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From: Mike Dodge micstedod AT verizon DOT net
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 23:21:53 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: (erielack) FW: DL&W 16499-16699
EXIF Image Description: Tag attached by Westinghouse to EL flat car 9621
"EL9621_20110509E-WhippanyNJ-MichaelSDodge_resize.jpg" - image/jpeg, 1363x1022 (24bit)

For what it's worth, the attached copy of a Lackawanna press release from October 1958 (original is in the Steamtown archives) states that hoppers would be used as the basis for 100 of the
pig flats in the 16499-16699 series. Whether that changed and boxcars continued to be used as they were in the September group I do not know. I do know the Whippany
Railway Museum currently owns EL 9621 (ex- DL&W 16621) and it is one of the the boxcar conversions, or at least its trucks match those used on the boxcars. It survived by winding up
at the Westinghouse plant mentioned by Mr. Recordon. Unfortunately, the car no longer has the hitch.

Mike Dodge

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Message-ID: <037001d061bb$1b142cb0$513c8610$@comcast.net>
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In-Reply-To:
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 16:35:42 -0400
From: "Paul R DOT Tupaczewski"
Subject: (erielack) FW: DL&W 16499-16699
EXIF Image Description: Tag attached by Westinghouse to EL flat car 9621

Rusty Recordon was kind enough to sum up his “magnum opus” articles in RMC from a few years ago on DL&W pig flats.... this should address some of the recent questions about hitches and such...





- Paul





DL&W 16499-16699



Commencing in September of 1958 Keyser Valley Shops began its last piggyback flat car conversion. Departing from the practice of salvaging center sills and trucks from surplus forty foot hoppers, the Lackawanna turned to its obsolete and aging wooden box car fleet to supply under frames and trucks. The donors were steel framed, double sheathed, wooden sided cars of the 46000 series. These were the last wooden box cars bought by the Lackawanna and were built by Magor Car Co. and American Car & Foundry in 1926. They were forty feet in length with a capacity of 50 tons.

The series conversion was completed in April of 1959 and departed from the pattern of hopper conversions in trailer securing technology and appearance. With this last conversion the Lackawanna finally embraced the deck mounted, retractable fifth wheel trailer hitch, first introduced by American Car & Foundry in 1956. While taken for granted today, acceptance of this type hitch, also built by Pullman Standard, was so slow through out the piggyback railroads that in a 1959 Railway Age Weekly survey of forty four roads only about half the cars were so equipped.

Lying flat on the deck when stowed prior to loading, this type of hitch is quickly raised into position and locked on the trailer king pin by an electric wrench, and is the only tie down required. Considering the labor and ancillary equipment savings in this hitch it is hard to explain the resistance. Several reasons have been advanced: many of the pioneer piggyback roads already had sizeable fleets and large investments in the early tie down technology; those railroads that viewed their piggyback flats cars as transport only for their own captive trailers didn’t value the speed in unloading; and the simple fear that the single point hitch would not hold the trailer on the car predominate.

The Lackawanna management ran a progressive road with a history of improving its piggyback car fleet. In all likely hood in the year and a half between the completion of the 16400-16449 series and the beginning of this series, the management recognized the retractable hitch as the coming industry standard and specified the ACF Type A for the next car conversion program.



March, 1957 DL&W piggyback flat cars and trailers simultaneously handled two transcontinental shipments of printing presses manufactured by the Walter Scott Company of Plainfield, NJ.

A Wall Street Journal printing press was shipped from Hoboken, NJ to San Francisco via a Lackawanna-Wabash-Santa Fe routing, including a segment from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit on the Wabash Great Lakes car ferry “Detroit”. The other shipment went to a Santa Ana, CA newspaper via a Lackawanna-Nickel Plate-St. Louis Southwestern-Texas & New Orleans-Southern Pacific routing. The March 25, 1957 Railway Age reported under the header “East Meets West-Via Transcontinental Piggyback” that, “The two simultaneous movements were the first of their kind.” Whether these shipments were the first transcontinental piggyback shipments ever, first to these cities, or of some other distinction is not explained, but it was obviously newsworthy enough for two photographs’ worth of coverage.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on May 10, 1959 the previous day’s arrival of the first transcontinental piggyback rail shipment in Seattle. The shipment was a Lackawanna piggyback flat car with new elevators from Westinghouse at Kenvil, NJ for the new Washington Building. They were delivered to the construction site in a Lackawanna canvas-topped van pulled by a Union Pacific Mack tractor. Prophetically the Post- Intelligencer quoted a Mr. Stahl of the Union Pacific, “This direct coast-to-coast shipment is the forerunner of many similar shipments to provide improved freight deliveries to the Puget Sound region,” today one of the major container ports on the West coast and originator of many transcontinental stack-pak trains.”





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EL9621_20110509E-WhippanyNJ-MichaelSDodge_resize.jpg

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