Modeling SP passenger cars, Part 12

 In previous posts in this series, I have addressed a wide variety of Southern Pacific passenger cars, many of them head-end cars. (Previous posts are easily found by using “modeling SP passenger” as the search term in the search box at right.) Although some SP passenger cars may appear generic, in fact the great majority had individual characteristics, especially the Harriman-era heavyweight head-end cars. 

In the present post, however, I want to turn to streamlined sleeping cars. This is a kind of follow-on to the extended description I published about heavyweight sleeping cars, in an article for Model Railroad Hobbyist (see a description at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/01/my-new-column-in-model-railroad-hobbyist.html ). That article focused on conversions of Rivarossi (or AHM) Pullman cars to floor plans other than the original 12-1 (12 sections, 1 drawing room).

The corresponding Rivarossi streamlined sleeping car represents one of the 10-6 floor plans (10 roomette-6 double bedrooms) for these cars. But there were a number of other floor plans widely used. As with other passenger car topics, one needs to learn what preferences and practices were followed by the railroad that is chosen for modeling. We SP fans have a great source: Volume 2 on sleeping cars, from the five-volume series of books entitled Southern Pacific Passenger Cars and published by the SP Historical & Technical Society.

Two distinctive cars used by SP for years on the all-Pullman overnight Lark train were the 13 DB (13 double bedrooms) and 4-4-2 ( 4 double bedrooms, 4 compartments, 2 drawing rooms). Both have distinctive window patterns and are readily recognized, thus desirable for modeling. For example, below is a photo (Lawson K. Hill, San Francisco, 1953) of SP 9106, a 4-4-2. 

This is the bedroom side of the car, and the distinctive pairs of small upper windows, one pair for each compartment, are evident. The two drawing rooms are the pairs of windows between the compartments, and the other windows are the double bedrooms. Note also the location of the remains of the original full skirts, below the compartments.

The 13 DB car has pairs of large windows on the bedroom side, and somewhat evenly spaced ones on the aisle side. But the aisle side also had some remnant skirting, as is shown below, in a photo at San Francisco circa 1955 (Don Munger collection). This photo and the one above, both showing cars in Lark service, are from the SPH&TS Volume 2 on sleeping cars.

To model the floor-plan cars just shown requires purchasing brass cars, or starting with some other car body and replacing the sides. Replacement could be done by scratchbuilding styrene car sides (actually not terribly difficult, since the car sides were entirely smooth). But an even simpler solution exists: brass replacement car sides.

Starting in 1978, Dennis C. Henry has operated a company called Brass Car Sides (you can visit their website for considerable information at: http://brasscarsides.com/ ). The coverage is most extensive for Great Northern, Northern Pacific and Milwaukee Road, but reasonably standard Pullman cars for many other railroads are available too. These are intended to be attached to some kind of core body.

As you see below, I purchased sides for the 13 DB (upper pair) and 4-4-2 cars (lower pair). The aisle side of the 13 DB car is the lower side of the pair, while for the 4-4-2 it is the upper side. You can observe that the remnant skirting on the brass sides matches what is shown above for the prototype 1950s Lark cars.

These particular sides are intended to be used with an Eastern Car Works “core body” kit, and are slightly too short for a Rivarossi body. However, there are easy solutions to this, which I will pursue since I have a stash of the Rivarossi streamlined cars. For example, here is the Rivarossi streamlined coach. This is one of the car bodies I will transform. Window arrangements here don’t matter — they will all be replaced!

For a good illustration of using these car sides to apply to a Rivarossi core body, I recommend the article by Willard Harvey (Mainline Modeler, Volume 11, October 1990, pages 68–73). He did what I will do: simply remove any area of the window band that conflicts with the new sides. Remaining parts of the side provide a foundation  to support the new sides. And one nice feature: since the new sides are thin, the window glazing can lie almost flush with the car side, as it should.

For more recent (and probably more accessible) articles, see the Brass Car Sides site. Among the write-ups there is this one, which I found interesting and informative: http://brasscarsides.com/photos/Jim%20Schwinkendorf/BCS%20Grove%20Car%207-4-20.pdf . Another quite informative article by Jeff Hanson is worth reading (see: http://brasscarsides.com/Construction%20methods%20for%20brass%20car.pdf ), but uses a Walthers car body to make a Budd car, so somewhat less relevant to my two projects.

I will continue with the model work in a future post.

