November 2018 calendar photo

[Stew Winstandley]

The Monon 2018 calendar photo for November shows a northbound passenger train with a box car behind 502. The trees indicate that it may have been early Autumn. I haven't previously seen this box car in a photo. The car is not black or box car red, and it has a strip down its side. I assume any box car that was used on a passenger train had pipes for the steam line between the steam generator and the passenger cars. Please provide additional information on this box car. There's no lettering visible in the photograph.

Outstanding 2018 color calendar.

Stew

[Ron Marquardt]

Stew, I have no idea what the car is, nor I suspect did Tony Koester when he shot the photo.  Probably storage mail in a common foreign line box car, but that's just a guess.  It appears to be a summer to late summer shot, and there was probably no need for steam back to the coaches.  If there had been, they would have no doubt tagged the box car on to the rear end of the train.  Whatever the service required.  Sorry we don't have more information for you.  / Ron

[Mike Aufderheide]

Stew,

Many years ago this photo came up and the group consensus was that it was a car borrowed from one of the Monon's fellow owners at Dearborn, maybe GTW.  I have continued to look for a match to this car without any luck. 

Regards,

Mike Aufderheide

[Mike Aufderheide]

Looking at the calendar tonight in better light, there is a stripe along the bottom of this boxcar as well as the more visible one at the top.  I think this is a Canadian National express boxcar (CN is the parent of GTW).  See the attached of the scheme that I think matches this and let me know what you think.

Regards,

Mike Aufderheide

[Ron Marquardt]

Tony's original photo was 11.2 MB.  Here is a closeup 876 kb crop from that photo.  Maybe it will help you better identify the car.  Notice that it has end doors on it.  Also note that it doesn't appear to have conventional freight car trucks.  / Ron

[Mike Aufderheide]

Ron,

Thank you very much!  Good call on the trucks.  I've put the question to the freight car geeks on the Steam Freight Car list, we'll see if they can verify CN had such a car.

Regards,

Mike Aufderheide

[Mike Aufderheide]

All,

Thanks to Ron's help and the help of Tim O'Connor and Ian Cranston on the Steam Era Freight Car List we have determined that it is a GTW express car. See the attached ebay photo in an earlier paint scheme.  You could model one of these with a Proto 2000 car with a few changes and a pair of Walthers GSC trucks.

Regards,

Mike Aufderheide

[Mike Aufderheide]

...and I tracked down an O scale model of this car that Weaver made. See attached.

Mike