MEC milk cars and wood passenger cars info

ModelRailroadForums.com is a free Model Railroad Discussion Forum and photo gallery. We cover all scales and sizes of model railroads. Online since 2002, it's one of the oldest and largest model railroad forums on the web. Whether you're a master model railroader or just getting started, you'll find something of interest here.


S

sandyriverman

New Member
I am new to the forum and just venturing into my first good basement layout after years of planning-dreaming. I am going to model a goodly part of the MEC Mountain Subdivision, mostly the part in NH where I live and the parts to
St Johnsbury and Beecher Falls.

I am interetsted in the late 1940's early 1950's era. Mixed trains ran a lot on this subdivision particularly the west end. I need milk cars as they were prominent for years on the branches. I have prototype photos but they show little detail. I would like any info on them that anyone might have.

They used wood combines w/truss rods and 4 wheel trucks. I have done some searching but am having trouble coming up with something that will work here for these cars. Might have to scratch build. Info on these cars would be greatly appreciated.

Do not need 100% prototype accuracy on any of this as I am just pleasing myself and only need something that is a reasonable representation of the prototype.

Would like to correspond with anyone modeling this area in that era just to enlarge the body of knowledge.

SRM
 
Hi, Thanks for the info. some of those milk cars look nearly close enough. Couldn't find the combine. I have a couple of very poor pics that show little detail but enough to get an idea.

Combine 502

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/woodcanoe/001-1.jpg

You can see the vestibules, truss rods and 4 whl trucks. Labelle has a model of a 1909 combine that is something like it but haven't found it anyplace else. Would like to find it in plastic.

I suspect these cars were built around 1900-1910. They look the part too.

Thanks for the info.
 


That's a closed vestibule wood combine. They are not going to be easy to find. Roundhouse, in the pre-Athearn days, made a plastic combine that would be very close, slighty too long but the look would be right. LaBelle makes the resin kit. Both show up on e-bay from time to time so that's a good place to check. Bethlehem Car Works has a 60' baggage car that's an exact match for the MEC cars but no combines. If you can't find anything, and assuming you can find a BCW baggage car in stock anywhere, that would at least be a good start for a kitbash.
 
I hear you on the combines. The MEC ran mixed trains from Bartlett to Beecher Falls and vice versa for years. These old wood combines were a fixture on those trains. Any photo just says "rural New England". They have a certain amount of charm for sure. I have been looking all winter for something to make them out of. Haven't seen anything like them on ebay either. Either find something from the 1800's which is obviously too old or something more modern.

These cars seem to be kind of unique to the MEC for some reason. I would like to know more about their creation for MEC in the first place, who built them and when. That might help some. I even thought of taking longer cars and taking a section out of them to shorten. Got to have 4 whl trucks and truss rods in any case. Can buy the trucks seperate but the truss rods are kinda part of the design. Its fun trying to figure it out. Thought it would be easy. Silly me!

Lots of the milk cars you provided the link to will work. Intermountain makes some too as I have found. In looking at what photos I have it is clear that many different types were used. I even found one with a curved arch roof yesterday in a photo which I had not noticed before. I am not interested in exact prototype anyway as I only want to please myself. But it would be nice to have reasonable representations of the original.

Another thing I am not sure of is just how was the milk carried. Most railroads I am aware of in Northern New England seemed to carry the milk in cans. But some of the Intermountain cars, and some from the link you provided yesterday, look like ones in the pics I have but were "tank" cars.

Got to find out more about just how that milk was carried.

Thanks for all the info. Those combines are really nice IMHO. Lots of character. Rural railroading at its best.

SRM
 
Wow, that sure is a lot of information. Nothing wrong with N scale either. I used to have a small layout years ago. Still got most of the stuff.

I am learning that there were "LOTS" of milk cars and that they are different and vary from place to place in the country.

SRM
 
If you'll forgive another incursion into this thread from N scale, I have an ice house and creamery under construction and here is one of my NYO&W Milk cars...just to show another example of what's out there that's been done in another scale, between upstate NY and New York City.
 
Last edited by a moderator:


Paul, I've seen the Rensselaer web site before but it galls me to pay $8 a month for what's mostly public domain material.

