Hi all,
Um, unit coal trains all look alike? Uh, NO, they don't. I live in St Paul
near one of the major BNSF mainlines in the area, and there's several such unit
trains running through here every week. If you sit and look at them, you'll
find that while a LOT of the cars are the same, and while they're all rotary
coupler types for the most part, you'll find different car heights, different
color schemes (even from the same railroad - rust brown, boxcar red, black,
tuscan red, etc), and so forth. Unit coal trains SHOULD look reasonably alike,
but the cars don't all have to be carbon copies of one another! :)
I've seen welded metal sheet attached to the tops of older rotary-coupled cars
to raise their capacity. Trucks on one car will have different levels of rust
and muck, or (sometimes) different makes of truck in the first place (not
common, but every now and then they'll shove a different-looking truck under a
coal car). Some cars will have steel plate patches, others have been
renumbered (black boxes on red, brown, or not-quite-so-black cars). Every now
and then, you'll find one where the number of bays match, but the number of
panels don't.
The point is, while a unit coal train *IS* a block of hoppers, while they're
all coal cars, they don't HAVE to match.
Um... except when you're dealing with Bethgon Coalporters, that is. Except
for road names, they almost always look the same. Kind of boring, to be
honest. :P
- Brian Panthera (nee Empanger - yes, I got married. Pity me. ;) )
------------------------------------
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/