Tony Thompson

Home Shop forms

For decades, prototype railroads have used a paper form intended to route a damaged car to its home shop for repairs. Usually of a size to be stapled to a route card board, they were usually light card stock. I thought this might be a good form to introduce on my layout. 

(For background on route card boards, you might wish to look at this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/11/chalk-marks-and-route-cards.html , with more information on the actual AAR standards for such boards described at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/12/route-cards-6.html .)

Here’s a Southern Pacific example of such a Home Shop form, well darkened by being out in the sun and weather until I rescued it from a car body with no trucks (thus probably no longer headed somewhere). The original is 3.25 x 7 inches in size.

The back of this card is interesting: it can serve to direct a car’s location in a train, for example a very light car might well be handled preferentially at the rear of the train. I will have to give some thought to whether I can use this in model form.

The card is a little damaged and quite dark in color. But of course in Photoshop all that is fixable. I lightened the background, removed the pencil writing, and repaired a few damaged areas. This gave me a starting point I could use.

Next I removed the part of the image that wouldn’t fit with my era, namely the four railroads listed at the top of the form (SP, SSW, NWP, SDAE). I then sized the image so it would fit into my waybill sleeves, which are baseball-card-collector sleeves, with a long dimension of 3.5 inches. This could now be printed out for use in an operating session.

To illustrate, here’s a yellow Empty Car Bill, overlaid with a filled-out Home Shop card. This doesn’t change how the car will be handled in my operating session, but it makes a different direction being given to the crew. The variety seems like a good feature. On some layouts, with foreign-road interchanges, or with main yards that direct empties for loading, this could change car handling. 

I filled this out in ink for visibility, but most prototype examples I have seen were filled out in pencil. I will experiment with a soft pencil to see if that can be more visible. The prototype form is over twice as big and so writing is easier to read on it.

I should mention here that I do have a prototype SP bad-order card in use on the layout, as I have described previously (you can see my post about it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-new-bad-order-card.html ). But because it is “nice looking,” as one person put it, visiting operators don’t like to use it to designate cars that need work. I like the “Home Shop” card because it can be used to move cars or to indicate bad orders.

I should also show an example of a Home Shop card from another railroad, in this case Santa Fe. I found this on a car not at Stockton, as the card mentions, so either the car was continuing to be moved, or had been repaired and the card not removed. This card is 8.75 x 3.75 inches in size.

The back is quite interesting; it is a Bad Order card, so obviously a carman could use whichever side suited his needs. It calls for quite a few specific indications of why the car is bad-ordered, and is of course a rather eye-catching color (the original is more of a fluorescent orange).

I will return to the topic of ways such cards could be used in model layout operation, along with results of my own experiments, in a future post.

Tony Thompson

Modeling in O scale, Part 2

Though a confirmed HO scale modeler from the very beginning of my model-building career, I do have a soft spot for O scale models, especially freight cars. As I mentioned in the previous post in this series, they do make me “itch” as a modeler who likes freight car details (you can see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/02/modeling-in-o-scale.html ).

In the previous post, I showed two of my O scale models, an Athearn metal box car (originally owned by Paul Shimada) and a styrene PFE steel reefer from InterMountain. Another Athearn metal model that I especially like (as a confirmed Southern Pacific modeler) is a 40-foot car decorated for SP’s “Overnight” service, the famous black box car scheme.

 One of the really nice things about this Athearn metal car (and also for the HO scale version done by Athearn in a metal kit) is that the trouble was taken to make new pressed ends, with the post-war “Improved Dreadnaught” contour, not true of other Athearn metal box cars. And not only that, but new sides were made too, to correctly show the ACR (Alternate Center Rivet) pattern of the side sheets — also done for the HO scale version in metal. Here’s a photo:

Another model I really enjoy owning is another Athearn metal car. It represents one of the two PFE rebuilt cars in Class R-40-14, but with nearly all aluminum bodies. And as one can readily prove with a magnet, the model’s sides are actually aluminum. Now PFE only had two of these cars, in a fleet of nearly 40,000 cars, but it will certainly grace my display case. It is modeled with its original 1946 paint scheme.

The underframe and all safety appliances, such as ladders and grab irons, were steel and painted black, as were door hinges and latch bar. It’s a lovely model of a distinctive PFE car.

Last, I want to show a little about an SP tank car model from Pecos River Brass. I wanted to letter it correctly, and as it happens, back when I made the artwork for SP tank car decals in HO scale (first sold by Jerry Glow and now by Tichy), I also made one set that was in O scale. Here is a link to the first post about the decals: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/05/sp-tank-car-decals.html .

