This
design had a life span that is truly enormous. The last cars of this
design were built in the 1960's -- three decades after the first cars
were built for Santa Fe. Quite a  few
of these cars are still in service. Because you have to stand on the
roof in order to open the hatches, these cars were immune from the
"No Roof Walk" rule of 1964, but a number would be scrapped when friction
bearing trucks were outlawed. Amazingly, some cars are now being retired
because they have hit the Federal
Railroad Administration's 50 year rule! The deLuxe models
of these common cars are weighted with the same
copper slugs used in our box cars for superior tracking and immunity
to magnetism. Most releases feature more than
one paint scheme variation within a road name. For instance, the Missouri
Pacific set  features
cars delivered with MP reporting marks and painted "corrosion resistant
gray" that is actually a tan color, and cars lettered for MoPac subsidiaries
Missouri-Illinois and St. Louis Brownsville & Mexico (both carrying
the traditional buzz saw logo) that are painted in a more traditional
gray color. Some of the more modern paint schemes including Delaware
& Hudson and National Bureau of Standards have the four-color
ACI tags. ACI stands for Automated Car Identification and worked like
a grocery store bar code reader using a color TV camera instead of
a laser. Unfortunately, the tags couldn't be read if they were dirty
and the system fell out of favor by the early 1980's. This aspect
of 70's railroading is rarely modeled but we include it on appropriate
cars. |
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