Has anyone figured out what the prototype for the new Walthers baggage car is? Assuming it actually has one. Unlike the 10-6 sleeper, Walthers does not state any. My library is hardly all inclusive when it comes to the vast subject of baggage cars, but I can't find any that match all the criteria; nominally 72' long, built by PS, two equal sized doors and each door having three windows. Oddly enough in the Pullman Standard Library Vol 8 on the Rock Island, the photo of the only PS baggage car in the book looks like an exact match, but the floor plan says it is 80' long and shows two different sized doors with the larger one having four windows (which doesn't match the photo).
I can't seem to find one- - related question though; the image shows a corrugated streamlined car with several available paint schemes... one of which is Santa Fe in Pullman Green, what I would expect to see on a heavyweight. Would Santa Fe have had a Pullman Green streamlined baggage car? I'm by no means expert in passenger cars and even less in baggage cars so I really don't know... maybe there's a lot that hasn't been finalized on this model yet? -Mike
All the photographic evidence I have of Santa Fe baggage cars show two windows in the doors. I wouldn't stick my neck out and say absolutely not but I don't believe ATSF had any stainless steel cars painted green or any other colour. Interesting to see what Walthers eventually come out with, most manufactuers seem to be outgrowing the age of picking a car and painting it for every road they can think of. I'd like to see Kato do a seperate run of their ATSF baggage car like they have with the dome car, maybe a pack of two different numbers.
You can almost buy the ATSF baggage car from Kato parts department. The body shell with glass is $20, diaphrams $2, everything you need but trucks which are temporarily out-of-stock. MT trucks could be used. There is no photo of any of the ATSF body shells so I don't know if they are painted or lettered. The corrugated (Budd) cars are sold painted but unlettered. I bought a few of the latter and use MT trucks with them. Ben
Not if it's corrugated*, and the doors aren't the same. But the CGW did have three streamlined baggage cars that were 72'. They were the only sleamlined cars the CGW bought new. IIRC Jason *The Walthers' listing doesn't say if it will come corrugated and smooth side, but it should looking at the paint schemes.
Santa Fe did have some green colored baggage cars used primarily by REA. The roof was black and the sides a combination of a silvery green, not pullman green. The green can best be described as a transparent dark green. I have a video, produced by Sunday River Productions, The Super Chief, where the car is illustrated leaving Needles, CA west bound first car behind the locomotives. Otto Perry, may have captured some of these in the videos produced by The Rocky Mountain Railroad Club. Most of his photography was black and white and it would be hard to distinguish the car from the others. The car would have a black roof and the dark sides would appear lighter then the pullman green. I painted up a O scale smooth sided baggage car...for a friend of mine. You'd have to come here to see the video I produced for his layout. I did find a picture in my computer files...the picture is not mine and I'm using it for illustration only. Look back in the consist the fourth car. Note the streamline baggage car with the black roof. This may be one of those units I previously described. Worth a look see.
I've also seen photos of smoothside cars painted green but not fluted side cars, I think the Santa Fe of the passenger era would have been too image conscious to paint over the shiny stainless steel. One thing the photo draws attention to is the variety of head equipment found on most passenger trains, they didn't all look like they were squeezed out of a tube as we tend to model them.
A quick perusal of books published by SFRH&MS (Ellington and Shine: Head End Cars and Hendrickson: Painting and Lettering Guide) revealed no mention of fluted side lightweight baggage cars that had been painted. The car in Rick's photo may be #3431, a one-of-a-kind 63' 8" car built by Budd. On the dust cover of Worley's "Iron Horses" is a black or dark roof car that appears to be #3431. No clue as to the color of the rest of the car in a b&w photo. And Santa Fe had no 72' fluted side baggage cars. Cars built by ACF were 73' 10". Those built by Budd were 73' 8" except for two one-of-a-kind cars (80' 4" and 63' 8"). There were a number from both builders with equal width doors but none with three windows in the doors. Ben
Pictures of Unknown Baggage Car Hello again, Here is what my reasearch has revealed. I went back to the video I mentioned earlier and tried some TV shots of the car. The quality of the picture is less then but it's the best I can throw out here. Of the car, my dad a former REA agent said, "The car was first used by REA as an express car". It was painted for them. I learned along time ago that I would have to make complete presentations to be believed. Something about my personality and it may be that I enjoy baffooning or balderdashing (my favorite fire side game) those around me. Therefore it takes extra effort to be believable. When it comes to printed resources: I've often heard my dad say about railfan research, "They don't know what they are talking about" continuing "They don't know railroading". I've found subtle errors sometimes corrected other times ignored. If a author has his or her own take or ideas on the subject the printed material usually reveals it. Attention to details and rebuilds are often times ignored or actual operation of equipment is anything but what the author believes. Although, I find many of the resource books extremely helpful. Still, I take everything with a grain of salt a side of fries, diet Dr. Pepper and one Jr. Whopper. Remembering there is the company line and then there's what really happens. Anyway on to the pictures...poor as they be. As I peer at the TV the car appears to have be a smooth sided, double windowed doors and it's obviously paint over silver, with silver trucks... they stand out fairly well. I can't read the header although in one pause i can see ANT...FE. You'll need to look at your own video for further clarification. This can be found on the Sunday River Productions, The Super Chief, The Streamliner Series.
