Car Information (continued)

On the interior of the car, the capitals on the pilasters between the windows appear to be intricate carvings. They are not. Remember this car and the two others in this order were most likely finished in a few months. There are fourteen of these capitals per car, multiplied by three cars, resulting in forty-two capitals to fill this order. On closer examination we see that the capitals are made from two pieces. The lower piece is a straight molding. In one hour, one man could have fabricated a sufficient amount of this molding to supply all the cars. The upper piece with the rams' horn was most likely done on a carving machine. We suspect this because of the small mark on the inside of the rams' horn. This mark was the result of cutting out the small fillet that was there when the part came out of the carving machine. Again, one man could produce all forty-two pieces in less than four hours. The next cutting operation on these parts was to relieve6 the back of the upper piece so the lower piece could be installed. This is a fairly simple operation on a wood shaper.

From knowing what machines were available and looking at the construction and tool marks, we can learn much about the manufacturing of this car that is not recorded or may have never been recorded.
The back side of the capital. The capital was actually made of two pieces of wood, the larger curved main carving, and the flat insert that formed the base of the capital. This construction made the capital very easy to mass-produce.
The mark on the inside of the volute is from the hand chisel used to clean out the fillet left after this piece was cut on a carving machine.
Workmanship is another aspect of the car's construction we can study. Discrepancies noted in the construction of the car tell us there a fair amount of the decision-making regarding the construction was most likely left to the worker doing the work. For example, between the body posts and the sidewall truss, it was not uncommon to block the area in with solid blocks of wood. We see this on other cars at Mid-Continent and in photographs of a Pullman-built car from 1889. Pullman made this car for a display but it is not known where. These photographs are of interest as the display car was built in the same era as MLS&W #63, and is the same class of car--17-window coach. In this car, the body posts were blocked in solid before the siding was installed. On our car, the blocking is very random and not complete at all. Where there was no blocking, small triangular blocks were glued to the body post and siding from the inside. It appears there may have been no official policy or design for installing these blocks at Barney and Smith Car Company when our car was built. On the hand-cut grooves mentioned earlier, we see some variation in spacing and depth. Also the removal of material with a chisel was not done very carefully. The location of the grooves may have been left up to the carpenter and the finish of the groove may be an indication of limited quality control.

By observing these types of things on MLS&W #63, and comparing what we see to what we read, we may gain a better understanding of how this car was built 113 years ago. The findings are also the justification for all the study, documentation, and sample collecting we perform on this car. This project is only the beginning of the work to be done at Mid-Continent. There are seven different railroad passenger car builders represented in the collection at Mid-Continent spanning from 1864 to the end of the wood car era. This collection and the material gleaned from it is one of the finest single source examples of the wood passenger car and its construction in the country. The methods used in the MLS&W project are the results of lessons learned from other projects and will be applied to the next.

Notes
1. William Voss, Railway Car Construction, 1892.
2. John H. White, Jr., The American Railroad Passenger Car, 1978.
3. Jackson & Sharp Car Company order book, Smithsonian Institution.
4. Railroad Gazette, January 4, 1889.
5. Scott D. Trostel, The Barney and Smith Car Co., 1993.
6. In woodworking terminology, to cut out a space in the back to accept another piece.

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