More of Rapido’s new 1937 AAR box cars

Recently I reported on two of the new 1937 AAR-design box cars in HO scale, both of them Canadian cars, as it happened (you can view that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2026/08/rapdios-new-1937-aar-box-cars.html ). Today I want to report on two others.

But first I have to mention the magisterial volume with phenomenal coverage of the 1937 cars, Patrick C. Wider’s monumental 384-page opus, Railway Prototype Cyclopedia, Volume 35 (Silverlake Images, 2020). I am overwhelmed every time I open it. If you’re a “freight car guy” and you don’t have it, your library is quite incomplete.

The first of the 1937 cars I want to present is an Erie car. The photo below shows the first car in an order for 200, Erie 79000–70199, built by Pullman-Standard in February 1940. It has a Viking corrugated roof, Youngstown doors, Ajax hand brake, steel grid running board, and Dreadnaught ends (Pullman photo, Biernacki collection).

The model faithfully reproduces the paint scheme, including the black roof, ends, and door. The running board is shown as unpainted. Soon after the built date of this car, Erie abandoned painting doors black, but naturally some cars so painted survived in service for years. That will be my challenge with this model, to be well-weathered original paint 13 years later, in my modeling year of 1953.  

The second car on today’s agenda is a Southern Pacific version. Like several major railroads, as soon as the AAR committee’s design features were pretty much settled in 1936, SP ordered 1750 cars from four builders, and a year later went back for 1000 more. So the “1937” design is important to the SP fleet. 

Of that initial order, 500 cars (SP 32770–33269, Class B-50-18) were built by Pullman-Standard, with an example shown below (Pullman-Standard photo). The first. 350 cars of this order had Ureco handbrakes.

Note that the initials SP here, with no periods. SP had discontinued the use of periods in reporting marks in 1931. An end view of another car of this class, at left below (Pressed Steel Car Co.), shows the five-spoke Ureco brake wheel also used on 350 of the Pullman-Standard cars. You can click on the image to enlarge it.

The model I received didn’t have this handbrake attached, but in the box was a small plastic envelope with two different handbrake assemblies, one of which was the five-spoke Ureco (at right above). I have heard some grumbles that handbrakes are not correct on some Rapido 1937 box cars; I hope these people still have the original box so they can search for such an envelope. I will replace the as-delivered handbrake with the correct Ureco.

These models have some nice details not usually included from the factory, such as a service stencil on the brake reservoir. I show an example below.

Below is the Rapido SP model. Like many and possibly all the cars of Class B-50-18, it has a black roof. But the lettering (spelled-out road name) was introduced in 1946, and in fact the car has a reweigh date of 1948. I know of no evidence that post-1946 repaints would have retained the black roof, discontinued by that time. I could of course repaint the roof. However, I can mask the road name and capacity data, and heavily weather the rest of the car, to make this a realistic paint scheme. 

Both these are nice models, and both require some judicious paint and weathering to be reasonable for my 1953 modeling year. I will return to that in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

New book on steam facilities from Firecrown

I’ve just received my copy of an excellent new book from Firecrown Media (successor to Kalmbach Media and all its assets). This book was created by Jeff Wilson, but as Jeff explains, it really was the dream of former Trains editor Jim Wrinn, who didn’t live long enough to do the project himself.

It really is a very handsome volume, with excellent photos featured throughout. An 8.5 x 11-inch book, it contains 208 pages, and is available for $29.99 at http://shop.trains.com/ . Here’s the cover: 

The book, naturally, draws on the very extensive resources of the former Kalmbach Library, particularly the part associated with Trains magazine (thus the Trains logo on the cover). 

Of course, you have to be interested in steam locomotives to fully appreciate this book and its photographic quality, but an image like the one below is surely quintessential railroading. (It’s Milwaukee Road 2-8-2 no. 354, taking water at New Lisbon, Wisconsin in July 1953; James G. LaVale photo.)  

The many photos of the interiors of roundhouses and shops are endlessly informative, as are the photos showing the scale of such facilities. I enjoyed this aerial view of the Santa Fe locomotive facility at Albuquerque, N.M., including the heavy repair shop at left (Santa Fe photo). This is just one of the numerous double-page spreads in the book; I apologize for the gutter image at center. 

