Hi - I'm just finishing three boxcar kits - a PRR X-29 (Red Caboose, very nice!!!), and two AAR cars (RI -Accurail, and Monon -Branchline). I have a question about tack boards, specifically their location on the car ends and, often, on the car doors. The tack boards were generally mounted on the boxcar ends just a foot or so below the end reporting marks, and on the door, often, somewhere on the top half of the door. They were nowhere close to an end or side ladder. That's where they are on all three of the cars I'm building. My question is, given that these boards were used for communication, why were they mounted so high? How did anybody get up there to tack on the card, and even more importantly, how did anyone ever get up to them to read the card? It would seem to me to have made more sense to locate the tack boards lower, or if they need to be high, on the ladder side of the ends, and next to a ladder on the sides. Can anyone explain? I'm confused (not unusual!). Must be something simple. Loading dock height? Ken
Ken - You pose an excellent question... I have an old Espee promotional film on VHS ("This is My Railroad") that shows a yard clerk walking alongside the tracks and pausing to tack on a card. Of course, the car shown is a wooden XM so it still doesn't answer the question! So I'll endorse your hypothesis of accessing the tack boards from an express or freight house dock or other raised structure...it certainly seems plausible.
I have absolutely nothing with which to substantiate this, but my recollection is that the wooden tack boards were most commonly used to provide information about the contents of the car -- for example, "Unload This Side" or various dangerous commodity labels -- while switching/handling instructions were more commonly written in chalk on the side of the car. This would tend to explain the placement of the tack boards. Now having said that, I have a very clear recollection of sitting in the office of the Asst. Terminal Superintendent (it was Dick Davidson at the time, later the Chairman of UP) at the T&P's old Lancaster Yard in Fort Worth in 1969. His office was in the hump tower and right outside his window was a yard clerk dutifully nailing sidecards with handling instructions to each car as it was shoved up the hump. I was working for the Burlington at the time and was on an assignment on the FW&D involving terminal modernization. We had long past ceased to use sidecards, using mechanized switchlists produced from IBM punchcards. I tell this long-winded story because now I wonder what in the world they were nailing them to!! I was much more interested in the fact that they were still using sidecards than anything about the physical manner of attaching them. Gordon
Gordon, that explanation sounds pretty good! Just yesterday, I stumbled across this Office of War Info photo by Jack Delano - it was recently published in MR in "The Operators" column. The photo is from the C&NW Proviso Yard covered freight house in December, 1942, where the platforms are level with the car floor, presumably making it a lot easier to use the door-mounted tack boards. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query...D+@LIT(owi2001014974/PP))+@FIELD(COLLID+fsa)) There are several other photos in adjacent call numbers on the website that show closer views of the doors as boxcars are being loaded. Best Regards,
