Page 67 - 38. MRH13-04-Apr2013

One important source of information about prototype freight
cars is the Official Railway Equipment Register, or ORER, issued
monthly before the Depression and quarterly since that time.
Copies from various years can often be obtained from sell-
ers of railroadiana and railroad paper, but another source is
the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA), which has
reprinted the January issues for 1943 and 1953. Both are
sometimes obtainable from used booksellers online, and the
1953 issue is still available from NMRA. Some libraries also
hold ORER issues. Wherever you find ORERs, the point is that
the exact size and makeup of each railroad’s freight car fleet is
shown in each ORER issue.
I have omitted from this column some of the largest and most
familiar railroads, such as Santa Fe, New York Central, and
Pennsylvania (three of the four largest American freight car
fleets), just because these roads are generally so well known,
although cars from each of them naturally are well represented
in my own freight car fleet. The roads emphasized in this col-
umn are generally less well known and, I think, less appreciated.
I have also left out the Southern Pacific, which is the home road
for my layout, and the fourth member of the top four.
Since I have already mentioned the Milwaukee Road as an
example, I will begin there. The Milwaukee Road owned a large
fleet of non-hopper freight cars, in fact the fifth largest of all
U.S. railroads (as I showed in my December 2011 column).
“One important source of information about
prototype freight cars is the Official Railway
Equipment Register ...”
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