And many of the activities associated with locomotive servicing are shown throughout the book. Here is just one example, showing a Union Pacific self-propelled crane, unloading coal from GS gondolas at a coaling dock. (Trains magazine collection). As the book notes, the Utah Coal Route gondola nearest the camera represents a jointly-owned operation of the the Utah Railway and UP’s Los Angeles & Salt Lake. Originally the UCR owned 2000 of these gondolas.

I continue to browse the book and find more and more interesting and informative photos. Kudos to Jeff Wilson for making this book a reality, and to Firecrown for publishing it in the size it deserves.

Tony Thompson 

The new Lines West WP box cars

I just recently learned of some new 3D-printed box cars from Lines West (Richland, WI) in HO scale. You can visit their website for information on all current products, at: https://lineswestproducts.com/ . The new kits I was interested in are for some 1916-built Western Pacific box cars and their descendants. Below I will quote from some of R.J. Dial’s very nice prototype research summary, provided for the kit. 

The prototype cars were built by Pullman in 1916, 1000 40-foot cars numbered 15001–16000. As you see below (Pullman Library), they were 40-ton single-sheathed cars with K brakes, wood doors, and arch-bar trucks. They also had a lumber door in the B end.

In the 1920s, WP converted 200 of these cars to stock cars, and in 1931, added 32 more. In 1936, conversion resumed, with another 200 cars converted and modernized. Thus more than 400 of the 1000 original cars became stock cars by the mid-1930s.

In 1937, WP converted 100 of the cars for bulk gypsum service with roof hatches, renumbering them into the 26001–26100 series. The cars had collapsible internal bulkheads to contain the cargo. In 1942, 25 more were converted. 

Below is a photo (Norman Holmes) of one of the cars in plaster service. Note the large door emblem and the roof hatches near each end, along with  late-style Andrews trucks.

Additionally, in 1936, WP began to convert surviving cars of this series into MOW cars, as their limited capacity made them less suitable for freight service. Many survived in their MOW assignment until the end of the WP. 

The next year, 1938, WP began converting some of these cars into cabooses, the first 38 with cupolas, then 61 more with bay windows instead of cupolas. By 1940, with the arch-bar trucks about to be banned, surviving box cars were stored, out of service, on line.

Lastly, after World War II, there were 35 of the original box cars in existence, and all were converted in 1947 to company stores service. With those conversion completed, none of the original 1000 cars remained as box cars in revenue service. Lines West has done kits for all but the cabooses.

I purchased the kit for the box cars that WP converted to plaster service, since by my 1953 modeling year, all the revenue-service box cars of this group had been scrapped or converted to other use.

When the kit arrives, it has no instructions in the box, but a very nice and complete set of instructions, along with a good prototype history, is available on the Lines West side as a PDF you can download (at: https://lineswestproducts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Kit-Instructions-WP-Pullman-Boxcar-Stockcar_V6.pdf ). There is also a pretty good YouTube video covering boxcar assembly; it can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9TNVrBRFJE .

The parts are extremely nice. The photo below shows the car body (note the several internal bulkheads, avoiding a problem which can occur with 3D-printed models: warpage. At lower left is the very nice underframe, with all brake gear and piping installed (the modeler will need to add brake rodding). The floor is slightly warped, as you can see, but is flexible and when snapped into place in the body, not only fits perfectly but also straightens.

At right middle are the car doors, below them the scale couple boxes (suitable for Kadee #158 couplers) and at bottom center, the roof hatches. All parts are quite nice; for example, the Z-bar braces on the car body are in fact Z braces. A nice touch is the inclusion of threaded brass inserts for bolster and coupler box screws, since many printed resins don’t seem to like being threaded.  

My first step, as it often is, was to place the car weights. As I usually do, I used two steel 5/8-11 nuts. But as you can see above, the interior bulkheads mean that the weights can’t be simply glued flat on the inside of the floor. Instead, they have to glued in an “upright” position between the bulkheads, where they just fit.

Next I began working on the body by starting to place the many grab irons that need to be installed. Starter holes are in the body at all such locations, making this work much more convenient. But I’ll continue with this project in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

An excellent new book

A really excellent railroad-experience book has just been published. Entitled Life Along the Tracks, it’s published by Basalt Books (an imprint of Washington State University Press). The dust jacket is shown below. The career stories are those of the Mike McLaughlin (1937–2012), assembled and brought to press by Jim Providenza. Jim also coordinated the outstanding map efforts of Dave Clemens. 

