2015 Lionel Milk Cars

[Neil]

Are now shipping apparently. Mine is the NYC version and at $57 or $58 it seems a great value under present circumstances.

[HONDO74]

Are now shipping apparently. Mine is the NYC version and at $57 or $58 it seems a great value under present circumstances.

Is this the one you are talking about,,,,,

[Neil]

Don't know for sure. If it's from the 2015 vol. 2, that's it. Haven't received it as yet.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Looks like a nicely detailed car; looks compressed a bit -- not scale?

That might make it even more interesting to me to convert into a traction freight reefer!

[chuck]

The car is scale, but based on the 40' Phaudler milk tank car. Later versions were 50' long.

NYC operated four NYC explicit milk trains per day as well as receiving cars from Erie/Lackawanna/Lehigh Valley (PA and Finger Lakes farms) from across the Hudson via car float. The cars included the 40-50' Phaudler, Borden's butter dish cars as well as "milk can" cars and a couple of specialty cars with removable tanks that trucked the milk cross town in Boston and New York. I have the Railway Milk Cars Parts 1-4 and I can not find specifics on the make ups of the trains of any photo's of cars in NYC markings. Most of the cars were actually marked with the dairy company (e.g. Bordens) or the company that outfitted the car with the dairy handling equipment, e.g. Phaudler). In addition to the NYC milk trains there were Long Island RR trains that brought in milk from long Island before it became a giant suburb of NYC.

I remember that when the prototypes for these scale milk cars were released they big complaint was the single grab iron on the one side. Most of the photo's of the cars show two more narrow grab irons but there are a few with just a single narrow one.

I have a several of them in different markings that I can use to make up a "milk" train when I so desire. They are very nice cars and I am not overly concerned about their specific "accuracy".

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The car is scale, but based on the 40' Phaudler milk tank car. Later versions were 50' long.

All I needed t know on dimensions; more familiar with the 50' cars. Have to see a good close up of the ends to see how complicated it might be to modify as a traction car.

[chuck]

Enough detail? I can go grab one and take some pictures.

http://www.lionel.com/products/new-york-central-milk-car-6-82508

I don't know about the "traction car" but a lot of these were re-purposed to express freight cars as milk delivery/production moved over to trucks with the proliferation of the Interstate Highway system and the suburbs expanded tremendously and delivery to a "big city" became less of an issue.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Enough detail? I can go grab one and take some pictures.

Good enough; thanks!

"Die-cast metal sprung buffers"

I'd be milling those off for my use.......might be in interesting challenge. I'll put this on the list of of potential projects for the next decade.

[J. S. Bach]

I have too many Scalecraft (and others) to want one of these (and then have to two-rail ). I was a fan of head-end stuff for many years; my twenty-car passenger train ended up with about sixteen or seventeen reefers, RPOs, baggage, etc. Every time that I added a "new" head-end to the train, a coach, sleeper, whatever would be cut out. Twenty cars was the limit of the Baldwin Model's capability on the WB&A Tractioneers' layout. The cars consisted of a mixture of various manufactures cars and trucks.

[chuck]

Cars were first introduced back in 2003. Article on converting to two rail.

https://oscalekings.org/WP/3-rail-2-rail-conversions/

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Cars were first introduced back in 2003. Article on converting to two rail.

Yes, but I'd be converting it to a two rail traction freight reefer so I'd be just exchanging the trucks directly. The ends are the issue as I'd be removing the buffers and adding a radius curved decking and radial coupler. All doable, just way down on the to do list of projects.