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Remembering the Rutland Q. #41 (01/24/00) Since I live in California, it's kind of hard for me to know exactly what the Vermont/Rutland territory looks like. Do you know of a good picture book or two which will show the topography, as well as the towns which were along the Rutland? Thanks in advance for the help. -Steve Schulman A. (02/19/00) Two videos that may be of interest in your search for Vermont topography are: Vermont Autumn Trails and Covered Bridges (50 minutes) Vermont: A Green Mountain Journey (60 minutes) Both of these videos are really quite fasinating for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of being there in person. If I remember right I got them from Vermont Public TV. The name and address on the box is: Odyssey Productions of Vermont These were correct as of 1995. Good luck. -Chuck Hladik A. (10/22/00) I'm answering my own question. I just got a book titled Vermont: A View From the Air by Charles Feil. It is very helpful to me as it has some very nice views of the land as well as barns, bridges, and other buildings as seen from above, the view most modelers see on their layouts. -Steve Schulman Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #41. Q. #42 (01/24/00) I know United Farmers of New England was not a shipper over the Rutland, but does anyone know how their cars appeared in the post-war era? I know of the older, billboard scheme photo in the RMC articles of the past but have I have never seem anything with the later lettering. I assume it was the standard roman lettering, but the layout is of interest. Microscale shows a UF of NE car in its decal set but it shows it on a 50' steel car which, I don't believe, was a type ever leased by UFofNE. Hence I take the Microscale scheme to be [not] necessarily correct.
A. (01/25/00) To the best of my knowledge, John is correct that UF of NE didn't have any 50' steel Pfaudler cars, so the Microscale drawing is certainly incorrect in its specifics, but in general it may be correct. (I must confess that I haven't bought the Microscale set yet since I have a couple of the New England Rail Service sets about.) They did have three 40' steel cars (1040-1042) and three 50' wooden cars (w/wide doors: 893-895), and all of these cars were painted in the Roman sceme after WWII. I have a vague memory of having seen a photo of one of the steel cars somewhere, but I can't find it right now. As a point of information, the UF of NE's creameries that I know of include Morrisville, VT on the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain (shipping in Pfaudler cars), Enosburg Falls, VT on the Central Vermont's Richford Branch (shipping in cans as late as 1956), and Colebrook, NH on the MEC's Beecher Falls branch (shipping in Pfaudler cars). - Chris Martin A. (01/25/00) The only United Farmers of New England post-war leased car numbers that I have been able to locate, thus far, are GPEX 1040 thru 1042, which are listed as 40' steel cars (most likely ca. 1946 construction with rounded side bottoms) in John Nehrich's Milk Train Data Pack. I have seen photos of this type of car with the Microscale
lettering style, and page 72 of Dave Albert and George Melvin's
New England Diesels shows a 1952 photo of what appears to be a United Farmers
wood-sheathed GPEX car also in this scheme. Unfortunately, the car number [is] not
legible. Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #42. Q. #43 (01/25/00) I'd like to railfan the Bellows Falls Sub this spring/summer and was wondering if someone could tell me what Rutland stations are still standing on the Bellows Falls Sub (other than Chester) and if they are accessible for photos from public property. -Rich Parkola A. (02/16/00)
Stations left other than Chester are Bellows Falls,
Ludlow, Gassetts Freight House and Summit (this station has been moved and heavily
remodeled). Also East Wallingford station has been moved on to Rte. 103 and used as a
home. Nice remolded Section Car house also at East Wallingford. Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #43. Q. #44 (01/25/00) I'm interested in the new Sunshine Models GPEX Wooden Milk Car and was wondering if anyone has built this kit and how you liked it. Were these commonly seen on the Rutland in the early 1950s or were the steel milk cars more popular? -Rich Parkola A. (01/27/00)
I'm in the process of building two of these cars. On one I
have the body assembled and the underbody assembled to the point of adding brake gear. So
far the kits seem to go together nicely and with no major difficulties. The only problem
I've encountered is that the text leaves something to be desired in describing
modifications to the brake gear and the photos don't help a lot, either. Based on what
I've encountered so far, though, I plan to purchase a couple more of these cars at some