The cover photo, one of many in the book from the talented camera work of Phil Hastings, is revealing: it’s not the Overnight Express roaring down the track, or even the dispatcher, king of all he surveys. It’s ordinary railroaders, probably doing track inspection. Very much in tune with this book. 

It’s an 8.5 x 11-inch hardbound book, 242 pages long. with both a glossary and index. It’s nicely produced. I was a little disappointed that the publisher chose to use uncoated instead of coated paper, but it doesn’t greatly matter here, as the photos are really illustrations, not reference material. And about the photos: considerable effort, mostly of Jim Providenza, located and selected the many fine photos in the book, since Mike’s own photos disappeared.

Some of us in model railroading have experienced what it takes to manage a large yard. I enjoyed Mike’s comment (page 157) about how it was, back in the day: “Yard offices were a madhouse, with clerks trying to decipher train lists and yard checks made in the rain, yardmasters screaming for the train list to make up their switch lists, crew callers, janitors, and a lonely cry from the corner: “Where IS that damn car . . .’ ”  

The content is especially interesting to me because although it’s a rich variety of railroader recollections, it's not the Operating Department. Mike worked on track and signals, and late in his career even in traffic management, spread over seven railroads, including Great Northern, Denver & Rio Grande Western, and Rock Island. But to me, all of it is good reading.

I have to say a little about the superb maps by Dave Clemens. Many railroading situations involve kinda complicated geography, most of it not particularly evident to the general public. Dave has created map after map which brilliantly show exactly what the reader of the book needs to know, and little more. I will illustrate with his two maps of the railroad lines around Bellingham, Washington. First, the local tracks:

Here we see the GN passing through the area, the NP just reaching it, and the Milwaukee having a ferry slip to serve their “island branch” trackage. How does this connect to what’s a little farther out of town? Dave has shown us that too:

All in all, really a well-done, well-illustrated, fun book to read. I’m sure many modelers will have the same reaction, even if they might not get excited by the book before looking inside. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Tony Thompson 

A superb new John Signor book

Continuing his remarkable series of books about the Southern Pacific, John Signor has just published the latest, this one about the San Joaquin Division. As always, the richness of photo coverage across a lot of years is very impressive. Below is the dust jacket. 

The book is published by the SP Historical & Technical Society at $90 (visit https://sphts.org/product-category/books/ ). It’s an 8.5 x 11-inch format, and is truly a large book, containing 586 pages. It has many of John’s characteristically excellent maps, of which I show a single example below pages 306 and 307). Spanning two pages, not all of it can seen in this quick scan, but it should be enough to portray the kind of information and detail in most of the maps. (You can click to enlarge.)

I counted 105 maps in the book, many from SP, including SPINS maps, but quite a number in John’s distinctive style. All of them add considerable depth to the information.

The volume is a treasury of action photos from all eras. John has freely mixed color and black-white images, wherever they logically fit. And I should mention that John has taken the opportunity to expand, revise and correct the some of the material he published years ago in his fine book, Tehachapi (Golden West Books, San Marino, 1983). One superb image from Robert Hale is shown below, depicting the westward San Joaquin Daylight at Tehachapi Loop in the early 1950s, with helper 4352 on the point. 

The book extends to the last days of the SP, and includes such latter-day information as the Palmdale Cut-off, along with many of the abandonments and dismemberments of the division. An example image from more recent times is this eastward mixed freight near Delano in the early 1970s, passing vast vineyards on the right (John Bergman photo).  The trio of SD45 locomotives is headed by SP 8834. Delivered through the late 1960s, the SD45s from EMD would dominate the SP locomotive fleet thereafter, with a total of 356 units in all. Those added up to more than 28 per cent of all the SD45s that EMD would produce. 

I confess to not being an objective reviewer, as I have long admired and greatly respected John’s books about the geography of the SP. But this one takes a back seat to none. Not only SP enthusiasts but all kinds of railfans will find innumerable facts and photos of interest. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Tony Thompson 

A new SP Shipper’s Guide

I have often posted about the superb railroad resources represented by what are generically known as “Shipper’s Guides,” though they often have somewhat different names, such as “Directory of Industries.” The latest one is especially interesting to me, as it’s a Southern Pacific guide. I have often heard rumors about these but have never before seen one. Now Ted Schnepf (as Rails Unlimited) has produced copies of a 1952 guide for sale. See his website for purchasing info: http://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/.html ).

