and 15. 

The Table below lays out the number of cars in each class, models needed and on hand.

Class	ORER	Need	Have
Fe-K*	4	0
Fe-L*	38	0
Fe-M*	2	0
Fe-N*	68	1
Fe-O*	17	0
Fe-P	774	6	1
Fe-05	253	2
Fe-06	99	1	1
Fe-07	154	1	1
Fe-08	2	0	1
Fe-09	55	0	1
Fe-10	50	0	1
Fe-11	98	1
Fe-12	100	1
Fe-13	233	2
Fe-14	100	1
Fe-15	223	2
Fe-16	100	1
Fe-18	50	0
Fe-19	399	3
Fe-20	200	2
Fe-21*	47	0
Fe-22*	200	2
Fe-23	214	2
Fe-24	199	2	2
Fe-25	494	4
* End Doors	4173	34
Pass Fe-24	298	2-4

I didn’t count any of the old Athearn Blue Box cars in my have column.  I have a bunch, and as stand ins for the missing classes they will serve, but I do intend to replace them.  Of the quality cars and kits I do have, only three are in excess of needs and at least one can be used to represent a combined Fe-9/10 grouping.  More on modeling this group of cars in future posts.

JOHN BARRY

Cameron Park, CA

30 April 2014