Re: La Mothe cars

I have done a fair amount of reading about the C&C, etc. I am traveling and away from my notes. But, here are some comments.

John White's book about wood era freight car construction includes a section on the La Mothe pipe frame cars. Seems that several eastern lines also tried them. Also some lines in England had them.

Kyle Wyatt of CSRM once told me that he had found a reference in an Official Guide that an eastern line was not going to accept La Mothe cars in interchange. I think this was late 1880s.

When the C&C was considering buying the cars it was told that there were 500 La Mothe designed cars being constructed in Denver. (Letter in the C&C collection at UNR Special Collections.) No one that I have talked to has any idea about these cars!

The cars did come to the C&C in a knocked-down kit form. General Manager H. M. Yerington was not happy about that! (letter copy at UNR).

Examination of the burned car shows the construction much better than the more intact car. (This was years ago and I need to spend time finding my slides -- could not easily find then a few months ago.) Some of the pipes were threaded into couplings and others were held in place by pinning through couplings. The metal pieces are a unique interlocking design that need to be slid together from the top of the cars.

The upper parts of four (4) box cars were lost in transit and these were completed as flat cars.

when the cars were only about a year old, the Dayton, Nevada, newspaper reported that they were not as sturdy and well liked as the conventional wood framed cars.

But, considering all the problems with the design, it is interesting how long they lasted in service and we have examples on hand today.

Brian Norden