One last Paul Lyons model

The late Paul Lyons, excellent modeler, long-serving member of the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society’s Board of Directors (and terms as its president), and professional architect, left a legacy of superbly built model freight cars. After he passed away, some of them were auctioned off by Paul Koehler, and I managed to get three of them. This post is about the last of them.
     Two of the Lyons cars I purchased were SP box cars built from Sunshine kits. They were beautifully built but not painted. I recall Paul saying that he didn’t have confidence in getting paint to look correct and the colors right. Whatever the reason, the cars came to me unpainted. Below is one example, from the Sunshine kit #32.21 for SP Class B-50-28.

     I immediately set about checking the various specialties on the car models (that’s the railroad term for items manufactured by other than the car builder: brake gear, running boards, doors, trucks, etc.). When SP was buying large batches of cars, it was common to split the order for each specialty among several suppliers. Luckily these splits were recorded by SP, and for box cars, they are fully reported in my book (Volume 4 [revised edition], “Box Cars,” from the series Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Signature Press, 2016).
     By identifying the specialties Paul put on these models, I could identify the number series of the prototype cars that would be correct for having those specialties. This last model I am finishing, a Class B-50-27 box car, Sunshine kit #32.20, has a Morton running board, Miner handbrake, and Superior door. Of these, the most restrictive, that is, the specialty applied to the fewest cars, is the Miner hand brake. It limits the car numbers for this model to SP 101875–102099, or T&NO 59625–59749.
     Next came paint. I have a specific paint color that I like for Southern Pacific freight cars, an ancient Floquil color called “D&H Caboose Red,” that is quite a good match to the SP color drift panels for freight car red. I once had the good fortune to come across several bottles at a hobby shop, and bought them all. I am working through them, and still have a little in reserve. Here’s the B-50-27 model, painted that color (the trucks are “paint shop trucks,” and won't remain on the model).

     I lettered the car with the Sunshine decals provided with the kit. Since Mr. Lyons was a proud Texan, it seemed appropriate to choose the T&NO version of this class. I had a builder photo to use as guidance in applying decals (SP photo, repeated below from my box car book, citation above), though not from the group with the Superior door.

     The photo above shows the car as delivered. By my modeling era of 1953, the car was about three years old, and accordingly would have acquired some mild weathering and a few chalk marks. The photo below shows the model as lettered (compare the prototype photo above). A couple of decal chalk marks are added too. Note that the Sunshine decals used 9-inch lettering for the reporting mark, which was the correct size at the built date of these cars.

     Just as a comparison, the photo below shows the other Paul Lyons model I acquired unpainted, a Class B-50-28 car with a 7-foot door. (It is the completed model shown in the first photo at the top of this post.) This car is newer (built in the spring of 1951, compared to the early 1949 built date on the B-50-27 model), thus lightly weathered, as it appears in service on my layout. This shows how a car like this would look with a little weathering.

     I still feel great respect for Paul Lyons and his modeling, and am very proud to have two of his box cars on  my layout.
Tony Thompson