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Post by 690 on Jan 19, 2024 13:41:02 GMT -8
It hasn’t officially been announced yet as far as I’m aware, but Rapido posted a teaser of sorts of a Berlin Mills PC&F 5317 preproduction sample. www.facebook.com/reel/3317519025206470?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V&mibextid=RGHVieDefinitely a much welcomed model, the Berlin Mills cars were pretty iconic, and both those and the Boston & Maine cars traveled the country hauling paper. |
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Post by riogrande on Jan 19, 2024 13:55:45 GMT -8
Looks like another 60' appliance type boxcar
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Post by Colin 't Hart on Jan 19, 2024 13:57:28 GMT -8
Looks like another 60' appliance type boxcar No, it's a late 1970s 50 footer. |
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Post by GP40P-2 on Jan 19, 2024 14:05:03 GMT -8
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Post by gevohogger on Jan 19, 2024 14:15:42 GMT -8
Looks like another 60' appliance type boxcar No, it's a late 1970s 50 footer. So close, yet so far away from a DRGW/Southern/EL caboose. |
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Post by ChessieFan1978 on Jan 19, 2024 14:47:07 GMT -8
No, it's a late 1970s 50 footer. So close, yet so far away from a DRGW/Southern/EL caboose. I be a little leary of Rapido doing any of those cabooses. Tangent is our biggest hope !!! |
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Post by riogrande on Jan 19, 2024 14:50:02 GMT -8
No, it's a late 1970s 50 footer. So close, yet so far away from a DRGW/Southern/EL caboose. Hope springs eternal! |
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Post by Mr. Trainiac on Jan 19, 2024 14:53:04 GMT -8
Rapido has the most unusual way of announcing things. Sometimes it's an email, sometimes it's at a train show, other times it's at the end of a random facebook video clip?
It looks like a decent model though. I've never seen a prototype car, but it should be a cool weathering project for guys that do that stuff. It gives off Penn Central vibes with the paint scheme.
Does anybody know if this body style or cubic capacity were used for other cars? I wonder if they will be able to offer this model for multiple railroads.
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Post by 690 on Jan 19, 2024 15:03:57 GMT -8
Off the top of my head, only the Boston & Maine and Berlin Mills bought the car (200 and 300 cars respectively), but as I said before, the cars got around the country quite a bit, and there are a decent number of different paint schemes they can do for the B&M cars anyway.
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Post by cemr5396 on Jan 19, 2024 15:40:19 GMT -8
Does anybody know if this body style or cubic capacity were used for other cars? I wonder if they will be able to offer this model for multiple railroads. From the seems of things, just the original owner plus a couple second hand owners. They went to EEC, LRS, and BKTY. Most still in original paint but some with basic brown repaints. Someone mentioned B&M had some but I did not find a single example from that batch on Railcarphotos. Not even secondhand owners. A search for 'PCF' 'Boxcar' and '5317' turned up only cars with BMS heritage, plus a couple of others that looked almost the same other than having a peaked roof instead of a flat one. |
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Post by Mr. Trainiac on Jan 19, 2024 20:11:31 GMT -8
Does anybody know if this body style or cubic capacity were used for other cars? I wonder if they will be able to offer this model for multiple railroads. From the seems of things, just the original owner plus a couple second hand owners. They went to EEC, LRS, and BKTY. Most still in original paint but some with basic brown repaints. Someone mentioned B&M had some but I did not find a single example from that batch on Railcarphotos. Not even secondhand owners. A search for 'PCF' 'Boxcar' and '5317' turned up only cars with BMS heritage, plus a couple of others that looked almost the same other than having a peaked roof instead of a flat one. I think this is the car u/690 is talking about: www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5672119RRPictureArchives says cubic capacity is 5220, which is about 100 cubic feet less than the Berlin Mills model. The side sills, end panels, and number of posts are the same between the two cars, so Rapido may be able to pass off the 5317 as the B&M car if they decide to offer that paint scheme. For a Plate C car, a difference of 100 cubic feet equates to a length change of less than 1 foot (keeping height and width the same). For the average modeler, they probably won't notice. If the B&M car has any insulation or load dividers that reduce capacity, from the exterior, it may be exactly the same as the BMS car. |
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Post by 690 on Jan 20, 2024 2:24:09 GMT -8
They’re the same cars, just had different loaders and such that lowered the capacity. BM specifically had three groups with various load capacity that were externally the same. The BM series was 3200-3399, delivered in the standard BM blue of the time, then some were repainted into Guilford white, then various Pan Am schemes, and finally some were sold to GATX with SNC reporting marks, some of which have since been resold again.
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Post by wagnersteve on Jan 20, 2024 3:16:12 GMT -8
1/20/2024, starting at 6:04 a.m., EST
I'm really pleased that Rapido Trains will apparently be making an HO version of the Berlin Mills Railway's boxcars built in the late 1970s. I've certainly seen them many times in New England and upstate New York since then. I certainly hope to buy one of them when they are available -- as usual, partly for sentimental reasons.
