Where can I find information about some of the industries that the Reading Lines served? Example; Carpenter Steel gondolas, who owned them.
Reading Lines or Carpenter Steel or Car-Tech. as Carpenter Steel was once known as.

Lee Fritz

I work at a papermill in Phila. located on the ex-Reading Venice Island branch. in the 1960's we had 5 boxcars that were lettered for our company - CCA (Container Corporation of America)used in specific service from Manayunk,Pa. to Nabisco in Beacon Falls, N.Y.they were painted chocolate brown & silver. there are photos in a book on Pullman-Standard freight cars. also someone released them in N-scale several years ago. I wish someone would do them in HO scale.

The Reading Color Freight Car Book by Bossler has lots of assigned-service notes and photos. They varied over the years as customers and traffic varied over the years. Mineral service such as limestone and cement, etc, were assigned to locarions like Cedar Hollow (Exton), etc. Some were generic like the ore service and stone service cars, boxcars seem to have specific locations as mentioned above. Over the years, a number of open hoppers and covered hoppers were assinged to sand loading on subsidiary PRSL at Millville and Williamstown Jct NJ . Pix of these cars are in the Bossler book also. Pool cars like the boxcars are the hardes to pin down as such small numbers were assigned. The Bossler book mentions locations and companies the XAp cars were assigned to.

In the 50's and 60's, Reading painted a colored panel on most of their dedicated service hoppers. Orange on stone service cars, whcih some company memos referred to as "orange blossoms." HTz hoppers dedicated to Grace Mine ore service also had an orange panel. HTwa's modified for sugar service had a blue end panel.

You can also check a RAILWAY EQUIPMENT REGISTER for the appropriate time period.

What do you condsider as "Carpenter Gondolas"? To the best of my knowledge Carpenter Steel (now Carpenter Technology) never owned it's own standard guage rolling stock. Scrap steel coming into the plant from the Belt Line connection were railroad owned equipment, most likely from the Reading or the Pennsy. Oddly a lot of Parrish (later Dana)scrap was melted at Carpenter and even though they were next door neighbors and a carload of scrap may leave Parrish and go immediately to Carpenter, the scrap "transferred" through a "middle man" scrapper, so that Carpenter was not "obligated" to absorb all of the Parrish scrap. Carpenter did operate a 24" gauge industrial railroad inside the plant, utilizing flat cars, tank cars and "dog boxes" which were pulled by Plymouth diesels and cars tied together by ropes instead of couplers. Carpenter produces specialy steels (stainless and tool grades) by melting scrap metal and adding nickel and so forth to create a higher grade. Parrish would not generally utilize any steel from Carpenter for truck frames.

Something N scale has that HO doesn't??? I can hardly believe my eyes!