Wednesday, September 13, 2017

CV Shower Car #4546

Ryan Mendell is building a very nicely done model of a Grand Trunk MoW car - which you can see on his blog here. 
In the comments section I mentioned how even the CV shower cars had the "Flammable" sign on the side - a common feature of most of the old CV wood work equipment. (And while I certainly thought about it, I didn't pry one of these signs off the cars laying about in East New London  yard way back when ... almost wish I had - it would make a nice conversation piece hanging on the walls in the basement.)
Back to Ryan's post. Although he's not building a shower car, my comment led to a question about what a shower car is, or was.... seems pretty obvious to me - it's a car with showers - in this case six shower stalls (and nine coat hooks??).  
Does this mean the "bunk cars" didn't have showering facilities? Honestly, I don't know. 
I do know the CV rostered three shower cars, nos.  4546-4548, from the late 1940s through at least the mid 1960s (based on the date on 4546 below).  George Dutka obtained some information about the interior arrangement of the shower cars from Jim Murphy, and included them in an early issue of the CVRHS Ambassador. Reproduced below:


A number of years ago, Pete McLachlan sent me a stack of photos of CV work equipment he photographed at St. Albans, which included a photo of CV 4546.  Based on the reweigh date, the car was weighed at St. Albans, Vt., in May, 1965, so this photo dates to after that date. I don't believe this car ever got the white maple leaf that was applied to some of the MoW equipment after 1954. In the 1950s the lettering would be identical except there wouldn't be a pregnant tapeworm logo on the side of the car. 

Note the "Flammable" sign. 



2 comments:

Ryan Mendell said...

Marty,

Great post. Thanks for all the prototype history. I think I'll build a shower car also. Seams more useful to crews than a bunk car, if there only out on the line for the day. Which is how I plan on incorporating the MoW train into my operating scheme.

Ryan

CVSNE said...

I plan to build one as well (a goal is a complete CV work train at some point). The F&C 36-foot boxcar might provide some reasonable starting points - although frankly I'll likely look at the new Accurail 36-footer and use things like the underframe etc... Most of the CV cars had Hutchins roofs, same as the Accurail car.