Shown below is the model, with decals freshly applied and a coat of flat finish sprayed on. Couplers are removed for the weathering step, which is next. As you can see, it has an operating manway cover on the dome.

Next came weathering. I followed my usual method using washes, with pigment from acrylic tube paint, but realized one more time how very large O scale cars really are, for someone accustomed to the size of HO scale cars. If you’re interested, background and illustration of my weathering process can be found in the “Reference pages,” linked at the upper right corner of the present post. This view of the right side of the car reminds that this side of SP tank cars had neither dome walk nor ladder.

By contrast, the other side does have the single ladder and dome walk, and in this case I’ve applied an “empty” placard as well.

All three of these O-scale models represent prototypes that are very familiar to me, as an SP and PFE modeler and historical researcher and writer. All are a pleasure to own, and also will soon be displayed in a wall display case. That will be nice!

Tony Thompson

Operating sessions no. 80 and 81

 This past weekend I hosted a pair of operating sessions on my layout, and these were sessions no. 80 and 81 on the layout in its present form. That’s not a fact of any importance, just a passing mention. The reason for the session was as a tune-up for the forthcoming BayRails event for out-of-town operators in March. 

(For those interested, I have written about BayRails previously. This event is held in March of odd-numbered years, and the 2023 edition will be the ninth in the series. The post about the eighth event in 2019 [we skipped 2021 for obvious reasons] is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/03/my-sessions-at-bayrails-this-year.html .

My layout was also involved during an earlier BayRails, the seventh event in 2017, and there’s a write-up for that, too, which can be found at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/03/bayrails-2017.html . But the point of the present post is to describe my tune-up for the 2023 event.)

The first day, my crew comprised Pat LaTorres, Dave Stanley, Jeff Aley, and John Sutkus. As crews nearly always do, they paired off and each pair started on one side of the layout, moving to the other side when the second branchline train ran. Here are Dave (at left) and Pat, getting close to finished with their switching at Shumala.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the layout, switching Ballard, was the other pair of operators, Jeff Aley (left) and John Sutkus. As I recall, Jeff was the engineer for this part of their work, and John was conductor.

I must admit we found a few problems, including a loose point rail in a switch and another point rail that had become slightly bent and no longer touched the stock rail when the switch was thrown. These were addressed in the evening after the session. These are trackwork elements that have been in satisfactory use for a considerable time, but as the Providenza maxim reminds me, “Trust nothing.”

On the following day, the crew comprised Mark Schutzer, Ed Slintak, Seth Neumann and Richard Brennan. They of course benefited by the flaws found and the problems corrected from the previous day, and happily, new ones were not found. Shown below are Seth (at right, checking on a point of information). He was the conductor at this time — note the clipboard with switch list. Richard Brennan, at left, was the engineer here.

Meanwhile, Mark and Ed were hard at work on the other side of the layout. Below you see them sorting out a long string of cars at Shumala. That’s one of Mark’s very nice SP 0-6-0 switchers, working at Shumala today, by Ed’s left hand.

One of the interesting parts of every session is the return of the first branch train to Shumala. Its power has to be exchanged onto the next train outbound to the branch, and the caboose likewise has to be transferred to the new train. This can be done in quite a few ways, some much simpler than others. Below you see Richard and Mark figuring this out. The long string of cars with the caboose is the arriving train, and on the track to the right of it is what will be the outbound train. The arriving road power has just been cut off and is moving out of the way so the Shumala switcher can exchange the two consists.

Two good sessions, a number of flaws found and (I believe) fixed, in advance of BayRails next month. But I’ll continue to exercise the trackwork in the meantime, reminding myself as I do so, to “Trust nothing.”

Tony Thompson

Building a BAR reefer

 Some time back, I wrote a blog post about the BAR (Bangor & Aroostook Railroad) refrigerator cars that showed up in PFE territory during the summer in the 1950s. Though purchased by BAR for potato service, most of them would have sat idle in the summer. Leasing them to PFE meant that BAR collected the mileage payments on these cars when used by PFE, often in very long journeys across the country and back. 

There are a few details about the BAR end of the story in that post, including the fact that the lease in most years ran from June 1 to October 1, with all the cars due on PFE rails on June 1, and all of them back to BAR on October 1. Here’s a link to that post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/08/bar-reefers-in-pfe-service-part-2.html .

