AC 10590 is a company service assigned flatcar of unknown origin with rather simple spartan “Service” lettering. Seen here behind the Steelton engine shops with salvaged truck frames from a scrapped SD40.
1993 photo courtesy of Blair Smith.
AC 40′ flatcar 10728 loaded with the wrecked body of hopper car 8444 in October 1993 at Steelton shops. Photo courtesy Blair Smith.
The flatcar appears to be a former 2201-2250 series car. These were officially in service and listed in Official Railway Equipment Registers from the early 1940s to early 1970s, although a number lasted longer in work service. The 10xxx series numbering on the Algoma Central was reserved for work equipment.
Several hopper cars, GP7L-m 102 and SD40-2 184 were wrecked in a 1993 derailment caused by a washout.
This old wooden boxcar was in pretty rough shape when found in behind the Steelton shops by Blair Smith on August 1, 1996. The paint and the car’s number are all but completely obliterated, but the number is probably AC 10036 or possibly AC 2036. The 10xxx series number range was used by the ACR for non-revenue and work equipment, although some tool and bunk cars were renumbered with 20xx numbers in the late 1980s. I’m not sure of the reason for the 20xx grouping, but it seemed to include some ancient wood boxcars used as tool and storage cars for the ACR’s auxiliary (wreck crane) train.
This car would have been an original AC 3101-3200 series car acquired new in 1928.
This pair of ex-Ontario Northland boxcars has also been receiving some attention lately, with new stencil reporting marks and numbers applied, and some basic weathering with pan pastels. The weathering still has a ways to go, and they also need a little touch up in some areas yet (like some minor patching in the data and re-weigh information to properly date the cars and vary things up a bit more) and the ladders and end details to be re-installed.
As on the model, the real cars were purchased second-hand from the Ontario Northland and just crudely patched out with AC markings. Both of these cars specifically follow the patch patterns of the prototype numbers they represent.
The 2906 is one of roughly 15 former Ontario Northland boxcars put into a series of general service cars; now when I say this, these cars were still basically non-interchange and captive to the ACR, and mostly commonly used for company materials and local wayfreight deliveries.
The 10352 has a work service number, and was likely a tool or work materials storage car. The real car has a pair of turbine style ventilators on the roof which will also still need to be added at some point.
I also have a couple of brown Ontario Northland cars in the wings which will also soon become another 2900 series car and probably another 10000 series work storage car.
Incidentally, this is the 100th post published to this blog!
The Algoma Central rostered several distinctive designs of freight cars that didn’t exactly match anything on other railroads. One of these signature cars was a 73 car series of 40’ flatcars with a 9’ tall open framework with wraparound sides at each end of the car. These permanent end racks created a fleet of cars that could be used for pulpwood service on the ACR, delivering pulpwood from spurs and sidings along the line to the Abitibi Paper mill in Sault Ste. Marie.
AC 2358 at Frater in September 1996, loaded with fresh ties and MOW supplies. Blair Smith photo.
Pulpwood was cut in 8’ lengths and loaded widthwise in the cars, with the end racks containing the pile, and the friction of the logs’ rough surfaces holding everything else together. These cars were used extensively and primarily for this, but I’ve also seen a photo of a trio of these cars in the late 1970s loaded with wrapped lumber loads from the Newaygo Forest Products sawmill at Mead (1974-1985), and they could be used for any sort of company service load requiring an open flat car as well (being particularly well suited to loading with new ties in the same manner as pulpwood logs).
Train of pulpwood arriving at Steelton yard, early 1990s. Morgan Turney photo via James Brookman.
The exact history of these cars is unknown, but they show up on Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) listings in two batches beginning in 1965-66. It’s likely that they are drawn from other series of 40’ flatcars with the custom end racks fabricated by the ACR’s car shops. By the early 1970s these cars no longer appear in the ORER listings, but these did remain actively in service well into the late 1980s and early 1990s (just not in interchange service and thus no longer included in the published data supplied to the ORER – a 1984 ACR freight listing reproduced in Dale Wilson’s “The Algoma Central Railway Story” indicates 69 of the 73 cars still in service), and a few examples still kicked around in company service well beyond the Wisconsin Central takeover. If any were left by the CN takeover of WC in late fall of 2001, this old equipment was likely scrapped then.
AC 2363 with trash dumpsters in the Canyon house track in 2000. Chris vanderHeide photo.
While other railways had various types of flatcars for pulpwood service with end racks or bulkheads and sometimes V-shaped decks or deck risers or dividers for loading pulpwood in 4’ long logs in two rows, the square, open framing with wraparound sides of these ACR cars makes for a distinctive looking car, particularly with the ACR bear herald emblazoned on the left hand side. Athearn even had an ancient old HO scale model from their old “Blue-Box” line of a 40’ pulpwood flatcar with superficially similar end racks, but the corners are rounded and the car has fishbelly sides and a prominent ridge in the centre of the deck. This could be used as a rough stand-in, but the divider/ridge in the middle is problematic, and the flooring of the car would have to be extensively reworked.
End view of AC 2358 at Frater, September 1996. Blair Smith photo.
To really get proper looking racks, they’d have to be scratchbuilt, either on an existing model of a 40’ flatcar with straight side sills, or a fully scratchbuilt model.