Gino, That is correct. There is a great discussion of coal car design issues in the book by Robert Karig "Coal Cars: The first three hundred years." White's "The American Railroad Freight Car" is

Gino: I believe that is correct. Eventually, the composition of the steel improved to help somewhat. I cannot quote the car series offhand but the Southern(s) first group of all steel gondolas was

Hi, I'm no chemist, but could it be that the sulfur in the coal reacted to form sulfuric acid? Which in it's turn corrodes the metal quickly if it is an inferior quality? Gino Damen The

Sam: To further complicate the nomenclature, there were also “hopper bottom” (HB) gondolas. They were as you’d expect, gondolas with hopper bottoms. A benefit of the “hopper” design was that

Would one of y'all gentlemen please explain to me the difference between the "drop bottom" vs. "double drop bottom" as described below. Thank you, Samuel Smith

Dave: There is not a specific file or folder to refer to and read but these kinds of letters appear in the Southern Railway Presidents’ files quite often. They provide insights into both the

The AAR was almost funny. The Southern had one of the larger gondola fleets in the US, especially relative to its size (obviously nothing like the Pennsy). I guess Faricy figured if a road had so

For a medium size railroad, the Southern maintained sufficient freight cars to receive, rather than pay, per diem for interchanged freight cars. When cars were MOL free running, there are multiple

We are gathering material to use in a future TIES article on the “Florida Sunbeam”. If anyone has any information or material to contribute, please contact us at editor@... or archives@.... The

If you can find the result, that would be great. History is always in danger of being lost, just when it seems safe something changes. Sent from Dave Bott' iPhone

This was throughly hashed out years ago on the old yahoo group. You may have them saved in your saved emails. I’m not sure if you can still go back and find the old yahoo group and search the

On the steam freight car list (STMFC) there is an excel sheet which has the reweigh and repack location shop codes compiled for all US railroads mostly by Richard Hendrickson and primarily based upon

Aidrian, My conductor logs were from the Winston-Salem division in 1934 and centered on Greensbor0. I didn't offer this because Allen was looking for 1955 data. The logs represent a large number

There was a long discussion which covered this topic on the old Freightcars List about 20 years ago. The upshot of a lot of analysis was that in the post war period "free roaming" cars - primarily

Can anyone give me a general idea of what percentage of cars on Southern main lines in 1955 would have been Southern? I was thinking 50% but that is just a guess. Any other percentages of other roads

Thanks for the replies about the Hogshead cars. Very educational. Completely outside of my work at the Southern in intermodal. If memory serves we did have some tire shipments by piggyback into

When I called on Goodyear's Akron OH HQ for CSX, which back then -- in the 1990's -- also served the Gadsden plant, both we and NS were trying our best to retain the rail shipment of tires. I believe

James, I suspect the RJ Reynolds acquisition of a truck fleet would be tied in to the State of NC's imposition of the tobacco leaf processing tax and resultant company activity to avoid that expense

Bob, Thanks for the info. Would that tax have coincided with RJ Reynolds purchase of a large trucking fleet in the early 1980’s? I remember seeing these cars come from the RJ Reynolds Storage

Absolutely they were in interchange service. They (all 3 types; original Coster Shop built dutch roof single door & flat roof single door; and P-S built flat roof double door) were in use hauling