O.k, folks... since so few of you have apparently taken time to either visit the web page I built for this project or actually bothered to READ what I wrote on the page, I'll reproduce it here so that MAYBE everyone can see my reasoning for picking this "shorty" auto-carrier as the project car...
"QUOTE" Along about the year 1954 the New York Central Railroad converted one of its 53' 6" flat cars (possibly a GSC flat car) into an open-side auto carrier capable of carrying 6 automobiles. The conversion utilized a modified version of the "Auto-Loader" rack system built by the Evans Products Co. which was typically used inside of boxcars. The main problem with the Evans rack inside box cars was the slow process of loading each boxcar individually since the ramps inside every boxcar had to be lowered and raised to get the cars onto the top row. This auto-carrier solved that problem by having open sides for drive-on loading and open ends with drop-ends that enabled ALL of the connected carriers to be loaded by lowering the ramp on only the end car in a string, much the same way it is done today with modern cars. Unfortunately, and for whatever reason, the NYC apparently wasn't sold on the idea, and only ONE of these cars was built. The Union Pacific Railroad had some similar cars, but they were not the same as the NYC car. S-Helper Service already offers a GSC 53' 6" flat car that is IDEAL (bordering on PERFECT) for a model of this car. I have not been able to verify if the NYC car that was used in this conversion was a GSC flat, but it was the exact same length and had a very similar side and overhead profile. I have talked with Don at SHS about offering their GSC flat car with this Evans rack as an add on part, but he believes there would not be enough interest in such a car to justify production of just the rack system to go with the already-existing flat car model. So I have thrown this web page together to try and determine if, indeed there is enough interest in it to see it done. Since the SHS flat would be the base model for the auto-rack, the model would be compatible with BOTH HI-RAIL and SCALE track and models. So my fellow S scalers... this is where you come in. If you would like to see a model of this car done, all you have to do is contact Don at SHS and let him know that you'd like one... or two, or five or MORE! Yes, only ONE prototype of this car was ever built, but unless you're a prototype modeler, there is no reason this should prevent us from having more than one model of the car. I am, in fact, a prototype modeler, and a SCALE ONLY modeler, but since I have decided to model a fictitious road in freelance fashion, if a model of this car gets produced, I would just pretend that my fictitious road had a fleet of them. Check out the following photos and concept/patent drawings of this car : http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoLoaderArticle(Small).jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoLoader.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack00.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack01.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack02.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack03.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack04.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack05.jpg http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/EVANS/EvansAutoRack06.jpg [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! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
