Good morning, Another newbie question. I am planning on including a stock yard in my layout which is a Santa Fe branchline operating in the 1950's. Since cattle operations were a big part of the Santa Fe in the flint hills of Kansas I would like to have 6 or so stock cars. This leads me to my question. For those of you that model Santa Fe stock cars what brand are you using and where do you find them? So far I have acquired one Micro Trains which seems to be the most accurate. The Kadee MTL seem to be fairly accurate with the exception of the Santa Fe logo which I understand was not on the real cars. There are a bunch of green stock cars on ebay but I don't ever remember seeing green ones on the trains that came through our town when I was going up in the '60's. So mineral brown it is. I can go with Kadee and either ignore the logo or perhaps paint over it. Any suggestions?
The Kadee/Microtrains cars are a NYC prototype but will sub for Santa Fe in a pinch. The green paint scheme is bogus and has a history of model companies copying each other going way back to the Lionel "Horse Express" cars that were really just their standard stock car but painted green.
Howdy, Well, the Micro Trains car is a New York Central car. Intermountain offered ATSF stock cars. (Good luck finding them). They have been out of stock for quite some time. Oh- Pecos River offered the min brass as well. Pretty expensive and just as hard to find. (Micro-Trains: NYC 28000-28499 (Lot 757-S) convertible stock cars rebuilt from USRA SS box cars in 1947.) Of course - you can use the MT car as a stand in. Regards, Wolf
Here is a list of the N scale cars that have been made over the years. http://atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Clinics/Stk/10bN.htm
These are some of my stock cars. Most of them are the Microtrains NYC Dispatch Stock cars in various railroad schemes. I do have one brass Hallmark ATSF car (third from the left) that shows the typical lettering for Santa Fe.
Thanks for the information that the MT cars are modeled after NYC. I know the number boards are not correct. r_i_straw, Impressive. I like how you painted the doors on some of them the same as the real ones. It sounds like acquiring cars will be long term and lucky project.
Also depending on whether the stock loads originated and also terminated on the home road other road's cars could be found in a consist of stock cars. Thus if the destination was the Chicago Stockyards and packing plants one might find CB&Q cars or any of their subsidiaries like Ft. Worth and Denver.
The Santa Fe cars with the yellow doors were convertible cars. They had a second floor that could be cranked up all the way to the ceiling for use with large animals such as cows or lowered to mid level for use with sheep, goats or hogs on two levels. Other railroads did not designate them but I believe the NYC Dispatch cars were also convertible. On the subject of the green ATSF cars, I believe this is where that whole myth began.
Always wondered about that. I had one of the Aurora/Trix stock cars in Santa Fe green and never saw anything close in any books. I also remember them from Tyco and AHM in HO scale, as well as Athearn and Bachmann. That Bachmann one was a vivid turquoise. Atlas and Micro-trains have had green ones, too. I always thought there must have been at least some green oddballs somewhere, at least behind the MT scheme if nothing else. Wrong schemes on wrong cars is not new, but usually they had some basis in fact for the scheme and color.
I imagine the story went something like this. The folks at Lionel wanted to get more life out of their cattle loading facility and thought it would be great to use horses instead of cows. OK, they made an effort to be somewhat prototypical and called up the boys at Santa Fe. Lionel: "Do you have cars for transporting horses?" Santa Fe: "Why, yes we do." Lionel: "Well, what color are they?" Santa Fe: "Green." Lionel hangs up the phone not realizing that Santa Fe was talking about their heavyweight horse cars used in passenger trains. That is my theory.......and I am sticking to it.
Ah, yes, Dr. Straw! As usual a correct diagnosis. Let's be honest, not the worst thing foisted off on the public by Lionel.
Oh, believe me, it can get much, much worse..... http://www.lionel.com/products/ProductNavigator/_ProductImages_590/6-29644_6967.jpg Everything's better with Warbonnet On It.... http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-37481201...ed-santa-fe-warbonnet-silver-red-black-12.gif Except possibly this... And THIS..... I can't believe it........ It's a wonder this didn't pop up all over the place! And you thought BNSF was to blame for the Vomit Bonnet. http://www.qstation.org/ATSF_Pix/ATSF640Ogreen.jpg So I guess green stock cars....yeah, I can still live with that.
Not a bad theory at all. But, in the end I remember that we are scale modelers, and Lionel is a toy maker.
Here's a couple of the IMRY cars: http://www.nicholassmithtrains.com/store/product/50356/N-AT&SF-STOCK-CAR-#60512/ http://www.nicholassmithtrains.com/store/product/50357/N-AT&SF-STOCK-CAR-#68896/ (No dealer discussion intended - simply identifying possible location of inventory for hard-to-find old product of interest to OP)
This page is now quite old and doesn't include the Intermountain cars which are (to the best of my knowledge) the only plastic RTR models of ATSF prototype stock cars. As Wolf mentions, the Intermountain cars are difficult to track down. Stephen Sandifer has much more information on ATSF livestock operations at: http://www.atsfrr.com/resources/Sandifer/Clinics/Stk/Index.htm Regards, Ron
When I get some of the Intermountain cars I will have to take them over to Steve's house and show him. He has been my go-to guy on all my obscure Santa Fe questions.
They could be a stand in as well. They are Pennsy prototypes. They do look nice. I am going to get a couple in Pennsy. (Non sound) Regards, Wolf