SRM, most milk in the early 20th century was transported in cans in special milk can refrigerator cars. This was the cheapest way to pick up small amounts of milk from farms along the line but very expensive to handle, both for the railroads and the creameries. Begining about 1920, cooperative creameries became more common. Farmers dropped ther milk off there, where it was pasturized and held in copper or glass lined tanks. When enough milk had accumulated, it was trasnfered to what we now know as milk cars, when the interior of the car was glass lined and then hauled to processing plants. The Bordens milk cars are perhaps the most famous of these types and lasted into the mid-50's. Most other milk was hauled by milk tank trucks after about 1940 since smaller amounts of milk could be moved much cheaper than hauling them by rail. There's a good picture of an MEC train at http://users.rcn.com/jimdu4/MilkTrains/BeecherFalls.htm. It was taken sometime in the 40's and shows a milk can car and what appears to be a steel RPO/Baggage/Combine so the MEC did eventually acquire some steel cars, although the milk can car is still wood.
 
I have that picture of the Whiting car at Crawford Notch. Like all photos I have seen though the car is only incidental to the photo and you cant really see details well at all. What did they have for trucks for instance?

I liked the info about the "milk tanks" in the cars. So the Intermountain cars are pretty good for this probably.

Another question is what color were the wood combines that ran on the Beecher Falls Branch in the 40's-early 50's? The one in the pic here was the maroon scheme. I kind of thought the combines I liked were green. But the only survivors I have seen were green but maybe that came later. Train 163 was the eastbound pass train. The wood combines were used on mixed trains #377 and #378 most of the time as far as I know. At least that is the use and time period I am interested in.

SRM
 
Do you mean for the milk car? Those are standard express car trucks and were used on almost all express and refrigerator cars that operated with passenger trains. Here's a Commonwealth version:

7029.jpg


They were very similar to four wheel passenger car trucks since they performed the same job in terms of providing a smoother ride than freight car trucks. The main difference was smaller leaf springs and larger coils springs due the higher PSI weights of the milk cars than a combine.
 
So I'm still confused a bit. The Whiting car shown in the Dwight Smith photo is described as a milk "can" car which is what I thought. In looking at the photo some more you can see that it has high speed trucks to reflect its use with passenger trains.

In this link: http://www.imrcmodels.com/ho/homilkcar.htm which is Intermountain models milk cars you see some that are marked milk "tank" car or "glass lined" meaning a tank. Yet they look a lot like standard refrig cars. If you look close you can see that they do not have the passenger style trucks either. I believe that some of these kind of cars were used in Vermont too.

So I am confused as to just who use what and when.

Re the combine: I happened to remember this morning that the Robertson book of Maine Central black and white photos contained a pic of the old MEC combine that operated on the short Hartland branch for some years. It was a one car train most of the time. I looked up the pic and had hopes of finding another of the wood combines and I knew its number was 506. Found the pic and the car was steel. Darn.

Still looking for the right combination of parts to make one.

I have read a bit about the "Old Woman" and like the NYO&W for all the reasons that I like the MEC Mountain Subdivision, especially the western end. Take a look at most any of the photos and it says "rural America" loud and clear. Thought about building a layout based on her but live in Bartlett, NH right where the mixed trains left from to go to Beecher Falls. Easy decision.

SRM
 
Last edited by a moderator:
SRM,
You're getting confused between a "milk can car" and a "milk tank car". Milk can cars were everything from purpose built refrigerator cars to converted baggage cars. The milk was delivered to the depot just before the train arrived and it was still fairly warm. The milk can cars purpose was to cool and preserve the milk in cans until it got to the creamery. The milk would spoil rapidly in hot weather, especially if there were any train delays. Because of this, milk can cars were almost always run as part of passenger trains and had high speed trucks to cope with the generally higher speed of passenger trains, although branch line trains were obvioiously not ballast scorchers. :)

Milk tank cars were normal refrigerator cars that usually had two steel tanks lined with glass. Milk was collected from larger dairies and farmer's cooperatives, where the pre-cooled milk was pumped into tanks. The milk tank car was capable of keeping milk at 35 degrees for as long as two days without additional icing so they generally traveled in regular freight trains. The trucks usually were more like caboose trucks, with leaf springs, to keep sloshing motion to a minimum. In the later years of milk tank cars, swing motion Bettendorf trucks were commonly used since they provided a smooth enough ride compared to earlier arch bar and Andrews trucks.