point. A. (01/30/00) I'm just finishing up the first of several of these kits I purchased. I've already completed a couple of the express reefers which are basically the same kit (of course the roof is different) and came out a couple of years ago. Overall, these are excellent resin kits and representative of today's resin technology. However, I found the prototype information supplied with the milk cars not to be up to Sunshine's usual excellent standards. In particular, I feel that several prototype photos should have been included showing typical lettering placement and the variations between the various lessees. -John S. Horvath Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #44. Q. #45 (01/25/00) Has anyone modeled the [Rutland steam switchers] #105 or #106 as they looked in the early 1950s? What HO models other than brass would be could good candidates to model these locos? -Rich Parkola A. (08/01/00) You may want to contact the RPI/NEB&W club as they may have a lead for you. It was suggested to me to use the MDC 0-6-0 to model the 105, but I have heard the MDC kits are a bear to build. As for the 106, I am using an Alco Models NYC B-11. -Rome Romano Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #45. Q. #46 (01/25/00) In Nimke's Vol 6, Part 1, Page 178 there is photo of the J. F. Carragher building of Lisbon, NY. What is the siding material used on this building? It sure looks like the type of metal siding formed to look like stone. What could one use to model this in N scale or HO scale? -Steven A. Schulman A. (01/26/00) Could that be a stone variation of the infamous "Inselbrick" asphalt siding? They look like similar sized panels much like the brick version panels. The only application of the formed metal Steve describes that I've ever seen is on the roof of an abandoned Coal and Lumber complex [still standing] on the Middletown & Unionville in Unionville New York. I've never seen a roof like that anywhere else, except maybe tin ceilings in old, period building interiors. Then again, isn't there a prototype for EVERYTHING??? John Nehrich had an article in the Sept. '88 Mainline Modeler on "Asphalt Siding" with photos of a variety of prototype styles and applications. Unfortunately the style in the Nimke photograph is not shown. In the article is a close-up of a structure John built using a "black felt tip pen" [Sharpie fine-point?] for the tar lines between panels. It looked great. In fact it was only after reading the captions that I realized that it wasn't a photo of an actual building. Such is John's modeling talent. I was up in Burlington right after Christmas and my Wife and while there I measured and photographed the old Swift packing plant, now a Dive Center of all things! I want to build a model of it for my railroad in order to have a place to switch some of those Red Caboose Mather cars. The Inselbrick siding along with the simple architecture of the old Swift plant is what really drew me to this particular structure. I've thought about what to do to model the "Inselbrick" for sometime now. I came upon some brick paper sheets manufactured by K & P Brick & Building Co. The sheets come in a variety of styles, colors and scales, N through O including S and are some of the finest brick papers I've encountered. I plan on experimenting with the sheets using a Rapidograph pen with a fine point to try and recreate the tar lines, much as John did. I'll let you know how it turns out. You might want to try using some Holgate and Reynolds
"stone" sheets for the desired depth in detail, paint them and then use a
Sharpie fine point or a rapidograph pen to give faint tar outlines of the panels. I too
would be interested in hearing of any other techniques used or experimented with to model
this style siding. A. (02/16/00) I was up in Lisbon, NY a couple years back (maybe more) and I remember that building being painted yellow, of all colors (must have been on sale or something they couldn't sell) so that would indicate that it was metal siding. I have a color photo and will look. -Steve Mumley A. (05/15/00) I believe the siding in question is stamped metal similar to "tin" ceiling material. Last weekend at the RRHS Convention I noticed a building behind Dunkin' Donuts in Rutland (I'm not sure which building) which had its rear walls covered in stamped metal made to look like pointed shingles. To model the Lisbon building, I would look for someone's embossed stone material and streak some rust on it, especially at the seams. This type of "stone" look was common in the early part of the century. Cast cement blocks with a "stone" face were also common. -Bill Badger Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #46. Q. #47 (01/27/00) I am in the process of building a model of the Florence (Vermont) station. From the photos in Nimke's Vol. 5 part 2, p. 118 and in Shaughnessy's The Rutland Road, p. 312, it looks like the station had a slate roof. Can anyone verify this? -Jay Conant A. (02/16/00) Most Rutland stations were built with Slate roofs and stayed that way, so I would say that Florance would have been the same. -Steve Mumley Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #47. Q. #48 (01/27/00) Nimke's books mention in several places that the Rutland from time to time shipped pulpwood. Since I don't think they had any of the bulkhead flat cars typically used for this, I wonder what they did use? -Jay Conant A. (01/30/00) Photos of the era indicate that both gons and boxcars (typically older cars with their roofs removed) were used in pulpwood service in New England and New York. I don't believe the Rutland had any roofless boxcars and I've never seen photos of their gons used in such service. Perhaps off-line equipment, in particular from the New York Central, was used. I know that in the postwar era the Central had some old SUF boxcars (both 36' as well as 40' USRA design) with the roofs removed that were reclassified to LP which indicates usable for pulpwood service. I've also seen similar Maine Central cars in photos. -John S. Horvath A. (02/09/00)