I show below the cover of the new Guide, which contains 118 pages, 8.5 x 11 inch size. I can only say that this is a phenomenal amount of information. It only covers the trackage assigned by SP to its Terminal District, but that was a lot of territory and a really huge number of industries, as I’ll show below. There were other industrial territories in the area, so this is far from all of the Los Angeles Division of the SP. 

Inside is on page 10 a map of the territory covered, from Burbank Junction in the north (where Coast and Valley routes diverged), to  South Gate to the south and Alhambra to the east. It’s shown here, though of course lettering at this size is too small to read. North is to the top of the map, and the orientation of the spine of the territory aligns with the Los Angeles River.

Note in the map that zones are marked out, from 1 to 16. Individual maps of each zone are then provided, which I will come back to. 

I was interested, in examining the map above, to compare it to the SP’s 1925 map of the same area provided in John Signor’s superb book, Los Angeles Division (SP Historical & Technical Society, Upland, CA, 2020), on pages 138 and 139. I haven’t tried to show what is in the gutter between the pages. It happens to be oriented so north is to the right of the map, and the Los Angeles River is thus approximately horizontal in this map. More importantly, Alameda Street runs horizontally across the upper part of the map.

Naturally, many of the industries and their locations are quite different between 1925 and 1952. But a similar intensity of of industrial location is evident. This was obviously a major part of SP’s industrial traffic base. Below is a photo from page 135 of Signor’s book, a 1925 aerial looking north (Spence Air photo collection, UCLA Dept. of Geography),with Alameda the dark street crossing from lower right to upper left. 

Signor points out that of the 340 industries listed on the map above, 278 of them were so located that they were switched from Alameda Street. The street contained double track, in some places triple track. One can imagine multiple switch jobs working up and down the street, dodging auto and truck traffic.

But back to the guide. This guide is a remarkable collection of specific industrial and operational information, even for the modeler of places far from Los Angeles. I will explain and illustrate some of that in a future post.

Tony Thompson 

The new Rapido SP dome car

Among SP modelers, there had been a buzz for some time about the forthcoming HO scale model of the Sacramento-built full-length dome cars from Rapido Trains. During 1954 and 1955, SP shop forces used some pre-war Daylight cars for underframe and some body parts, and the dome structure was purchased from Budd as a kit. The rest of the car was essentially new construction. There was one prototype built first, then six production cars. 

For a full background on these cars, see Volume 5 of Southern Pacific Passenger Cars (Lounge, Dome & Parlor Cars), by Jeff Cauthen and Don Munger, SPH&TS, Upland, CA, 2012).

Here’s an example of a car in service on the San Joaquin Daylight (SP photo), taken just above Caliente in 1955. It was usual to operate the car with the short roof to the rear, as here, so that dome seats faced forward. The bar-lounge on the lower level was relatively small, and SP provided beverage service to the lounge end (nearest the bar) of the upper level. The cars operated rarely on the Coast Daylight  until later years, because adding it to the consist, along with the usual tavern car,  would require removal of a coach, with corresponding revenue loss.

The reason Rapido has produced it, no doubt, is because one of the cars survived long enough to be purchased by Canadian Pacific and rebuilt by them for their Heritage Fleet, operating as the car “Selkirk.” But they offered the model in both full Daylight paint (red and orange), and in SP’s post-1958 simulated stainless steel with red letterboard.

In later years all the cars had their fluted sides replaced with flat stainless panels, and some cars operated in yellow paint to match the City of San Francisco. A few cars survived to operate in Amtrak paint (Phase 1). All these schemes were offered by Rapido, along with CP deep maroon. But every single scheme is now shown on the Rapido site as “out of stock” (see: https://rapidotrains.com/ho-scale/passenger-car/sp-dome-lounge-cars.html ). The strong response to these models may well cause them to be re-run at some point.

These models are really beautiful. The full interior is readily viewed through the expansive dome windows, including the lower-level lounge with its fully equipped and detailed bar.  

