<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18812">
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV>Several Bluefield Daily Telegraph articles from the early Twentieth
Century posted on the Mailing List have mentioned "Battleship" coal cars,
and some people have posted comments on the Mailing List about the use of that
term on the N&W and Virginian. I do not know about the latter, but a
search of early Twentieth Century N&W operating timetables in the NWHS
Archives sheds some light on the usage on the N&W.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The term Battleship does not appear in the earliest Pocahontas division TT
in the Archives, No. 1 eff. 12/3/05, and No. 2 is missing. The term does
appear in No. 3 eff. 11/25/06 in the tabulation under the heading "Figures to be
Used in Computing Tonnage for Cars of Different Capacity and Lading."
Under sub-heading "Steel Coke Cars Loaded with Coke," appears:
Battleships, 100,000 pounds capacity -- 67 tons loaded with coke. There is
no listing in that TT for these cars with coal loads. By
about 1920 78 tons loaded with coal had been added to that part of the
TTs.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Reference to Andrew Dow's book on N&W coal cars reveals the Class HI
and HL (not to be confused with the later HL cars that were converted into H9
hopper cars) were the N&W's first all-steel hopper cars, with the latter
having been built in 1906, the same year that the term "battleships" appeared in
the operating TT. The pictures in Dow's book show a formidable looking
large coke car.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>My conclusion is that the term "battleships" was an official N&W
description that dated from about 1906 and that it was picked up by the
newspaper reporters, probably from the rank and file N&W railroaders of that
era.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Gordon Hamilton</DIV></BODY></HTML>