Manufacturer
Micro-Trains Line Co.
351 Rogue River Parkway
Talent, OR 97540
www.micro-trains.com
Road names: Georgia-Pacific, Federal Paper Board (two road numbers each)
Era: 1980s to present
Comments: Micro-Trains has unveiled its 123rd N scale body style, a 65-foot 100-ton skeleton log car. The cars, built in the early 1980s by Evans Car Co., are still in use today, hauling logs, poles, and pulpwood to lumber and paper mills. Its construction on a fishbelly steel spine keeps the weight of the car itself down, maximizing the load the car can handle.
The model uses a die-cast metal spine to increase its weight; empty, it weighs 1 ounce, only 1⁄4 ounce short of National Model Railroad Association recommended practice 20.1. With the included solid cast-resin pole load, the car weighs 21⁄4 ounces. The model’s major dimensions matched those for GPSX no. 174 listed in the 1990 Official Railway Equipment Register.
I found photos of the Evans log car online, including a Southern Ry. version. The Micro-Trains car strongly resembles the prototype, though the photos included additional tie-downs and bracing. Stand-off handgrabs on the diagonal end braces were realistically thin. The car rides on 100-ton Bettendorf trucks with 36-inch plastic wheelsets, which are in gauge. It’s equipped with body-mounted Micro-Trains couplers, which are mounted at the correct height.
Our sample is smoothly and evenly painted green, with finely printed white lettering. Even the tiniest printing, the “Plate C” clearance marking, is legible under magnification. Our sample has the reporting marks GPSX (paper company Georgia-Pacific), and Micro-Trains has announced a second paint scheme, Federal Paper Board.
N scale railroads serving the modern lumber industry should have a few of these detailed cars on the layout.
