A new meaning to "on the ground"

One more. No date on this one, but the other side of the Democrat & Chronicle clipping noted a movie at a drive-in which came out in 1963, and there was an ad saying the new 1964 Ramblers had arrived at the dealership, so this must be fall 1963. Amazing that the car didn't even derail, the train line broke when the car collapsed, putting the train in emergency. Could have been a lot worse!

Yikes! I'm amazed the rest of the car didn't come apart, spilling it's contents everywhere. Shows what kind of workmanship those old cars had when built!

Charlie

I'd love to see the built date on that car - I see it's got an old "stem winder" hand brake. And also note the train line, angle cock and air hose are gone on the A end. The couplers probably separated vertically, parts started dropping until everything came to a halt. I'm guessing that car was scrapped without making another mile on its own wheels.

The Western Refrigerator Line Company (WRX) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Refrigerator_Line
I would hazard a guess, looking at the car count shown at the bottom of the page, that all the cars were built around the time the company was formed in 1929. The continuous decreasing numbers seem to indicate that cars weren't replaced over time.

Thanks! So the car was ballpark 34 years old. That's a lot of icy salt water dripping from the bunkers. (And you thought it was just your family car that could rust out over time! )

Interesting that The Great Yellow Fleet, referenced in Wikipedia, shows 500 WRX cars in 1940. The January 1940 Official Railway Equipment Register shows 2000 cars, numbered 9000 through 10999, with WRX marks.

JR

jr wrote: The January 1940 Official Railway Equipment Register shows 2000 cars, numbered 9000 through 10999, with WRX marks. JR

I don't have any ORER issues that far back. The more recent ones will show the number series as you describe, then the dimensions and capacities, then at the far right they show how many cars are within that group. So using that example, on Day One after they were put in service it would show 2,000 cars between 9000 and 10999. After 20 years, due to wrecks, fires, sales of extra cars, etc, they might still show the low and high numbers but there may be half or even less than that of the original amount remaining.

Well, I'm a goof.

I completely missed the right-most column. The series 9000 through 9999 has 435 cars, and 10000 through 10999 has 65 cars. So Mr. White's book (and Wikipedia) match the January 1940 ORER for total number of cars.

JR

No big deal, don't beat yourself up. But you do raise an interesting fact unrelated to the car which broke in half. The series starts at 9000 and ctclark, above, says they were probably built about 1929 (obviously over a period of time). But from 1929 to 1940 is only 11 years, and the group shrank by 75% in that time. That's pretty high attrition. I wonder if a large block of those cars was sold or otherwise renumbered. If not, those cars must have been made of very flimsy construction.

I looked it up--photo and article ran in Rochester Democrat & Chronicle on May 28, 1964.

Thank you! My estimate was off, I "assumed" the load of new Ramblers was at the beginning of the model year.

It's off topic for railroading, but just for kicks here's that ad: