Wordless Wednesday

New Haven Railroad County Parlor cars

When the New Haven Railroad purchased it's new stainless steel cars after WWII, part of the order were for a 20 combination Parlor-Baggage cars.  They were delivered in two basic layouts, but these were later modified on some of the cars.  I am not sure if Rapido will make these cars and I really wanted a pair of them for the East Wind trains.  I decided to combine (pun intended) a Rapido car and a set of E&B Valley Car Works sides to create these cars.  I have some photos to show how I went about it.

Here are the incorrectly painted Penn Central coaches that I used to create my Parlor.
A better starting point would to use an unnamed Parlor from Rapido

I removed the sides, but saved the vestibule doors on the end of the car with the
 most vents.  This keeps the doors consistent with other Rapido cars.

The first side removed.

The E&B Valley Car with the skirting and vestibule door removed.
I used Model Flex Red/Orange for the strip and Tamiya Mica Silver
is a close match to the Rapid silver paint.

Here is the unmodified interior from a Rapido Parlor car. You need to remove most of
the seat and then remove the the blue floor and turn it 180 degrees.  The steps must
also be removed from one end and installed in the other.

This show you the major components prior to assembly.  I had to move
some of the vents around to match the prototype.  I did use some
vents from Custom Finishing.  The name boards on the side of the car
are made from .005 styrene. 

you need a door for the baggage end of the car, I used a door from the bulkhead of the
old E&B valley car.  I sealed the window with a piece of styrene.  The door
was then glued to the Rapido vestibule.

Here is a diagram of the cars as delivered.

NEB&W Visit

I had a wonderful opportunity to attend an operation session on the New England Berkshire and Western on April 21.  This is a world class class club that is located on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I can not think of a layout I have sen in person that has a more realistic city scenery that really nails the details of structures and scenes. I am posting a few photos of may visit.

PS-1 Box Cars

The New Haven bought 1000 PS-1 40 box cars that had 10'6" interior height.  They are considered to be earlier body style with on ribs on the end panels of the roof, now small rectangle panels on the peak of the ends and shorter tabs on the sides by the bolsters.  Ted Culotta did a great article on these care as part of his Essential freight Car series that ran in Railroad Model Craftsman. He also has great decals for script herald for these cars, just check out Speedwitch models.

The 7' Superior doors are from Southwest Scale.

Rapido Parlors

The newest release from Rapido are the New Haven 300 and 400 series Parlors.  Because the New Haven used the same exterior arrangement, only the interior is different.  The named versions of the cars come with interior pieces to do both kinds of cars as well as all the various length name boards. If I had though more about it , I would have picked up only unnamed cars only, giving me extra interior parts to upgrade other cars. As you can see from the photos, the interior details are very nice.  The only negative is the lighting bar is not wired in and there are no directions on where the capacitor wires.  I may take another car apart to see how it goes, as I have to add shades to them anyway.

This is a full 36 seat parlor

This is the other side.

Here is the interior of what will be Parlor Car New Haven.  The NH had 5
Parlors with this arrangement.

Here is  close up up of the interior parts, They are done very nicely.

This shows the side with out the name board applied.

Painting Ties

I painted my track with Camouflage brown that is a nice base color for the track  I have now gone back and painted various random ties with a wash of various grays and browns.  I use acrylic craft paints that cost fifty cents apiece at Wal-Mart.   I add more gray ties to sidings and spurs and keep the main line in better.

Wordless Wednesday