I hosted our local trains group last night, and look what appeared:



I'll let others who are more qualified than I to deccribe it. but we were all amazed when it was hooked up to a long freight and easily negotiated 49.5" radius curves

By the way, neither I nor the car's owner were paying attention when this was hooked up and sent on its merry way

Does it run on coal?

Wow! Very unique car and very nice layout.

Did your benchwork groan from that beast?

Also, was the special handling instructions passed on to the train crew?
We don't want a sadness spill, now do we?

do you have a bigger pic of that, or a link so I can see it full screen?

Nice car, took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at..lol

By request:

I don't get it. Is this car based on a real prototype?

Glenn:

The car is a tribute to John Armstrong, the famous trackplanning and O Scale guru, and won a contest category in a NMRA meet for creative scratchbuilding in the vein of John Armstrong. It was built by a good friend of J. Sethian and mine (It has been up here on my railroad, too).

John's sense of humor was legendary. On his Canandaigua Southern, one of the swipes at the language (and a wry test of one's vocabulary) was a lineside industry called the "Lugubrium Corporation of America". The name comes from the word lugubrious, meaning exaggeratedly mournful. The product of the Lugubrium Corporation of America was billed as "the World's Saddest Material". John's original structure survives today as a principle industry of my railroad.

To now answer your question, no. No prototype. Just a ridiculous amount of effort expended on a piece of gentle wordplay, something John cheerfully engaged in and certainly would have appreciated.

Brian has summed it up succintly and reasonbly accurately.

The Lugubrium Corporation of America reprocessing plant created by John Armstrong was deemed to need a means to transport reprocessed Lugubrium. Of course, being a transuranium of immeasurable sadness, it also generates its own heat, not unlike plutonium, for example. Hence, the large ( and considerably weighty!) center containment vessel with the 2 flanking coolant tankers.

What Brian neglected to mention was that this also paid tribute to one of John Armstrong's other remarkable creations - the "Cementipede" - an highly unique articulated covered hopper unit.

And, yes, a truly ridiculous amount of effort was expended on both tribute and fun.

And, having fun is what it's all really about anyway.

BTW, it won the President's Award at the NMRA MER Convention last year.

Thank you, John (& John!) for making it possible to endulge my quirky and whimsical sense of humor. It will probably never run on my own layout, so someday it will have to find a home away form home....