I couldn't agree more with John. And although I have no photos to prove it, I can guarantee that the Santa Fe used the 53'6" cars with auto racks. I saw many, many of them behind the old GE pepless wonder engines we used when I was a road fireman in 1963. They were use to haul autos and trucks out of the Fairfax industrial district of Kansas City, Kansas, where there were at one time both Ford and General Motors auto assembly plants. When I was a teenager riding bikes with buddies all over town, many is the time I recall ogling the shiny new Cadillacs, Corvettes and Ford pickups stacked on the carriers in the huge Argentine, KS yards. That was in the 1950's.
One other thought: How about trying to convince the three (or is it four?) clubs that sponsor S Fest to make it a show car? Or how about an S convention car? Or how about a TCA convention car? The TCA car this year is a real show stopper: an S flat (don't recall the manufacturer) that has for a load a genuine piece of ore from an old Colorado mine. The TCA national is in Denver this year. Does anyone have any contacts to see if we could get the ball rolling? I have not had any recent response from Don Thompson to my query about SHS producing an auto carrier. Some months back he did in fact indicate that he "had always wanted to produce one but lacked documentation." He also cited the enormous amounts of time and money it took to bring the Consolidated project to market and I got the impression that they were kind of taking a breather before committing to any other new and large projects. And as all of you know, their son Ben was injured in the line of duty serving in the armed forces in Iraq. Understandably, they were concentrating on helping him make a full recovery. But if our collective hunches are right, the cars would be a quick sell-out for the reasons John mentions, and then surely SHS, AM or someone else would realize the demand and produce bunches of others. Bob Werre mentioned that there might be a problem with the unit being top-heavy. I think this is not too big a concern. I have several of the MTH O auto carriers and while the instructions warn against running too fast around curves, we never had single tip-over or a derailment when we operated a modular layout at Union Station for nearly three years off and on. Then too, if plastic autos were used instead of diecast, the load would be less. But even using diecast, I just don't think that top-heavy would be an issue. It does strike me as rather odd that there isn't more photo documentation for the 53-foot auto carrier. Any railroad that hauled freight out of Midwest cities like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and Kansas City would have also moved automobiles. So the carriers must have been numerous. In my neck of the woods, auto transport was #3 behind wheat/corn/soybeans and raw materials (coal, rock, petrol products). A distant fourth was livestock, primarily because of the formerly huge stock yards at St. Joseph, MO and Kansas City. Another thing that strikes me as odd is the fact that no S manufacturer has stepped up to plate to produce an auto carrier. It seems like a no-brainer...I guess there was an S kit produced for a short period many years ago, but I have never even seen one, either in the box or built. Roy From: John Degnan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 23:35:22 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], "POST : (S) S-Trains Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "POST : (S) S Scale Prototype Modeler Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "POST : (S) S Scale Model Railroading Group"<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "POST : (S) S Scale Group" <[email protected]> Subject: {S-Scale List} Re: {Spam?} [SSPM] EVANS AUTO LOADER DRAWINGS FOUND! This particular car was simply a flat car (# 5000085 if I remember correctly) owned by the NYC that had the Evans Auto-Loader rack installed on it. The whole car was not a product of Evans... only the loader/rack system. As for there being other roads that used this type or similar cars... I have not turned up anything just yet... and to make things worse, the NYC car, to the best of my knowledge, was a one-of-a-kind on the NYC roster. HOWEVER... let us all not forget... this is S scale... where little to nothing is prototypical and where the "base" (supporting) group are Flyer-philes and/or hi-railers (where anything goes). Therefore a long (non-prototypical) string of these would look right at home on a Flyer/hi-rail layout without any complaints from us rivet-counters. So with that point in mind, as well as the fact that there are currently no other auto-carriers of any kind currently available in S scale, I strongly believe that these would sell very well. This would be a first-of-its-kind model in S, and that alone would most likely bring in the sales. SHS already makes a flat car of the EXACT SAME LENGTH of the NYC car (53' 6"), therefore all we really need is the Evans rack itself to add to the flat car, just the same way that the NYC did with their flat car. Doin' my homework. John Degnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:Scaler164%40comcast.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Andrew_Malette To: John Degnan ; POST : (S) S-Trains Group ; POST : (S) S Scale Prototype Modeler Group ; POST : (S) S Scale Model Railroading Group ; POST : (S) S Scale Group Sent: May 16, 2007 10:02 PM Subject: Re: {Spam?} [SSPM] EVANS AUTO LOADER DRAWINGS FOUND! Great work, John. Were these owned by roads other than the NYC, eh, eh? Andy Malette www.mlwservices.ca [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! 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