Eastern Railroad Discussion > PRR Freight Car in 1986

I caught this PRR Hopper on the MKT RR in Savannah Ok in May 1986.

As you can see, the paint job is pretty fresh.

Why would a Pennsy car still be running in interchange this long after the Penn Central merger? I would have thought it would have been repainted to PC.

Yardclerk

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What did that yellow ball stand for? I've heard its ore loading only, but PRR had a fleet of jennies for that. But then when Conrail ran the ZWW's and ZSR's on the Pitt Div, the ZWW's had jennies and the ZSR's were pocket hoppers. Anyone know for sure?...Roadrat

Funny you should mention the ore trains, because I just posted a video clip of an empty one on the Oaks site. Didn't notice any PRR cars though, but did have a few EL hoppers mixed in with the G38 and G39 ore jennies.

From PRR Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Yanosey and Sweetland, Volume 1, page 64, relating to H43's: The yellow ball on the simplified scheme signifies that the car was suitable for unit train service. A yellow ball with a black dot meant that the car had modified trucks and side bearings to prevent "rock-off".

There are pictures of PRR locomotives with similar circular markings - what did that mean?

I caught a Pennsylvania flat car on the BN @ LaCrosse in 1992. I thought it was odd...especially the fact that it hadn't been renumbered, new reporting marks, etc.
-Martin Young
Corona, CA.

oaksmodelrr wrote:
>
> A yellow ball with a black
> dot meant that the car had modified trucks and side bearings to
> prevent "rock-off".

Are you sure about that last part? I thought that particular marking was due to a defective batch of type U-33 wheels that were known to be subject to high breakage rates. The "dot in a box" marking was supposed to have some significance as to the wheels and relate to restrictions on the car...

The Yellow ball was to indicate unit train service. This worked for a year or so then cars started finding their way into non unit train service. All PRR H-43 class cars were painted with Yellow Balls. The cars had a tendency to rock off on poorly maintained jointed rail at certain speeds. Some cars had snubbers applied to try and alieviate this problem. These cars had a black dot placed in the center of the yellow ball. The rr discovered that the snubbers would not fix the problem and the best way to eliminate the rocking off was to either run below 15 mph or above 30 I believe. There were critical speeds because of the wheelbase of the car and the 39' jointed rail. Most of these cars existed well into Conrail in fact most of the G-52 class bathtub gons were built fron the frames of the ex PRR cars.
----------------------------- Ken McCorry

I saw PRR gons and a covered hopper on CR into the mid-90's. There are still some (now extremely rusted) gons around in PC paint with the red P/white C logo in the corner. Saw a couple of them in the past year or two.

What would really be interesting would be to find a PRR car that was renumbered for CR, but kept it's PRR paint, and then re-stenciled for PRR during the Conrail/NS/CSXT merger, i'm sure there arent any that exist since not many freight cars recieved the PRR markings, but would be possible with a NYC car..

Just a thought..

UP_Omaha

The ESHR has a trio of of ex-PRR hoppers at Littlecreek, Yard, in Norfolk, VA. They were at one time used as idler cars for loading the car float, but now sit off to the side rusting away. One is in full PRR dress(672791), one is in PC dress, and the is in a PC/CR dress. ESHR now uses some ex-Southern 40' low side gons for idler cars.

While I have my box of NYC/PRR/CR freight car slides out, other cars I shot in long ago paint include a NYC flatcar #506109(11/93), PRR flatcar #480362(3/95), and a 50' PRR DD boxcar #?3797(10/85). Another odd find was a CR 50' plug door boxcar #360007 in fresh CR paint, and the roof walk still in-tact in 2/95.