I was glad to see that a quite accurate diaphragm is on the car end, along with other often-omitted details like the pair of grab iron steps on the side skirt at the corner. The underbody is also well done, showing all of what should be visible from the side of the model.

Since I model 1953, and the first car was built in 1954 (and used for the rest of that year in test service around the system), with the additional six cars built in 1955, it might seem that I have no use for this model. But of course the traditional modeler’s license contains a provision for small time warps, and I plan to include the car in an occasional deadhead move of passenger equipment, such as shown below at Shumala, sandwiched between a couple of Lark sleepers.

Another view from above the model, posed on the layout, allows at least an impression of the superb interior. Luckily, since I will only be deadheading the car, not operating it in a regular train, I don’t have the challenge of filling the seats with passengers. 

All in all, this is really a nice model of a distinctive SP prototype, very well executed. Rapido Trains and its people are very much to be congratulated.

Tony Thompson 

The peculiar new Walthers steel reefer

I have seen promotional material for the new Walthers “mainline” refrigerator car in HO scale, and wondered what it might be a model of. Since their ads have shown a Fruit Growers steel car, perhaps that was their goal. But they are also marketing two Pacific Fruit Express paint schemes on this car body, so I wanted to evaluate those models.

I have no idea where they got the ideas for their two paint schemes. Neither one makes any historical sense. But before I get to that, let’s look at the car body itself. The photo below shows that the model has molded-on ladders and grab irons. The rendition of the rivet lines of the steel body are not bad, nor is the door appearance. Ice hatches do resemble the Holland hatch covers used by PFE for a time. The running board represents a steel grid, and it is a see-through grid. 

That’s the good news. But the roof is a late-1920s style flat panel roof, not the prototype’s raised panel roof. And the underframe has no relation to any PFE underframe I know of. Aside from the roof and the relatively invisible underframe, the body is not a bad version of PFE’s first steel reefers, Class R-40-10.

Now to the PFE paint schemes they have chosen. The one shown above is a mish-mash of components from different eras, and one wonders what they thought they were doing on this steel body scheme.  I will come back to it, in favor of beginning with the single-emblem scheme, cars that are lettered as Class R-30-13. It’s shown below in a Walthers photo.

This scheme had a UP “Overland Route” slogan emblem on one side, which you see above, and an SP emblem on the other side. The paint scheme as shown above was in use prior to 1936. That’s because it’s the pre-1936 UP emblem with the word “System” in the blue field. That would be all right for the time the R-30-13 cars were built, as would all of the rest of the lettering. But as mentioned, all this decoration is on a steel body, while the lettering is for a wood-sheathed car.

These single-emblem cars have car numbers beginning with “40,” consistent with Class R-40-10, but they are lettered as Class R-30-13, a car with wood-sheathed sides and ends and an outside-metal roof, wood running board, and K brakes: none of those features are on the model. 

In a way, it’s a shame they went to all the trouble to accurately letter the car this way. If it were just a wood car body, the lettering would be quite nice. For comparison, below is a prototype photo (Pullman for PFE). Incidentally, the deep underframe (whitewashed for the photo) is yet another feature missing from the Walthers representation of Class R-30-13.

Now let me return to the steel car. This second paint scheme has car numbers beginning with “41,” again consistent with Class R-40-10, and for that class the car body makes far better sense, even the lack of placard boards on car sides (but unaccountably, they do have placard boards on the ends). Unfortunately, all the dimensional and capacity lettering and data is copied exactly from the R-30-13 model, entirely wrong in almost every detail for a steel-body Class R-40-10.

But the emblems are a problem, too. The chosen “two-emblem” paint scheme, with both railroad emblems on both sides, essentially a 1946–1950 scheme, is fine, but they have chose to letter a red-white-blue UP emblem with the word “railroad” in the blue field, something never done with that emblem. In fact, the first UP emblem to contain the word “railroad” was the black-white one introduced in 1950.

The PFE photo below shows the black-white UP emblem. Clearly Walthers got the white border and the word “railroad” in the upper field, but chose to stay with red-white-blue, an imaginary scheme (it’s shown in the upper photo in this post). 