My first visit to New England was in July 1963, in the summer before my senior year in high school. A good friend of mine, a year ahead of me at school, invited me to go with him on an expedition in his English sports car to see the total eclipse of the sun, visible in northwestern Maine on July 20. En route we visited New Haven, CT, where he would be attending Yale starting that Fall. Then up the Naugatuck Valley and through Canaan into Mass., where we stayed at his girlfriend's family's summer place on Goose Pond. Then north and east to Berlin. He was astounded at what I knew about the railroads we saw, but I wrongly thought that the wood-sided single-sheathed boxcars we saw at the Brown Company's paper mill in Berlin were lettered for the Boston & Maine. They actually were ex-B&M cars with BMR reporting marks for the Berlin Mills Railway, owned by the paper company. The Wikipedia article on Berlin, NH, says the pronunciation of the place's name was changed from "BerLIN"to "BERlin" during World War I because of anti-German sentiments. Maybe so. But the local pronunciation of the next town north, Milan, was, at least then, "MYlan". I learned that August that in much of the US Paris is pronounced "PAIR-iss".
We stayed at the house of my friend's uncle in Errol, NH. For supper we had trout that he caught out of the Androscoggin River from his small back porch. At that time logs were still floated down that river to the paper mill in Berlin. The day we headed south there was plenty of fog along the very curvy road next to the river, and he was driving quite fast. If we'd gone into the rier we'd have had to contend with the future pulpwood in it!
After that we rode the steam-powered cog railway up Mount Washington, proceeded on to Burlington, VT, used the car ferry to Port Henry, NY, and followed the D&H south. I saw a D&H boxcar with the "double shield" herald "in person" for the first time. We used Route 128 to skirt metro Boston, a city that I first came to in 1968.
Ownership of the paper mill in Berlin, NH, changed several times before it shut down completely in 2006.
I already have a Broadway Limitied Imports HO tank car lettered for the Brown Company .
To give you an idea of how small the population of Errol, NH, was in 1963 -- it probably hasn't changed much since --, a few years later a young MIT grad my wife knew from having worked there got an offer to become principal of its high school. He would also be the science, math, and boys' gym teacher. The only other teacher there, a woman, taught English, French and girls' gym. He had grown up in New York City; he turned the offer down.
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Post by drolsen on Jan 20, 2024 8:51:22 GMT -8
From the seems of things, just the original owner plus a couple second hand owners. They went to EEC, LRS, and BKTY. Most still in original paint but some with basic brown repaints. There were quite a few second-, third- and fourthhand owners, and these cars traveled all over the country. This example that I shot in Texas was BMS 349 -> OLYR 74843 -> SRN 74843 -> HS 30169 and then became BKTY 153403: HS 30169These four SLR cars that I shot in the same train in Cumberland, MD in 2008 were still in Berlin Mills paint. They later went to BKTY. St Lawrence & Atlantic former Berlin Mills boxcarsThe Boston & Maine cars were built in 1979 and last well into the 2010s, both in original paint and in the sharp-looking Pan Am schemes: BM 3300 in plain BM repaint schemeBM 3311 in Pan Am two-tone schemeBM 3316 in solid Pan Am schemeBM 3379 in original paint through 2016I think these BMS and BM cars are among the most requested 50' boxcars I've seen over the past two decades, despite their limited original owners. The Berlin Mills scheme is really recognizable and appeared all over the country. The flat roof that makes it difficult to kitbash these cars. I can't count how many stand-in models I've seen built from the old MDC and later Athearn FMC 5347 models (with peaked roofs). Really glad to see these cars on the way. I'll be getting several of each. Dave |
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Post by edwardsutorik on Jan 20, 2024 9:24:31 GMT -8
Always room around here for another B&M car.
Well, maybe not that attractive Portec 3000 one. I just don't believe those travelled a long long ways. I DID see B&M boxes around Oakland back in the Olden Dayes.
Ed
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Post by cpr4200 on Jan 20, 2024 10:08:01 GMT -8
Always room around here for another B&M car. Well, maybe not that attractive Portec 3000 one. I just don't believe those travelled a long long ways. I DID see B&M boxes around Oakland back in the Olden Dayes. The Portecs were used in cement service between a plant near Montreal (Delson?) and Southern New England. They ran on the CP-B&M route via Newport and the Conn River Line to E. Deerfield. You'd see them in cuts of three to five on the head end of westbounds out of Newport. |
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Post by wagnersteve on Jan 20, 2024 11:32:12 GMT -8
1/20/24, abouto 2:26 p.m., EST
cpr4200, thanks very much for your latest post, which I've just now seen.
It's been a long time since I've been in Newport, VT. My wife and I went through that place en route to Quebec City from Mass. and Montpelier on our honeymoon more than 50 years ago.
