portedly remained on the roster by the end of the decade.
the P-S gondola’s longevity and low main- tenance requirements helped herald in the standard use of aluminum in future freight car construction.
Southern placed an order for 750 of the new cars, and deliveries began in January 1960. Shining brightly in their yet-to-be-tarnished aluminum finish, railfans quickly dubbed the coal haul- ers “Silversides.” Per Southern prac-
tice, Pullman-Standard cars arrived in groups assigned to one of the road’s subsidiaries. Car numbers 1000–1529 went to Southern proper; 1530–1689 went to Cincinnati, New Orleans & Tex- as Pacific; 1690–1739 went to New Or- leans & Northeastern; and 1740–1749 went to Alabama Great Southern. The Silversides were delivered with vermil- ion-colored lettering. Some cars were reportedly repainted with green lettering and, after the road’s merger with Nor- folk & Western in 1982, appeared with an assortment of patched paint jobs and Norfolk Southern (NS) lettering. By the early 1990s, the fleet, now classed by the NS as GS-1, was renumbered into the 11000–11749 series. A total of 742 Silversides survived the merger with the majority of these cars still accounted for in the late 1990s. By 2000, however, the Silversides were considered “over the hill” and began to be scrapped through the mid-2000s. Only a single example re-
What is believed to be the very first unit coal train began service on January 21, 1960, when a loaded 100-car consist of Silversides left the Southern Electric Generating Company (SEGCO)-owned coal mines near Parrish, Alabama, and traveled the 121 miles to SEGCO’s Er- nest C. Gaston Steam Plant on the Coosa River near Wilsonville, Alabama. Upon arrival at the power plant, a ro- tary dumper emptied the cars with the unloading process taking only about 90 seconds per car. In an hour’s time then, some 1,400 tons of coal could be un- loaded. A similar Silverside-equipped Southern unit coal train was also oper- ated from the General Coal Company’s transloader at Appalachia, Virginia, to the Duke Power Company’s power plant at Belmont, North Carolina, some 312 miles away. Here, the P-S design’s in- corporated empty-load brake system with its dual-acting brake cylinder and Cobra high-friction composition brake shoes, the first for a new car order, were put to the test while in 100-plus car con- sists working the famous Saluda grade, which, in some areas, reached 5 percent. Fox Valley Models honors this trend- setting coal gondola with its HO-scale model (also being released in N scale). Comparing the miniature Silversides to
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