Prototype Information
Freight Equipment Diagram Books are a collection of equipment diagrams, representing most of the freight car fleet of the issuing railroad. The equipment diagrams are not scale drawings. They are impressions of what the car looks like, and provide a record of the capacity, dimensions and ancillary items. Some details are of interest to the Traffic Department. Others are useful to car-men for maintenance and repair purposes. It is worth noting on some of the large orders for steel box cars, the division of specifications among several manufacturers for such items as doors, roof walks, power hand-brake mechanisms.
Freight equipment is not the only subject of diagram books. Many railroad also publishe locomotives, passenger cars, and maintenance of way equipment.
Original equipment diagram books were blueprints. Blueprints are made by a photographic process (Cyanotype). The resulting
image takes the background color of the paper, the rest of the page
becoming a Prussian blue– which turns black or gray via a photocopier.
It was a relatively inexpensive means of printing small quantities of
many pages. Fortunately for us, many diagrams has been scanned and inverted to provide a black image on a white background.
The condition of diagrams varied considerably. Railway historians have used several different procedures for achiving. Some archives were a simple scan and minor tweak. Others required major clean up, removing excess marks, and/or reinstating lines and repairing individual characters. The 'cleanness' of the diagram depends on the skills, abilities and time available to the archivist.
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The WWSL
The WWSL does not have a Freight Equipment Diagram Book. Maybe someday when everything is done I may chose to create one. For my purposes, each piece of equipment will have an equipment diagram available for referral in applying prototypical equipment in the kitbatching process.
References
Here is a list of diagram books of specific interest to me that I have found in my internet research.
Great Northern Freight Equipment Diagram Book
Milwaukee Road Freight Equipment Diagram Book
Northern Pacific Freight Equipment Diagram Book
Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway Equipment Diagram Books
Union Pacific Freight Equipment Diagram Book
Pennsylvania Railroad Equipment Diagram Books
Burlington Northern Equipment Diagram Books
Western Pacific 1947 Freight Car Diagrams
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