Is there some reason you have to get a wood combine? They really weren't all that common by the early 40's and were uncommon by the late 40's. A steel combine gives you a lot more modeling choices and the wood milk can cars were run right up until the extinction of that species in the late 50's.
 
Thanks for the info. I am pretty clear now that there were two types of milk cars that looked rather similar. One was a milk "can" car and the other a milk "tank" car. My confusion is trying to figure out which type was used on the Beecher Falls branch of the MEC Mountain Sub.

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b34/woodcanoe/001-2.jpg

The photo was taken in June 1949, at Northumberland, NH, on the Beecher Falls Branch. You can see the way-car behind the engine, 3 milk cars and the combine. Like most photos of the milk cars in this area you cannot see the trucks or the lettering on the cars. I am going to make an assumption. I know there were 3 creameries on the branch. There were usually 3 milk cars in the consist. That would make sense. Since it was coming from a creamery as opposed to farms I am assuming it was transported in milk "tank" cars. But Dwight Smith, who researched a lot on them referred to the one pictured in Crawford Notch as a "can" car so therein is the confusion. I suppose it is possible that both types were used but I kind of doubt that. 3 creameries and 3 cars pretty regular is pretty good evidence that the output of a creamery was in each car.

These cars were moved in passenger trains most of their lives so the high-speed trucks were probably a given. Don't know why the Intermountain cars do not have them but they are models of cars used elsewhere, might have been a different situation.

Re the combines. As can be seen in the pic these cars were a fixture here. Wood siding, oil lamps and truss rods just say something about the area. This is "country" railroading if you will. I just can't imagine that anything else would say this. I have had the idea since the beginning that one would have to make these from two regular cars by "combining" the needed parts. I have just noticed that MEC had at least two of these cars, #501 and #502, and if you look at the pics they are different, different arrangement of windows. I think the one above is #501. #502 has 13 windows on a side. This one has 8.

Bachmann makes a passenger set from about 1890 that has truss rods and kind of the right roof. They are too short but maybe one could use part of a coach and part of a baggage car. Have to close the vestibules somehow. But it looks possible if one can't find anything else.

This isn't really frustrating. Its like doing a role-playing game where you search for the correct answers. In other words its fun.

SRM
 
SRM, pretty cool picture. Sure from a different era than we see today.

I took the picture and blew it up and the third reefer back does say "Milk Tank Car". The other two don't but the contruction leads me to believe they are tank cars also. "Milk Tank Car" was painted on the early version of the tank car to distinguish it from a can car. By 1949, there were so few can cars around that I suppose the designation for tank car wasn't needed any longer. The two front cars appear to have faded lettering that may have carried the tank car designation but the resolution is too poor to tell.

The only thing I can compare the trucks to are the combine truck lengths. The milk tanks cars appear to have much shorter wheelbase trucks than the combine and are close to the wheelbase of the gondola behind them. I'd guess these were modified Bettendorf swing motion trucks with a leaf spring, very similar to a caboose truck. Slightly larger than normal but not as large as the older express trucks. I think the Intermountain cars just use standard freight trucks because they are the cheapest thing to use. There were so many truck variations that they are lucky if they get the paint scheme variations right. :)

I know what you mean about the wood combine and atmosphere. I spent a little time in Vermont in the mid 50's as a kid and can remember wood combines on the Rutland. I'd really try to find a Roundhouse Palace Car combine and use that as my starting point. You could use the Bachmann cars but they would be an awful lot of work compared to the Roundhouse car.
 
As far as I know, a milk "can" car, often a combine, was used to pick up small cans of milk from lineside stops where various area farmers would leave them. They would be taken to the creamery, where after processing, the cans would be redeposited at their respective stops, empty, and the milk, after processing, would be bulk loaded in milk "tank" cars (these are the glass lined boxcar looking ones with the passenger type trucks) to be shipped out to wherever. Thats my understanding of it. Atleast, thats how it was done on the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR in Maine.

Oh, and those "tank" cars, were quite expensive, so they were well maintained and had very long lives. Some cars from the 1920's made it to the 1970's and were some of the last cars running from that era. They had been rebuilt of course, with metal frames instead of the truss rods, but the wood sheathing and glass liners were often original. There weren't a lot of course, but there were some. By then though, trucks had taken most of the business.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.




Affiliate Disclosure: We may receive a commision from some of the links and ads shown on this website (Learn More Here)

Back
Top