There have been lots of discussions regarding changing eras for modeling prototype equipment in the forums. So I have been doing some reading of magazines back in the fifties and made a discovery. I have been looking at the dollar car series in Model Railroader that was running in the 1950s and possibly later. This concept started by accident. Tom B. has lots of reference material that is well archived. Ron was building an old kit regarding a carbon black covered hopper car. Tom B remembered an article about that type of car in the dollar car series and dug it up. He then came in with the article and said "Rob here is that article about that car kit you are building." Clearly he mixed up Ron and Rob as the two of us build a lot of things.

Well I had no idea what he was talking about but was interested in the car type anyway. So I made a copy of the article after reading it and asked him how many more of those types of articles were written. He replied "a lot" so I asked "if I could borrow some of his magazines and photo copy the articles," his reply sure and a stream of magazines has been arriving to be copied.

Now I model the late fifties and the common name for that era is transition era in the present day publications. In the 1950s many of these models are referred to as "Modern" freight cars. So you see I have just discovered a way to change from Transition era to Modern painlessly.

Hey April will be here soon.....