I’d like to show an example of one of the BAR reefers on the Southern Pacific. It’s an Al Phelps photo of an eastward fruit block from San Jose and the Coast Line, behind Class AC-8 cab-forward no. 4179. It was just leaving Broderick, California (now part of West Sacramento) on September 3, 1955, and is about to cross the Sacramento River. 

The BAR reefer, BAR 7107, at left in the photo above, is quite obvious. Ahead of it is PFE 3969, Class R-40-25. Here is a larger view of the BAR car.

This view does show several of the features of these cars that differ from the Accurail version, as I have already described previously (see the post linked in the second paragraph of the present post). It has double rivet rows on the sides, a tabbed side sill that is black, and a different placard board arrangement than the Accurail model (which follows a Fruit Growers prototype). And of course the Accurail car has molded-on ladders and grab irons.

Since this car is only seasonally present on my layout and in any event does not represent a railroad that I have chosen to model closely, I will accept most of the compromises just mentioned, in part to preserve the paint and lettering of the Accurail version. I will confess that if I were using this car body to model a PFE Class R-40-26 reefer, I would be taking matters to a higher level.

(This topic reminds me of a conversation at a model railroad meeting some time back, quite possibly in the bar at the end of the day. A particular modeler, who I won’t name, said “Does your model of an iron foundry really contain a furnace that can melt iron? No? So does that make your model unacceptable? No, of course not, because it looks like a foundry. We apply that to nearly everything we model: does it look enough like the real thing to be ‘okay.’ So that leaves just the problem to define “enough.”)

But one area where I hate to compromise, even on a stand-in, is car roofs, because we see them so clearly on a model railroad of typical height above the floor. I used the attachment posts of the Accurail running board to fill the holes in the roof, then I installed a Plano etched-metal Apex running board, part 197, to this car, attaching it with canopy glue.

Moreover, the Accurail body has no corner grab irons on the roof. In the spirit of the molded-on grabs on the rest of the car body, I installed some Tichy roof corner grabs, with the vertical legs cut off, with canopy glue. This accords with the Richard Hendrickson observation that sometimes there should just be something in that location, even if it’s not quite correct.

For the operating side of the model, I installed Kadee No. 158 whisker couplers in the Accurail coupler boxes, and InterMountain 33-inch semi-scale wheelsets in the Accurail truck frames.

With car assembly complete, I weathered the car with my usual method using washes, with pigment from acrylic tube paint. Background and illustration of this can be found in the “Reference pages,” linked at the upper right corner of the present post. Chalk marks and route cards are added.

One final comment. The prototype BAR cars like this had “tabbed” side sills (see photos at top) , and the Accurail model has these cutouts indicated on the back side of the side sill, so you can easily do this if desired. The tabs provided, though, don’t exactly match the BAR cars. More importantly, the tabs are painted black on the BAR cars and thus aren’t very evident. I decided, in light of the other compromises, to leave the side sill as it is.

Though this is a car that I can only operate seasonally (June to October), and has compromises in modeling, I am still pleased to add a steel BAR reefer to my freight car fleet. I am sure it will be carrying produce on my layout this summer.

Tony Thompson

Waybills, Part 105: briefing, Part 1

For some years, I have introduced each operating session on my layout with a short oral briefing on my waybills, so that operators know how to read them and follow them. 

I have occasionally been asked if I could write all that down, not the waybill fundamentals, as those have been covered in a number of articles, but the briefing itself. I was never inspired to do that, until Paul Weiss constructed such a written briefing for his Central Vermont layout. “I could do that,” I thought. 

In my oral briefing, I  begin by pointing out the main features of the waybill design that I use. I always point that, just as in the prototype waybill, the bill is divided down the middle, with shipper information on the right and the destination or consignee on the left. That’s why prototype conductors often folded the bills in half lengthwise; they were only concerned with the left side. Model operators likewise can just read the left half if they wish.

Below is a graphic that I used in an MRH (Model Railroad Hobbyist) article in January 2018 (see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-new-column-in-model-railroad-hobbyist.html ). It shows the car initials and number at top, as the prototype does; and note also, below the consignee address, the routing of the car is shown. (You can click on the image to enlarge it if you wish.)

At this point I emphasize that the consignee address may not be at the company’s own spur track, but at the town’s team track or house track. I use an example waybill from an actual event on the layout, when an operator, holding this bill, asked me, “Where is Carlson’s Furniture? I don’t see it on the layout.” I just pointed my finger at the address notation, “HS. TRK.”

