Howdy all!
Personally, I have seen SR woodracks some years ago near Brokenbow, OK. I
was about 14 in 1960 and could not go find out what the heck they were doing
there. Guess the MOPAC or Frisco was short and got some of them by paying
rental to SR. My experience in researching cars leads me to think that some
amount of that must occur elsewhere as railroads had to meet customer needs
when they did not have immediate availability cars.
From another experience in the 1970's, I was involved with a group that as
an investment formed a shortline on former SR track to own boxcars and other
specialized cars that we our group rented to railroads or shippers who needed
to move cargo. We had 11 wood-racks that were leased and never in Georgia. As
a matter of fact before the entire operation
was sold, we had more cars than you could park on the track available to our
comapny.
An example with which I am familiar are the 1950's period 125 TON
Depressed Center Flatcar Fleet. The Central of Georgia had Cast Steel produce
5 of those car bodies that were completed in the Savannah Shops. They serviced
a huge GE Transformer Plant in Rome, GA. SR built 15 similar cars. These cars
traveled all over the US and Canada delivering huge Transformers. The CofGa
had to rent similar flats from Frisco and SAL to meet requirements for
Transformer delivery.
So, it is more than possible an SR pulpwood car might be on any number of
railroads that ran whereever wood was collected to turn into paper and kraft
board products. If a railroad had no suitable trees in its territory, such as
SP, UP in the Great American Desert area it does not follow that other uses
would not be found for woodracks to move bulky cargo. I have seen them show up
with MILVANS chained down to their deck using some NCO ingenuity.
Just What I Know,
Bob McCarthy
Modeling the Mighty Central of Georgia in Scale S
--- On Thu, 12/4/08, Jim King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Jim King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: {S-Scale List} Southern wood racks off-line
To: [email protected]
Date: Thursday, December 4, 2008, 3:41 PM
The questions posed about whether or not Southern's wood racks went off line
jiggled a memory (now perish THAT thought!). It's likely they didn't go off
line much as they were captive (generally) between wood yards and a paper
mill in that area. However, there is a photo in one of the Clinchfield in
Color books showing a going-away shot of a Geep towing a string of empty
Virginian wood racks.
While living in Virginia in the 80s, I frequently traveled east to shoot the
N&W around Crewe, stopping at the N&W/SR interchange in Burkeville. It was
quite common to see loaded SR wood chip hoppers sitting in the N&W portion
of the yard awaiting pickup by the SR local for forwarding to a huge paper
plant east of Richmond at West Point, VA.
There are just two minor examples of off-road situations. Would a Southern
car be seen in Canada or Oregon? Probably not. But the AAR banned K-brakes
from interchange around 1951-52, which is what spurred SR to rebuild 4150+
boxcars (maybe some gons) into these cars instead of rehabbing their fleet
of ex-steel underframe wood racks that had K brakes. So, if these cars
weren't meant for interchange somewhere, why go to all that effort?
Variety is a good thing on any layout, even if you do nothing more than have
the car pass thru on a train or plopped on an interchange track. You can
always make up a story that a customer (either a wood yard or paper mill)
has reached a deal with SR to supply cars because they were easier to get
than another road's cars due to availability or price.
You don't have to model the Southern to justify a pulpwood car. And, no,
the SHS bulkhead flat is not a wood rack with a V-deck. It's a flat car
with ends. Totally different animal.
Jim King
Smoky Mountain Model Works, Inc.
www.smokymountainmo delworks. com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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