Check this site

have you looked here?   F431's  and F331's There are 3 NS cars listed. (The site loads slow)

Yup, been frequenting those particular links

The F431 cars page is where I first found 185220. What I'm interested to know is what the number range is for that particular set of cars, and what the actual dimensions are listed. Also, I have the Southern and N&W cars listed in my 1988 ORER, so I'm trying to determine if that series came from SOU or N&W or if it was built new for NS.

I've discovered that it's actually quite difficult to find information on depressed center flatcars that aren't Schnabel or the Walthers 8-axle type cars. Either that or my google-fu has been weak recently.  I stumbled across the Conrail Historical Society website, and found the CR class FE42A cars are similar but are listed as being 5 feet shorter than the NS car.  Is it the same car but only shorter?  Is it an error on the rrpictures website?

Craig

Lone Ranger

According to the 1995 ORER, the series 185009 through 185900 are almost all high capacity, heavy duty flats, depressed center flats or well cars.  There are about 30-40 series of cars, each in groups of 1-5 cars (mostly singles).

NS 185220 is the sole car of its size, (IL 46-10, IW 9-0, IH 1-11, capy 172 tons).  There are no cars in any other 185xxx series with dimensions even close that car.

Thanks, Dave

That's the information I was looking for.  The data you found confirms what was listed on the rrpictures website for that car (I was suspicious because the Conrail FE42A cars look identical but show an IL of 41' and total length of 47').  It looks like that car just happens to be the only one in the NS fleet matching the one I'm working on.

One curious thing I noticed was that the Interior Length never seemed to make sense on these cars.  I always assumed it was for the depressed section of the car, but clearly an IL of 47' on a 53' long car doesn't match the depressed section length.  From what I can tell, the IL is for the overall length of the main deck, including slope sheets and usable portion of the raised decks over the trucks.  In this case, the brake components take up about 6 feet on the deck of the B-end.

Craig