And of course a waybill could at least equally likely direct a car to the team track as to the house track.

The next form to present is the Empty Car Bill that I use, based on the Southern Pacific paperwork of this kind. It was common for railroads to choose yellow or tan or manila for these Bills. Note that the car’s destination is only to the town in question. This is simply because the agent for that town ordered the empty car to be delivered. He would not have identified the shipper, nor need he do so.

But of course that means that a road crew, in order to deliver this empty, need to find out where it goes. On the prototype, the crew’s conductor would step into the depot and find out from the agent. On the layout, we duplicate what would occur when the train arrives in town outside the agent’s duty hours: there is a bill box. I’ve written extensively about bill boxes; here’s a good background post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2012/03/bill-box.html .

Here’s the kind of message that would be in the bill box, along with any waybills or Empty Car Bills prepared for outgoing cars that the crew should pick up. (On the SP in the 1950s, most agents’ desks contained lots of pads of blank telegram forms, though telegrams were going out of fashion; thus these pads became used for all kinds of notes written by agents.)

Note here that empty car PFE 40559, shown in the Empty Car Bill, is here directed to be spotted at Western Packing in Ballard. A few other car moves are specified also.

I would summarize what’s just been described this way, in terms of what information a switching crew has. First, they have complete information on both inbound and outbound loads, and on outbound empties, and can go ahead with their work. Second, there are some cars, inbound empties, where they only have partial information, and must get an agent’s message to proceed. And third, there are some cars about which they have no information, and those should be left where they are.

This is the core of my waybill briefing. There are a number of additional features that I also describe, and I will cover those in a following post.

Tony Thompson

Modeling in O scale??

This is something you probably didn’t know about me. Though I am a confirmed HO scale modeler, and have been from the very beginning, when I built Strombecker wood kits as a boy, there is an O-scale side to me too. Fact is, O scale has its attractions, and sometimes (as I often say), looking at an O scale model makes the modeler in me just itch to build and detail such big, beautiful models.

During the time I lived in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), my very good friend Larry Kline, who was an O scaler himself, encouraged these little impulses. (Larry passed away in 2014, as I memorialized in a blog post some time back; you can see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-memoriam-larry-kline.html .) 

And in addition, Larry had a fine O scale layout that ran beautifully, so that if I bought or built any O scale equipment I would be able to operate it. (A few photos illustrating Larry’s last layout can be found in one of my older blog posts: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2013/03/rpm-east-and-correction.html .)

So the bug did bite. I think the first nibble was when Paul Shimada, long-time NMRA Pacific Coast Region leader (and NMRA President in 1984–1986), passed away. I saw that there was to be an auction of his models, and couldn’t resist buying one, because I had met and liked Paul. Then there was another one, and another one . . .

The Shimada box car is a stock Athearn metal kit. Further, I know from Paul’s own notation on the center sill, that it was purchased in November 1963 and assembled by him that same month. I have not upgraded details (it lacks sill steps at present, and still has its O-scale Devore couplers!), but I did fix its reweigh date.

Larry Kline, having successfully infected me with the virus, urged me to try the InterMountain styrene O-scale kits for PFE reefers when they were released. I didn’t “get right to it,” as Larry would have said, and he built one of the Class R-40-10 ones for me as a Christmas present that year (he also build several for himself, so it went fairly quickly, he admitted). This is the car, just as built.

Incidentally, regarding this model, InterMountain clearly went to some trouble to do accurate lettering and paint colors. In fact, when in later years some of their HO models of PFE cars had a peculiar off-orange color, I told one of their people, “Go look at your own O scale model! It’s a dead match for the paint chip!”

Here’s one more example. It’s a Precision Scale brass caboose, Southern Pacific Class C-30-1, very accurately modeled. I painted and lettered it. You see it here without couplers, as it was in the midst of upgrading its original couplers.

One of my treasured possessions is one of Larry Kline’s freight cars. It’s a brass model of a GS or General Service gondola, with (working) drop-bottom doors. But the car number is imaginary, and literally none of the other lettering is correct or in the correct location, except the SP emblem (I think Larry bought the car this way and didn’t change it — he certainly knew better).

Partly in honor of Larry’s memory, and partly so I can display the car with a clear conscience, I’d like to correct the lettering. Luckily for that goal, there is a Protocraft decal set for these cars. I will take up that project in a following post. 

Tony Thompson