Category Archives: Freight Cars

Freight Car Friday #5 – ACIS 1415

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ACIS 1415 is an interesting car with a story to tell.

Built in 1974 by National Steel Car, this 61’6″ (inside length) woodchip gondola was purchased for service hauling woodchips from the (then) new Newaygo Forest Products lumber/chip mill at Mead, at mile 275.3. It was one of original 90 cars numbered ACIS 1401-1490. As the cars were exclusively used between Mead and paper mills in Wisconsin (my best information indicate the primary destination for these cars was a mill in Appleton) the “ACIS” reporting marks indicate cars assigned to strictly International Service and not to be used between domestic points within Canada under customs regulations.

By 1985 the Newaygo mill had shut down and most of the Algoma Central’s chip cars were sold off, however this became one of 5 cars (ACIS 1413, 1415, 1416, 1417 and 1433) retained and repurposed as a lumber carrier for Dubreuil Brothers Lumber in Dubreuilville. The end door was removed and replaced with the open steel bracing shown above and the top bracing holding the car’s sides together was raised to provide additional clearance for loading. These cars would be spotted at a ramp at the end of the loading track at Dubreuilville and pulled each day by the southbound freight to head down to the Sault on the night freight out of Hawk Junction. At Steelton yard they would be spotted at a Dubreuil Brothers Lumber yard next to the ACR yards and unloaded.

An interesting example of a unique service provided by a unique regional railway.

Freight Car Friday #4 – NFPX 1511

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In 1974, Newaygo Forest Products opened a sawmill at Mead (mile 275) on the Algoma Central, one of the major outputs of which was woodchips which were shipped to paper mills in Wisconsin. The Algoma Central purchased 90 60′ woodchip gondolas from National Steel Car in 1974 for this service, adding another 23 cars in 1980. By 1985 however, Newaygo had shut down the Mead mill, and the majority of the AC’s woodchip cars were sold to Newaygo and used in services on other routes.

Here’s NFPX 1511 (former AC 1511, one of the 1980 built cars) at Steelton yard in February 1999 with a load of woodchips from a lumber mill at Calstock, Ontario, on the Ontario Northland Railway near Hearst. (Photo courtesy of Blair Smith)

Scratchbuilt Ends for 2301-2373 Series Flatcar – Part 2

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This week I managed to take the next step forward on the ends for my (current) quartet of 40′ end-rack pulpwood flatcars, finishing up the major framing on the end of the rack.

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Note that the inner-most vertical members on the prototype are Z angle, not square tube or bar stock like the rest of the frame. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any commercially available Z strip in the .040″ thickness I needed to match the rest of the framing; Plastruct makes some down to 1/16″ but that’s still far too large by at least 50%.

What to do when you can’t get the angle stock you need? Well, simply fabricate your own out of plain strip. To make the fabricating process easier, cleaner and more precise, I built a jig using a couple sizes of styrene strip sandwiched between a bit of scrap styrene for a top & bottom plate, with a space in the middle to feed through a pair of .010x.030″ strips (top and bottom flange) and a .010x.020″ (middle web) strip through the jig.

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Once the cement on the jig set, I could fabricate the Z stock by inserting the strips into one end of the jig and slowly pushing them through out the other side, about a quarter to a half inch at a time and cementing them together with liquid cement applied with a very fine brush into the joint between the strips.

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The result is a nice, solid structural shape that looks about as good as any solidly extruded commercial offering, and would have been extremely difficult or impossible to do free hand at such a small size.

Freight Car Friday #2 – AC 8010

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Photographed in October 1993 by Blair Smith, AC 8010 is an example of a series of 100 cars built by National Steel Car in 1971 for the Algoma Central. Aside from the totally unique bathtub shape of the car body, the cars feature a chain-driven longitudinal hopper opening; this feature was apparently not well appreciated by crews when it froze up in the winter. Another 100 cars were apparently planned, but cancelled, with the railway instead ordering 300 rapid-discharge triple hoppers for delivery in 1974-75.