Eggs a la Ed Lee

Oh, this car has been on the bench way too long.  That delay has nothing to do with the car itself, rather the good things happening in the rest of my life that keep getting in the way of model railroading.  Still, I'm glad to see it finished and rolling down the track.  Here's the story.

This freezer, NADX 6002, in service of the Pacific Egg Producers of Seattle, is built from 'An "Ed Lee" Kit', from E. Suydam & Co of Duarte, California.  What brings this kit to my bench is its presence on John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid.  Yep, another "Heritage Fleet"car.

NADX 6002 seen on the G&D in May, 1963

I began this car in July - almost exactly four months ago.  I did not deviate far from the kit instructions, only adding weight, backdating the air brakes, and changing a few minor details.  I've got a great prototype image of this car in Hendrickson & Kaminski's Billboard Reefer book.  Suydam got most of the details correct but I took the opportunity to add missing corner straps and reduce the number of grab irons on the sides and ends.

What's funny is that while Suydam did well in this regard, they missed one "colorful" detail, that is, the PEP Eggs banner should be royal blue.  An eBay search turned up some original blueprints for the car with painting instructions and the blue color is noted.  I very carefully added some blue paint to mine and it looks good from 3 feet away.  Red Ball got the color right but has too many hinges and grabs on their NADX 6001.  Likewise Train Miniature's plastic version, NADX 6003 (though in their defense, all of their reefers used the same body).  I mention the hinges because that was a key ingredient to identifying the maker of John's car.  

Sometimes I wonder where the manufacturers get their information and why they make some design choices that don't match the car itself.  It may be clear they're working from an image of the car or even drawings as some claim, and yet, they choose to include the wrong number of hinges on the door.  Go figure.  I can come up with some plausible reasons, but they'd only be guesses.  One is that Suydam was using a black and white photo as reference.  Who knows.

Finally I decided to change the brake detail in order to run this car on my late 20s era railroad.  I took my weathering cues from John's car but toned it down slightly.  The Ed Lee/Suydam kit was fun to build and follows the classic construction methods of kits from this era involving drilling, cutting, shaping, painting, etc.  There's a sublime satisfaction I get from taking a box of parts and turning it into a rolling freight car.  I'm happy with how it turned out and can now run another car "from the G&D" on my railroad.

Towards a G&D 2-8-0

No, this isn't a post about the "Putnam" 2-8-0 kit-mingle, but a new 2-8-0 project - at least the research stage.  A few years back a friend of a friend needed to sell some trains to make a little traveling cash - I know, this sounds sketchy but it's all above board, I promise.  I nearly made the mistake of buying another Spectrum 4-6-0 but narrowly avoided that fate after spotting the wheel lope; I swear half of those must be lemons.  Instead, I purchased the most reliable runner Bachmann ever made, in my opinion, the "evergreen" Spectrum 2-8-0, as Iain Rice once dubbed it.

Before the cash had even changed hands I had begun to formulate a plan for what this engine might become.  Readers who have been with this blog a while know I can't leave well enough alone and must modify and manipulate a locomotive, rarely leaving it in an un-molested state as the manufacturer designed it.  My first consideration was an ET&WNC 2-8-0, detailed to match one of their two ex-Southern standard gauge engines (one still steaming today and another under restoration).  However that option had too many compromises and difficulties.

After a bit more cogitating I decided it would make a fine Gorre & Daphetid tribute locomotive.  John Allen was fond of the 2-8-0 wheel arrangement, owning four of them, three from different railroads but redetailed or at least repainted for the G&D.  I wouldn't be attempting to make the Bachmann model match a specific 2-8-0 from the G&D stable, but a plausible G&D 2-8-0.  All I'd need to do is modify a few details to disguise the look of the Bachmann model and give it a G&D "family" appearance.  A high headlight, tender coal bunker extensions, maybe a cinder catcher on the stack, and other small details here and there should do it.  Now to find a similar prototype from which I could gain some guidance...

See this site for similar images: https://snyrr.com/category/uncategorized/116/

Susquehanna & New York number 116 fits the bill, but almost...needs a few more modifications...let's see...

This photo is available for purchase from Taplines at https://www.ebay.com/str/taplinesrailroadphotography

S&NY 116 became Meridian & Bigbee River 116 and is preserved on display in Meridian, Mississippi.  The Taplines image above (I'm hoping the link to the listing will be enough to justify its use here...) shows the engine sans spark arrestor and with a lowered headlight.  If I were happy with the look of the Bachmann headlight, (and its dim glow), I could just leave it where it is, but I like it up high and that matches the G&D style.  Point being, there's plenty of flexibility in detail options not only because I'm modeling a plausible locomotive from a freelanced railroad but also in terms of the prototype practices.  Just because it's freelanced doesn't give a modeler license to stray from the practical realities of railroading.  I would argue it makes the freelancer's task that much more challenging; otherwise, you're wandering into the artist's realm of fantasy and out of the real-world grounding that railroads have provided for modelers.

