5.5" Sand Car (Gondola) 1109

The 5 1/2 inch American Flyer gondolas were produced from 1914-1935.  The first version was just a simple gondola with plain red sides and no markings.  This style ran through 1916.  In 1917 things began to change first with a brown litho and yellow rivets and then with the style below - the same treatment as the first of the 6 1/2 inch cars. However, as with the 6 1/2 inch cars, things got interesting - litho treatments completely different from the 6 1/2 inch cars, with such road names as Chicago, Milwuakee, and St Paul Railroad (Milwuakee Road), EJ&E (origin road unknown), Leigh Valley, Illinois Central, and Nation Wide Lines, a subset of American Flyer. What my sources found interesting about these smaller gondolas is the emphasis on "Chicago centric" railroads - CM&St.P, EJ&E, and IC with Lehigh Valley tossed in almost as an afterthought.