Model Railroading > Long Drag, Little Coast.

Oakland bound heavy drag. Capital Corridor train coming off the Newark wye.

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#11 San Jose bound a half hour earlier...

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Some nicely weathered SP power and equipment there. Kudos.

Nice looking manifest Chris, thanks for sharing.  I forget, what does one yellow door on the boxcars signify?

Kent in CArmel Valley

Very cool Chris.  I remember seeing trains like that alot in the 80's.  Lots of good times trainwatching.

DynamicBrake Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nice looking manifest Chris, thanks for sharing. 
> I forget, what does one yellow door on the boxcars
> signify?
>
> Kent in CArmel Valley

Kent, I believe yellow doors signify paper or lumber service cars. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong please.

Yep, yellow door was for paper loading, mostly large rolls for newspapers ( remember those? ).. There was a large number of paper mills in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, although SP cars seemed to be present in Washington and BC paper mills as well. Through the years other types of boxcars would be seen at paper mills bringing in recycled paper, often RBox cars as the interiors were less critical.

The yellow doors were mostly a 60's and 70's thing, an attempt to provide clean cars for customers that insisted on clean cars for paper rolls. At that time lumber was mostly on flatcars, but in general lumber boxcars had an XM class marking. Auto parts and home appliances had their own boxcar pools as well.

The SP car types are often presented on Tony Thompson's blog:  https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/

Cool video 's. t4p.

+ should add that there was a yellow stripe car which were 40 ft cars rebuilt to relieve shortages in cars for lumber service, they also had larger than typical doors. Some of these programs had a special purpose and lasted for only a few years but were not re-painted at the end of the program.

At the time there was an intention to reduce empty boxcar mileage, but also rules about sending box cars to the home road when empty, basically lots of rules that lead to car shortages. The dedicated pools were an attempt to keep the customers happy but also led to all sorts of secondary problems.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/26 16:04 by TCnR.

I recall a few warehouses that would receive these giant rolls of paper along San Leandro blvd in east Oakland over by the Coliseum. You could see the rolls on the loading docks as you drove by.

I'm not a diesel era guy, but the freight scene with the lightig and particularly the background is a very prototypical looking video.
Nice work all around!

Fantastic stuff Chris, loved the CC train rolling by in the first video.

 Nathan

Thanks to all of you for participating and the very nice comments. Much appreciated.