As mentioned above, this project is really just in the research stage and that's fine for now.  When it finally comes time to modify the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0, I'll have plenty of prototype practice and modeler's imagery to guide me through the work.  I've got most, if not all, of the parts, paint and details I'll need to do the conversion, and the engine is a smooth-running example of Bachmann's early Spectrum products before gears started splitting.  Some day this will make a fine tribute loco to pull a train of heritage cars.

 

Full Circle

This is blog post number 200.  Rather than write a big blog recap or make some major announcement, I decided to spin a yarn about a mystery solved.  Let's start with this image:

I snipped this sliver from one of John Allen's photos of a scene at Port on his Gorre and Daphetid railroad, taken in 1971.  Yup.  That's all you get.  Running the image through Google image search gives you all manner of fun things, none of which help in this situation.  All I could make out was some text along the bottom beneath that colored logo, "Bay RR".  However, I could tell the steps are molded on, the side appears to be simulated wood and the roof walk tells me its a box car.  That's it.  Maybe another image might help:

This full-side view is from a John Allen photo of a train on the high bridge over Squawbottom, 1972.  Now the overall shape of that herald is clearer and some general text is emerging on the left side.  Perhaps a road name up high and a slogan below?  The images above are all I could find of this particular car and offered no definitive answers to what the full road name was.  That is, until I was searching for other surviving relatives of a totally different car:

More is known about the Virginia Midland, though not much more.  Still, I was trolling eBay, as one does when on the hunt for vintage models, when I found a listing for a Virginia Midland hopper.  I was not entirely sure it was the same VM as the box car on the G&D, but I figured if the seller has one private road name car, there may be more.  And I was right.  Check this out:

Look familiar?  This is a picture from the eBay listing and the photo quality is not the best, but it was certainly good enough to make out the relevant text!  Until this point I had no hope of ever identifying that mystery car I had been calling the "X Bay RR".  Now I knew it was the Seaford and Oyster Bay RR, "Trail to the Sunrise"! I was ecstatic. 

Fine.  Mystery solved, right?  Not so fast.  Whose railroad was this?  How did one of their boxcars come to be on the G&D?  That's hallowed ground on which not just any car trod, er, rolled.  How was it hitched into a train alongside such famous lines as the Alturas and Lone Pine or the Texas and Rio Grande Western?  Perhaps the internet, that great oracle of our age, could tell me more.

After a string of fruitless searches I found the goods but it wasn't a direct route.  However New York State Route 135 appears to be.  This road is commonly known as the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway.  We're getting warmer.  Model Railroader database?  Nothing, except that Seaford is mentioned in connection with the NorthEastern Region of the NMRA.  Hmmm.

Adding NMRA and NER to the search term "Seaford and Oyster Bay" brings me to "The Coupler", the publication of the NER, specifically the Summer 1981 issue.  There on page three is a fine article about newly minted Master Model Railroader #85, Frank Murray.  Click here for a link to the full issue, however this snip answers most of the pertinent questions:

That last line brings it full circle.  There it is.  "Trail to the Sunrise"?  A nod to the Sunrise Trail Division of the NorthEastern Region of the NMRA.  "A number of years ago" was probably at least 10, since the earliest image I could find of an SOB car was from 1971 and Frank completed his MMR certification in 1981.  

Only a few details remain and they're perhaps less important.  Did Frank mail his car to John or bring it with him on the "vacation"?  Oh, and there's a bonus G&D connection; in the same article are names of other modelers in the Sunrise Trail Division who had achieved MMR.  One in particular stood out: Waty House (#5).  Did Watson House have anything to do with securing an invitation to the G&D for Frank?  John considered House enough of a friend to name a major structure on the G&D after him.

The world may never know any more than what's been discovered and shared here, and that's okay.  And the car I found on eBay?  Why I bid on it of course!  And won, along with another private road name car, a reefer lettered for the "Busted and Maimed", Route of the Busted Pine.  No, I don't have any clue to its origins.  Yet.

Thanks to all who regularly read this blog, and any who stop by occasionally or stumble across it.  However you find it, if you would consider following along I'd appreciate it and as always, leave any comments or questions down below.  There will be more to come.