Another passenger car upgrade

As I have written a number of times, my layout is primarily a branch line, with limited amounts of mainline traffic passing by on the Southern Pacific’s Coast Division main line. Since my staging cannot accommodate full-length passenger trains, I usually run second sections, or deadhead extras, to include passenger cars.  

My equipment is in some cases accurately modeled SP prototypes (as a single example, see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/03/modeling-sp-passenger-cars-part-12.html , or refer to my Model Railroad Hobbyist article in the issue for October 2023), but in other cases would be better described as credible stand-ins. This is especially appropriate in a deadhead extras, moving equipment from one terminal to another, as in such cases the equipment need not match any specific train. 

This post is about upgrading one such car, a Rivarossi baggage-postal car. This is only broadly like an SP car of the same type, but could pass muster in one of my deadhead extras. The model does resemble some 1950s cars built by Pullman -Standard, such as SP Class 80-BP-60-1 (meaning baggage-postal, 60-foot postal apartment). Shown below is the “north” side of one of these cars, painted for assignment to the City of San Francisco (Pullman photo, CSRM). Note the full-width diaphragms and full skirting.

 I point out that this is the “north” side because the other side was different, with five windows in the postal apartment. Below is a photo of the “south” side, seen in COSF service at Laramie, Wyo. in August 1966 (Don Munger collection). Here skirts are almost all removed, and full-width diaphragms are gone Both prototype photos are from the essential  SPH&TS book, Southern Pacific Passenger Cars, Vol. 3: Head-end Equipment (Pasadena, 2007).

The Rivarossi car has all these general features, so I decided I could use it, even though it’s 73 feet long, not 80 feet. I began by stripping its original paint, masking and painting two-tone gray in the typical SP “pool scheme” arrangement of the mid-1950s, that is, with no train name or emblem, and lettering it with postal-baggage SP decals. 

The car number I chose to use is SP 5156. This corresponds to SP Class 70-BP-1-3, built by Standard Steel Car in 1924, a round-roof car class fairly different from the Rivarossi model. But many cars in this class were converted to regular baggage cars after World War II, including 5156, so by my modeling year of 1953, 5156 was a non-existent SP 5000-series number. My stand-in model, shown below, could use it.

Evident in this photo is that the model needed replacement of the Rivarossi horn-hook coupler arrangement, which is a kind of “Talgo” attachment to the truck. I will install Kadee couplers on the body instead. It also should have diaphragms, and like all stock Rivarossi passenger cars, has far too little weight for dependable operation. I added a pair of 5/8-11 steel nuts with canopy glue; these can be seen below before painting them black. This is the “north” side of the car.  

Next, diaphragms need to be added, and couplers installed. That and a few other tweaks will be covered in a future post.

Tony Thompson