Moreover, as is obvious in the model photos above, Walthers painted all side hardware orange (ladders, grab irons, and door hardware), consistent with PFE practice beginning in 1948. From that time until 1950, the all-orange sides co-existed with the color two-herald scheme, as mentioned.

Where can you find all these lettering details as to arrangement and dates of use? An excellent book from the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society, entitled Southern Pacific Freight Car Painting and Lettering Guide (SPH&S, 2016) contains a thorough and clearly presented description of all the PFE lettering schemes down through the years, organized and written by Dick Harley.

Quite aside from curiosity about how and why Walthers made its peculiar lettering decisions, as a modeler the far more interesting question is, what can be done with this model if you’d like it to be more prototypical? I will turn to that topic in a following post.

Tony Thompson

Southern Pacific’s GE 44-tonners

The General Electric 44-ton diesel switcher was sold to railroads large and small, and to industrial users, all over North America, and many survived 30 years or more in service (and a number have been preserved at various railroad museums). Powered by a pair of Caterpillar 190-horsepower diesels, they were easy to maintain, with Caterpillar parts available everywhere. Over time, Southern Pacific and its subsidiaries owned a full dozen of them.

The earliest three 44-tonners owned by SP arrived in the fall of 1942, only two years after the first 44-ton locomotives had been produced by GE. Numbered 1900–1902, they were mostly used in Oregon during the war, and later were tried many places on the SP system. Like others in the earliest production, these had side radiators, unlike the many post-1942 44-ton engines with end radiator shutters. 

(One of the magisterial Joe Strapac books on SP diesel locomotives, Volume 18 in the series Southern Pacific Historic Diesels, is about Alco and GE diesel switchers. He covers the 44-tonners owned by SP, Pacific Electric, Visalia Electric, and Petaluma & Santa Rosa, along with Pacific Fruit Express. It should be consulted for history of the locomotives on all the subsidiaries.)

Here’s a photo from that book (Gordon Spafford photo, courtesy Joe Strapac), taken at Eugene, Oregon on March 15, 1946, with SP 1901 painted in “Tiger Stripe” colors. The side shutters and plain hood end are clearly shown.

In the photo above, note the prominent rerailing frog over the front truck at right. Photos of these locomotives on the SP after the 1940s no longer show these frogs present, so they were not a permanent feature. 

What might this have to do with SP’s Coast Division and in particular, the San Luis Obispo area (which I model)? In the 1953–54 era, SP tried out a variety of diesel locomotives on different parts of the system, including Coast Division, and specifically at San Luis. 

One of my previous posts, with parts of my interview with Malcolm “Mac” Gaddis who worked there in the early 1950s, mentions trying out GE 70-ton engines, Baldwin and Alco six-axle road switchers, and others (here’s a link to that post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/08/san-luis-obispo-operations-3.html ). He mentioned the 44-tonners in another part of the interview. Neither the 44-ton nor 70-ton locomotives could do the desired job in the yard at San Luis Obispo (which is on a grade), and after short stints, they were sent elsewhere — but they did work there.

This is of current interest because Rapido Trains has just introduced a GE 44-tonner in HO scale, and they offer it in SP paint and lettering. Among the body styles they chose to do is the original design, with side radiators, sometimes called Phase I, correct for the SP numbers they have modeled. Here is a photo of SP 1902 at work on my layout, switching cars at Shumala.

The engine runs nicely, has a realistic diesel sound, and handles switching well. It’s shown below spotting a reefer at the Phelan & Taylor packing shed in East Shumala on my layout.

I’m sure the 44-tonners didn’t serve very long in this area of Coast Division, but the times when they were tested does fit my modeling era, so I will operate this one occasionally.

Tony Thompson

Adding California condors to the layout

This may seem a rather exotic idea. But I’m doing it. Probably many readers have seen layouts with kites in the air, or airplanes; I can remember visiting a layout with a blimp in the air. Well, why not birds? Of course, nearly all bird species are quite tiny in HO scale. But the California condor, with a wingspan of up to 10 feet (the largest in North America) is a potential exception. As explained below, I decided to give it a try.

These birds are mostly black, but like most vulture species, have a bare head. They also have elongated white patches on the underside of the wings. Below you see a California condor in Zion National Park (Phil Armitage public domain photo, 2007), with tracking devices visible on both wings. 