This doesn't reply directly as to types of
pulpwood cars loaded on the Rutland, but modelers may be interested to know that in the
early 1950s the Rutland carried hundreds of carloads of 4' pulpwood in overhead service
for St. Regis Paper Co. loaded primarily in Maine Central cars. The wood was loaded at
Maine Central team tracks in Beecher Falls, VT and West Stewartstown, NH and forwarded to
St. Regis mills in Deferiet and Carthage, NY located on the New York Central near
Watertown, NY. The routing was MeC- St. Johnsbury- StJ&LC- Swanton- CV-Rouses Point-
Rutland- Norwood- NYC. This was low-rated traffic carried by five different railroads! I
wonder what the CV's per car earnings were for their 14 mile haul from Swanton to Rouses
Point? A. (02/16/00) The Rutland didn't have any pulpwood cars on their roster except in the 1920s they had three flat cars with bulkhead ends and I have no idea who used them, etc. All other pulp wood loadings were in regular 40ft box cars. As Dwight Smith mentioned, many a carload of pulpwood moved over the Rutland in MEC cars both from the Bellows Falls gateway and the Alburgh interchange. I remember seeing these movements each day. They moved in groups of 5 to 10 cars with the oldest cars in the world. As Dwight mentioned, the divisions were really low and the railroads didn't get rich handling this. They used old cars because it was really hard on the interior of a box car. The paper mill at Sheldon Springs (CV) also received pulpwood in box cars. My younger brother's first summer job while in college was unloading these cars at night. That's when he knew that college was a good thing. If really interested, I have a Rutland tariff showing pulpwood rates, destinations and shipping points. -Steve Mumley A. (06/17/01) On a cold fall day in 1953 or 1954, while a freshman at St. Lawrence, I hitch-hiked over to Norwood to inspect the Norwood & St. Lawrence. While there, I enjoyed one of the thrills of my young life when I was invited to ride one of their Moguls down to the ashpit and return. It was a joy, topped only by the privilege of handling the throttle for a few minutes on the way back up the yards. During my visit, I observed a number of old wooden boxcars which had their tops removed and were being used to haul pulpwood to the mill. Pulpwood was just dumped in, not stacked, so the loads had a certain jack-straw appearance. Small lakers used to dock at Waddington on the river and discharge (I guess) Canadian pulpwood for the short line to haul to Norfolk/Norwood using the boxcars. These could well have been the Rutland cars which are in question, especially given the paucity of rolling stock on the line. I wasn't knowledgeable enough at that time to investigate further. Hope this sheds some light on the topic. -Bill Wellman Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #48. Q. #49 (01/30/00) I am looking for some information about Rutland rolling stock and I was wondering whether you could help me. Model Die Casting makes a (36 foot?) two-bay covered hopper in a Rutland scheme. Did the Rutland really have these cars, and, if so, what did they carry, who were the shippers and the primary recipients? Thanks for any assistance that you can give me. -Paul McNamara A. (02/02/00) The Rutland had 15 P-S covered hoppers in the 500-514 series built in 1956. They were used for grain and ground limestone. The MDC car is reasonable for the price - I can't find the one that I bought - good grief! - but I remember it having relatively accurate lettering. The Atlas Rutland covered hopper has almost perfect lettering on a better (finer) model. They came in sets but I've seen them being sold separately (for about 50% more). -Ray Muntz Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #49. Q. #50 (02/09/00) Although I have been in HO for quite a while, I recently decided to branch out to S scale. I purchased an RS-3 from American Models and now would like some advice on decaling it for the Rutland. With no S scale sets of decals available, I decided to try Microscale Railroad Gothic in yellow. The letters look to be about 9-10" high, a little small. Should be about 12". Any thoughts on a better lettering set to use? For paint, I was thinking of Floquil Southern Green. It seems darker than Vermont green, but once again, any outside thoughts or information would help. -Cy Bacchi A. (02/09/00) Refer to Question #5 for a discussion on Rutland Diesel Green. -Jim Dufour A. (02/15/00) When the Microscale lettering came out...one of the things I did was to check how large the lettering actually was, comparing the lettering on the beautiful, nearly broadside shot of #400 at Rutland on page 53 of Nimke, Vol.2 with the drawings that appearred in RMC several years ago. It turns out the lettering Cy disdains as too small is in fact the right size -- 10". -Chris Martin A. (03/11/00) At the Springfield show (in early February) Ron Sebastian of Des Plaines Hobbies told me that he will (at my longtime request) be producing S-scale decals for Rutland diesels. He said they will not be based on the same artwork used by Microscale for their HO set. The S-scale decals should be available sometime this spring or summer. -Jeff English Care to comment? Click here to email your response. Please refer to Q #50. [Back to Rutland Q&A Directory] |
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