I was also going to ask if anyone knows of a roster for freight cars. I'm trying to find the correct numbers for 40 foot gondola built in 76.
Nick Molo's book does not show any 40' gondolas at all. I am surprised to learn that anyone was ordering 40' gons in 1976. GS
It looks like I misread the car data. TL 10-76 is what it says on closer inspection. To boot, I think these were meant for the 50 footers. Turns out, the 40 footer were only built somewhere in the 50-54 range, so your surprise is justified. It's been a bad night for decaling.
If you are looking for car numbers of a specific time period, there's a quarterly publication called The Official Railway Equipment Register which lists the numbers, dimensions and capacities of every freight car in North America. It doesn't provide the manufacturer or any pictures. You might try to find one for your era. Rich
Not Rich, but I would highly doubt that a library would carry it. Maybe some of us may have one for the date range you are interested in and copy the pages? I doubt I have one that new.
Bob is right, your neighborhood library probably wouldn't carry it. You would have better luck with a library that specialized in transportation or, more specifically, railroads. The Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri-St. Louis has an extensive collection of them. The NMRA republished two editions, one from 1943 and the other from 1953; eras popular with model railroaders. Of course, there's always Amazon. Rich
My ORER copy is from July, 1979. It shows no Frisco gons shorter that 52ft. Some earlier scribbles I have show several of the old (~1919-1920) 40 ft gons still hanging around, mainly in company service, but they are gone from the 1979 ORER. K
I was able to find the car numbers I was searching for. My dad had an ORER dated 76 or 7, I think. Thanks, guys.
I wrote it down somewhere, but basically around 200 cars. 55012-55190-something was what we found. The Atlas 40 footer gons were correct in that aspect. They were built circa 1950-54.