The California condor, as many readers may know, was on the verge of extinction, with only 22 birds alive in the wild, when conservation efforts began in 1987. Capturing wild birds for breeding, nurturing of chicks, added protection for birds released into the wild, and thorough monitoring of health of the population in the wild, has been a notable success. 

Today there are estimated to be 558 of these birds in the wild, and in addition to their last original range in the coastal mountains of California, they now are successfully ranging and breeding in many other areas, including the high Sierra, southern Utah and northern Arizona, and both Big Sur and Pinnacles National Park in California. Introduction of condors has recently been accomplished in Redwood National Park in northern California, and in northern Mexico. For more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor#Description .

The Miniprints offerings (see their line at: https://www.miniprints.com/shop-birds/ ) include a California condor in their extensive line of 3D-printed birds and animals in HO scale. The origin of this is interesting. My friend Seth Neumann contacted Bernard Hallen at Miniprints and asked if he could make a condor. What he apparently did was scale up a vulture, and of course condors are in the vulture family, so these are certainly close enough in HO scale. 

Seth bought some, painted them, and was kind enough to give me two pair. There are two standing birds and two in flight (shown below both from above, with all-black wings, and from below, like the prototype photo above). The model wing span is about 1.25 inches, which translates to about 9 feet in HO scale, certainly reasonable.

So how would these bird models be installed on a layout? They are soaring birds, so should be seen in a hilly area, and obviously the flying ones have to be in the air. For the standing birds, I luckily have a perfect rock outcrop above my layout town of Ballard, so one of them fits nicely there.

The thought of the condor, brooding above the town, inevitably brings to mind one of the great personalities that Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, assumed: the “fierce vulture” in a tree. Not sure the condor looks a great deal like Charles Schulz's drawing (internet image).

The flying condor I decided to attach to a wire, allowing it to appear to be actually “in the air” above the hillside. I used 0.015-inch brass wire. I first tried it out unpainted, attaching it to the underside of the flying condor with canopy glue, and sticking the wire into the hillside above Ballard. You can readily see the wire in the photo below, because it is still shiny brass color.

I then spray-painted the wire medium gray, which seemed like a sufficiently neutral color to make it disappear. And it does, from most angles. In fact, the condor is now a little hard to photograph so that the wire shows. After trying several different perspectives, I did come up with one where the wire is visible. But I will repeat that viewing from the layout aisle, it’s pretty hard to see the wire.

This was a fun addition to the layout, and of course full credit to Seth Neumann for both the idea and the models. But now that they’re available from Miniprints, anyone can do the same. I’m glad to do something to honor the return of the California condor to the wild, even in HO scale.

Tony Thompson

More about Chrysler trucks

In a recent post about the steel express refrigerator conversions of Pacific Fruit Express, I mentioned the Chrysler freight trucks applied to 25 of the cars when they were converted to passenger express service. These were visually distinctive because of the use of an external hydraulic snubber, which projected upwards on the side frame. (You can read that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-steel-express-cars-of-pfe.html .) Here is a photo of the prototype truck (PFE photo, CSRM).

I mentioned in that post that I had made representations of Chrysler trucks for my own car fleet’s PFE steel express reefers, using a casting from Ross Dando’s Twin Star Cars company. This was a nice part and certainly an accurate representation of what you see above. Here is that truck on my PFE car:

I don’t know whether Twin Star Cars will necessarily return that part to inventory. But there is an alternative and perhaps better option today: a company called “Plate C Model Prototypes” has made a 3-D printed version of this truck, now marketing it through 3D Central. You can see the 3D Central trucks at this link: https://3dcentraltrains.com/search?type=product%2Cpage%2Carticle&options%5Bprefix%5D=last&q=trucks . The Chrysler trucks are on page 2, and I used Part 4103-01, the original truck design. As of this writing, they are in stock. (The site warns that things can go in and out of stock, so patience might be necessary).

They really are nicely done. I show a rather close-up photo below, and in my opinion, this compares favorably with the Twin Star Cars version or the prototype photo above. Note in the lower view how much the snubber projects, as should be the case.

But if I already had a nice version of these trucks under my PFE express reefer, why did I buy another pair? Three years ago, I posted about the work I did, modeling one of the General American-Evans pioneer DF box cars, where DF = Damage-Free loaders. (That post can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2021/02/gaex-box-cars-part-2-modeling.html .) 

