Freight Car Friday #56 – CPAA 208558

Today’s “Freight Car Friday” post is linked to a scan I received of an empty car waybill for the movement of an empty Canadian Pacific boxcar. The waybill shown below is for the movement of empty boxcar CPAA 208554 from Canadian Pacific’s Sault Ste. Marie yard to the CP yard at Schreiber, ON, via the Algoma Central from Sault Ste. Marie to Franz.

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Note a few interesting things about the waybill: there’s no actual shipper or consignee other than CP Rail itself. The notes at the bottom where the load/commodity information would be for an actual loaded shipment indicates a particular assignment number.

Presumably, based on its destination, this car is most likely a car assigned to woodpulp loading (which I’ve written about before) and was returned empty from SOO Line to CP Rail at Sault Ste. Marie, and there it received this billing for movement up to Schreiber where it will be reassigned for loading at one of the pulp/paper mills at Red Rock, Marathon, or Terrace Bay.

The car referenced on the waybill, CPAA 208554, is one of a grouping of cars built by Berwick Forge & Fabricating for the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad (MPA) and acquired secondhand by CP Rail in the early 1980s. Later in the late 1980s-early 1990s many of these CPAA cars were renumbered CP by removing the “AA” from the reporting marks. I caught CP (ex-CPAA) 208558, part of the same group and just four numbers away from the car on the waybill, at CP Guelph Junction (Cambellville, ON) in February 2004:

Generator End Details and Body Trim

A few more steps forward on these cars in getting the bodies finished up this week.

End details have been added with some electrical plugs from a Detail Associates locomotive M.U. stand detail kit, and the step platforms scratchbuilt from styrene sheet and strip. Mounting holes for all of the end of side grab irons have been located and drilled out, but these will be installed later after the bodies are painted. The final remaining details yet to be done on the ends are adding the brake wheel and hardware to the “B” end of the car, and adding ventilation louvers on the end doors using the 3D louver decals from Micro-Mark, which I do have on hand.

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One of the interesting visual features of these cars is the sheet metal overhang over the ends; I replicated this with .005″ styrene sheet wrapped around the roof of the car. The trim work on the upper fascia of the car side and the corners was also cut from .005″ strip, and then the joints were filled and sanded down. (And rounded off on the side corners.) I also added a few more pieces of .005″ sheet (barely visible at the far ends of the cars) for the roof hatch where the steam exhaust vents are mounted.

This project may pause for a bit while I work out how to do the roof vent/stack details (try to scratchbuild, try to draw up some parts for 3D printing?) but there is also some minor underframe work to be done yet as well.

Throwback Thursday #2

In the late 1960s-early 1970s Newaygo Forest Products had not yet established the lumber & chip mill at Mead to process logs, but had already been established since at least the 1950s with significant pulpwood loading spurs at Mosher (mile 217.3 & 218.0) and large cutting areas centered around the Mead area with spurs at mile 264.4 (Hale), 275.3 (Mead – where the mill would be built in 1974), and 281.9 (Coppell). During the 1950s up to the early 1970s this raw pulpwood would have flowed south; once the mill was built in the mid-1970s it seems most Newaygo pulpwood was sent to Mead to be chipped, and the woodchips were then shipped south to Wisconsin.

Empty cars would often be stored at nearby sidings at Horsey (273.1) and Coppell (280.9), which is exactly what we see with the message forms below.

These scans are of simple message forms that could have been delivered to train crews along with train orders, but to convey information that is less operationally critical or not covered by the formal forms of train orders.

These messages were all delivered to train no. 5 on successive days from April 24-26, 1970, and there’s a lot of special references to handling empties and pulpwood loads related to Newaygo’s spurs at Mosher, Mead and Coppell.

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I believe the railroad term for some of these set-outs of empty cars in the house tracks/sidings at Mosher, Horsey and Coppell would be “constructively placed” – maintaining a ready supply of empty cars nearby for loading at the logging company’s spurs.

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61′ gons referred to these messages would of course be the 1001-1400 series bulkhead gondolas built in the mid 1960s. 40′ gons referred to in the second message would have to be cars from the 4601-4804 series (re)built by the ACR’s shops in 1947-48 and still in service in the early 1970s.

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The specific references in the last two messages to handling both units (locomotive) through to Hearst are interesting; perhaps it was not uncommon to set off the trailing unit at Oba once all the interchange traffic was dropped off, if there were only minimal traffic left for Mead and Hearst? (Note also that CN freights only operated into Hearst 3 days a week according to the timetable – a frequency Ontario Northland maintains today.)

Throwback Thursday #1

Chips Will Fly at Paper Firm Plant

Mead, Ontario – Newaygo Forest Products Ltd., a subsidiary of Consolidated Papers, Inc., Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., will dedicate its $5.2 million lumber-chip complex here Oct. 6.

The new facility – which has 92,000 square feet of space in five buildings – has the capacity to produce 75 million board feet of lumber and 80,000 tons of wood chips for pulping a year, the company said.

Some of the features, it said, are computer sorting of logs, extensive use of chippers rather than conventional saws and hydraulically powered and controlled equipment.

Newaygo said the complex would enable nearly complete utilization of trees: cutting lumber from the trees fist [sic], chipping what is usually edgings and slabs for pulping and using the bark and sawdust for fuel.

A sister subsidiary of Consolidated Papers, Newaygo Timber Co., Ltd., owns more than 350,000 acres of forest land in the Mead area and will provide most of the logs to be processed in the new facility.

Employment of the two companies is expected to reach 270 when the facility is in full operation. Delays in equipment deliveries have postponed the startup of operations except for the sawmill.

– Milwaukee Journal, Sep. 24, 1974 Sec2, p13