I ended up going with the #1’s and got my other 5 skeleton cars painted (but not yet weathered) and couldn’t resist getting them out on the layout. Much better than just having 1 lonely car behind a 3 truck shay.
Now if I can just find some logs… Thanks for all the advice, folks! Very helpful! Next step: more extreme weathering on all of them…
Concerning the length of log cars of the type that B’mann produced. Eastern logging lines, in a lot of cases used the shorter cars, as the loggs were often much shorter than found out West. Just north of me here in Ottawa, there was a line that was at one time owned by the Singer Sewing Machine Company. It used the short type of cars. (Thurso & Nation River Railroad)
Good information Fred!
Jim,
In the Western woods logs were generally cut for 16 or 32 foot lengths to transport to the mills, or in other multipliers of 8 foot. These logs were usually cut 3-6 inches longer than the finish length to allow for waste/damage/trimming. Some of the old pictures of rail cars bringing out logs of 80 to 120 foot long for use as ship masts or pilings are really interesting to see.
Rick
Rick:
So if I understood what you said correctly, and I measure correctly, the Bachmann skeleton cars are about 12" long which is, in 1:20.3, about 20 feet. So the 16 foot long lengths would be, though on the short end, prototypical. The 80 to 120 foot humongous ones were using disconnects (must be!) and with my small layout I’m not going to go to that length anyway (that’s 4 to 6 feet long IRL!).
So when people talk about lengthening the Bachmann skeletons (or creating their own) they are more targeting a 40 foot (prototype) car for the 36 foot lengths eh?
I have such short sidings that I think I’ll stick with the 12" cars for now and see how I like it…
Thanks for the historical context guys! Great stuff to know…