The just-linked post has more details, but briefly, the consortium of General American, the car builder, and Evans Products Co., the DF-loader maker, built 540 cars, 340 of them with conventional vertical panels, 8 on each side of the door. The photo below shows an example (George Sisk photo, Charles Winters collection), drawn from the 110 cars built in the late fall of 1950 and leased to the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The prototype GAEX cars had Chrysler trucks (visible above), which originally I decided to ignore, and simply used conventional trucks under the model. But in that post, I prophetically wrote, “Maybe I’ll come back later and redo the trucks.” That’s the reason for buying another pair: so I can complete my GAEX box car.

I won’t go into the model itself, as the background and modeling was adequately described in the two original posts (the second is linked two paragraphs above). For the current topic, what’s important is that now I can “finish” that model with correct trucks. Here are the Plate C trucks installed:

I am glad to make this model more accurate with the replacement of its kit trucks with these impressive 3-D printed versions of the Chrysler freight truck. This is yet another example of the accomplishments of 3-D printing in our hobby.

Tony Thompson

A new vinegar tank car

Vinegar tank cars, made from wood, were unusual, but not rare, cars in prototype service. Vinegar is in essence mild acetic acid, and corrosive; a steel tank car would require a lining, while wood seemed to stand up to vinegar all right. I have long wanted one, having seen a photo of one being repaired at Southern Pacific’s Sacramento General Shops.

Below is a photo from the internet of a preserved car of this type, at the John Street Roundhouse in Toronto. You can readily see many details of construction. Note that there are a substantial number of circumferential rods, connected with cast clamping devices, holding the tank staves together, along with tank hold-downs that are flat strapping, and that comes down to the side sill. The heavy end bracing is also evident.

Sunshine Models, many years ago, produced a kit for such a car. Their Prototype Data Sheet or PDS #60 for these cars showed a good prototype photo, shown below with credit. This is a car owned by Standard Brands Inc., thus the reporting marks, SBIX.

The Sunshine kit was infamous for its complexity and tedious assembly, not to mention the challenge of getting all those rods to look right, with somewhat even but not exactly even spacing, lying flat on the tank.

One of the best Sunshine kit assemblies that I know of, was built by Lester Breuer; he described the process in his blog (you can read it, and appreciate the assembly difficulties, here: http://mnrailroadcab100.blogspot.com/2020/09/vinegar-tank-car-sbix-1641.html ). But it is inevitable that some parts are oversize and it is difficult to avoid glue getting onto the tank. I’m not criticizing Lester here; practically every completed versions of this kit that I have seen is rather clunky compared with this.

For these reasons, I had shied away from buying and building the Sunshine kit. But there have been brass vinegar cars too, notably a Heinz car in brass from Overland Models. Unfortunately this is a quite different-looking car than the Standard Brands car shown in the uppermost photo of the present post. Here’s a representative photo of a Heinz car (Henry Ford Museum collection), dated 1915, and you can compare it to the prototype photo above:

Accordingly, I was really thrilled to hear that North Bank Line was going to import brass models of the Standard Brands car in brass, and I signed up to receive one. These models have just been delivered, and I am delighted with mine (as far as I know, they were all sold out on arrival, though some may be available at dealers; for example, https://resourcedrails.com/products/copy-of-ho-new-brass-nbl-north-bank-line-various-roads-sbix-1605-standard-brand-vinegar-car ). Here’s an overall view of the model, and you can readily see the realistically small rods around the tank:

The lettering, often red in the 1950s for these cars, is very nicely rendered on this model, as are all the details, and here again, you can admire the tank construction; Kadee couplers and Tahoe Model Works trucks provided (thankfully, no “roll like sleds” brass trucks).

And I have to mention the nice end detailing, including crisp lettering. It may seem unusual that the gallons capacity of the car is not lettered on the end, but that is true also in the prototype photo I have. We can of course look it up in the 1955 Freight Tariff 300-H, “Showing Capacities of Tank Cars,” and we find that car SBIX 1641 had a capacity of 7965 gallons, very similar to all the 97 cars shown in this tariff entry without expansion domes, as is this car.

I look forward to lightly weathering this model and putting it into service on my layout. And congratulations to North Bank Line for an excellent product!

Tony Thompson