Historical Car Record: Who knew?

[Dave Schneider]

I just stumbled across a previously unopened attachment in my email archive and thought I would share it with the group. The attachment from Milwaukee Road freight car expert John Greedy was something called a Historical Car Record, and was essentially the life story of a series of insulated boxcars that I am trying to build in N scale. I had never seen one of these records before, and this has to be one of the most interesting and informative pieces of paper I have seen in a long time. I thought it would be helpful to share this find with the group
as I suspect other people may have never seen one of these before. Man, what I would pay for a stack of these!

Anyone know where to find more of these?



Best wishes, Dave

[Blazeman]

Note the couplers are not Rapido given the time frame involved.

Can you imagine doing all that key stroking and not making errors?

[bbussey]

I see some errors.

They did have erasers then, prior to White-Out and Correct-o-Type being invented. 

[Dave Schneider]

Another interesting tidbit is that the insulation type is something called "Gustin Bacon Ultralight"! 

I justified placing this in N scale as this is part of my research to build this car. Longtime Railwire readers may remember my etched car side posts about these (still unfinished) cars, but I thought that your kids might be interested now they are all grown up. I considered making a New Years resolution to finish these cars, but I may just put it on my bucket list instead.

Best wishes, Dave

[jmlaboda]

"Can you imagine doing all that key stroking and not making errors? "

Hunt and peck... scary thought...

Unlike company service cars a variety of records were required for any car used in revenue service, including individual records for each car's maintenance, repair, modification, renumbering, rebuilding and retirement.  While it is a bit easier in this day thanks to the computer age there are still many of the same records that have to be maintained and additional reports that have to be submitted to various federal agencies.

Non-revenue cars varied from road to road, with some "records" being nothing more than a transfer of assets (be it to a different owner or division, or destruction) and a letter stating that such was approved by such in such in a specific department of the railroad.  Often not even renumbering records were kept, other than simply letters speaking directly of such changes.

[Bob Bufkin]

Interesting.  I could actually type faster on an old manual typewriter than I can today on a computer keyboard.  I had to pass a typing test in the navy for advancement in rate in my speciality.  Could do 60 WPM without error.  At one time I could do 74 WPM in a timed test.  Couldn't do that today is I had to.

[bbussey]

Interesting.  I could actually type faster on an old manual typewriter than I can today on a computer keyboard...

Same here.  I think no fail-safe of having a backspace key had something to do with it.  Plus the feel of the keyboards are just different today than 30-40 years ago.  You had to really strike the keys then, and now it just requires a feather's touch.  I guess we should just be thankful that the keyboard layout remained in the QWERTY configuration, for the most part.