Cement is heavy enough that it doesn't make sense to ship it any farther than necessary. I strongly suspect that most of New York Central's FlexiFlow covered hoppers carrying it went very far from whree they were loaded. Upstate NY to Framingham, MA, on the former Boston & Albany, yes, regularly.
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Post by edwardsutorik on Jan 20, 2024 12:25:21 GMT -8
The Flexi-Flo's made it to the west coast in their later years, doing whatever they did.
So I had an excuse to get one.
I'm not finding same for the Portecs. Yet.
Ed
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Post by lvrr325 on Jan 20, 2024 13:00:16 GMT -8
I see patched B&M Portecs pass the Tower 55 camera all the time, usually in pairs or trios. That's why I figured I'd sample one. Worst case if it doesn't sell, I weather and patch it for one of these cars.
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Post by GP40P-2 on Jan 20, 2024 13:17:02 GMT -8
The Flexi-Flo's made it to the west coast in their later years, doing whatever they did. So I had an excuse to get one. I'm not finding same for the Portecs. Yet. Ed I have caught the WW Portecs in Sparks, NV in the 1980s. Has anyone gotten a WW yet? Is the yellow of the concern that our favorite Delta pilot was concerned with in the Portec topic? |
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Post by cp6027 on Jan 20, 2024 13:56:30 GMT -8
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randyb
Junior Member
Posts: 85 
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Post by randyb on Jan 20, 2024 14:10:41 GMT -8
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randyb
Junior Member
Posts: 85
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Post by randyb on Jan 20, 2024 14:20:22 GMT -8
St. Mary's Railroad had similar cars but with a different roof for starters. Not adequately versed on what else might differ.
I'm excited for this release, I've been wanting these cars for years. The B&M cars appeared in the Mid-Atlantic states ALL THE TIME and the BMS cars turned up quite a bit as well.
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Post by wagnersteve on Jan 20, 2024 18:24:20 GMT -8
1/20/24, starting 8:24 p.m., EST, interrupted for a long stretch by household and evening tasks
randyb, thanks very much indeed for posting all those wonderful photos, which I was able to see even though I don't participate in Facebook. They really bring back memories. My wife grew up in Athol , the westernmost town in Worcester County on the B&M's Fitchburg Route, had relatives farther west, and we usually get to Berkshire County more than once a year, so I've been in Greenfield and East Deerfield a lot and North Adams and Williamstown quite a bit, among other places in Massachusetts. Was intrigued to see the 40' BAR cars used to take newsprint to a newspaper in Norristown, PA, that couldn't accept 50' cars. Decades ago I quite often used both the former P&W interurban from Haverford Township to go there, and at least once rode either a PRR or a Reading electrified commuter line to get there.
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Post by nsfantodd on Jan 20, 2024 18:34:44 GMT -8
The Flexi-Flo's made it to the west coast in their later years, doing whatever they did. So I had an excuse to get one. I'm not finding same for the Portecs. Yet. Ed Ed, Were the Flexi-Flos in ACFX? I think I saw a pic of them late in life in ACFX. Also curious of the time frame. Dont remember where I saw the pics. Thanks |
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Post by surlyknuckle on Jan 20, 2024 20:10:55 GMT -8
The Flexi-Flo's made it to the west coast in their later years, doing whatever they did. So I had an excuse to get one. I'm not finding same for the Portecs. Yet. Ed I am not sure what your modeling parameters are, but I've been seeing a lot of exB&M Portec stenciled for AEQX these days on CSX between Philly and Richmond. Not sure where they're going but they seem to be getting out and about now that they are in a lease fleet. |
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Post by surlyknuckle on Jan 20, 2024 20:14:06 GMT -8
The Flexi-Flo's made it to the west coast in their later years, doing whatever they did. So I had an excuse to get one. I'm not finding same for the Portecs. Yet. Ed I have caught the WW Portecs in Sparks, NV in the 1980s. Has anyone gotten a WW yet? Is the yellow of the concern that our favorite Delta pilot was concerned with in the Portec topic? My two WWs came here this week. The answer is...quantitative. They look a lot better than the stock Atlas photo on the website. But the yellow is still not great. They are pretty lemon-y in person. On the website, they almost look back-lit. It's like a 180 going the other way from the stock photo. I bet we don't see a re-run with better colors for quite some time, so I'll probably make my two cars "work". Won't be able to hide the colors with weathering too much since they would have only been a couple years old during my era. |
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Post by edwardsutorik on Jan 20, 2024 20:56:55 GMT -8
The Flexi-Flo's made it to the west coast in their later years, doing whatever they did. So I had an excuse to get one. I'm not finding same for the Portecs. Yet. Ed Ed, Were the Flexi-Flos in ACFX? I think I saw a pic of them late in life in ACFX. Also curious of the time frame. Dont remember where I saw the pics. Thanks I got SYSX 836. It's got conspicuity, so it's pretty late. Ed |
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