The Walthers 10-6 Pullman will be available in both corrugated and smoothside versions, and while I have no info to support it, my hunch is that, guessing from the road names to be offered, the same will be the case with the baggage car. We shall see.
AFAIK the Walthers N Scale Baggage Car will be offered in both Corrugated and Smoothside versions. The Smoothside version matches the Chicago Great Western car which was later sold to the GN. The corrugated car is likely similar to Santa Fe cars. Santa Fe had a practice of purchasing many cars from three builders... Budd, Pullman-Standard, and ACF or St.Louis. The PS and ACF cars could be either smoothside or Corrugated. I am not a ATSF expert but if they followed the same logic as the CB&Q did, the Smoothside Baggage cars could either be Silver (sometimes with full simulated corrugated stainless steel shaddow-line striping) for use with Budd or PS Stainless Corrugated cars or Green for use on trains which were predominately heavyweight and still in Pullman Green. We tend to overlook that almost right up to the end there were many standard heavyweight cars in daily use by most of the railroads... even the CB&Q, known for its Budd Zephyr fleet, rolled a lot of passenger miles in ACF and Pullman-Standard heavyweight cars. Charlie vlk
The Walthers catalog pages for both N and HO show the same car and color selections. Whatever is already available for HO is probably what will be produced for N. http://walthers.com/exec/productinfo/932-55090 http://walthers.com/exec/productinfo/932-6800 I have not seen the HO Pullman baggage cars but I did buy a couple of the HO Budd baggage cars which are very nice. Ben
The Santa Fe never painted any of their light weight baggage cars green. The fluted side cars from Budd and ACF remained stainless with no paint as did the smooth side ACF stainless steel cars bought in 1955. From 1956 through 1960 a series of non stainless, smooth side, shells were built by Pullman and delivered to the Topeka shops where the Santa Fe finished assembling and painting them. These were painted in two different schemes. One was silver with black lettering while the other was medium gray with black roofs, silver trucks and white lettering. They came in two sizes, those delivered from 1956 until mid 1958 were 63' 11" long and the ones delivered from late 1958 until 1960 were 73' 11" long. They had two identical sized doors on each side, each with two windows.
After digging through all my literature on the subject of the gray painted Santa Fe baggage cars, I would like to add some thoughts. Many times in color photos the gray cars can look kind of green. In the attached photo below, of a known gray baggage car, you can see many things reflected in the glossy paint. The sky, the yellow stripes on the nose of the diesel next to it, and probably trees and grass off to the left. Any green painted light weight baggage cars would not have been "Standard Practice" of the Santa Fe which has been well documented. Anything unusual would no doubt have attracted a lot of attention. However I have not found anything in the literature mentioning it. Not to say that it never happened, just that it would have been very rare if it did. We all know that it was not "Standard Practice" to paint passenger diesels gold. In this case it has been well documented that they still did.
I've seen photos of the gold PA. Interesting. Russell, do you know anything about the dark roof Budd baggage cars. I considered that it might be wartime "camoflage" but then the whole consist would have needed to have painted roofs. Another thought, considering the deterioration of the early Budds, was a coating to moistureproof the interior. Not that it matters with the Walthers Pullman design baggage cars, I just always wondered. Ben
Is Walthers the new Con-Cor? Does it matter? To be honest, I hesitate to post what follows because I welcome Walthers' interest in the N scale market, and I don't want to say or do anything to undermine that. I've purchased several Walthers N scale models and I'm delighted with their interest in N scale! Strictly from my standpoint as a D&RGW modeler, though, I'm disappointed in the upcoming passenger releases: If the N scale 10-6 sleeper is the same as the HO model, it's unprototypical in a rather obvious way -- there's no corrugation below the windows. It's unprototypical in other ways, too -- for instance, the Grande rebuilt these cars in a 5-6-6 configuration, I believe (this is off the top of my head, and might be wrong, but I know they were rebuilt). But that's not something that the average onlooker would notice. The lack of corrugation would be noticed, I think, so I canceled my order for these cars, with reluctance. Clearly, Walthers has met with success marketing these designs in the HO market. So... Are N scalers more prototypically oriented than their HO counterparts, I wonder? Consider Kato's Empire Builder, which wasn't considered entirely prototypical and, as I understand it, didn't sell all that well. Compare this to the beautiful and prototypical California Zephyr (which has been through 3 iterations) and Super Chief (which has sold out and will quite likely appear with a second set of road numbers). Let me conclude this post by conceding that I may very well be a victim of obsessive protypicality disorder (OPD). I am seeking treatment but I have not yet found a shrink who specializes in this malady. ^_^ --Bryan
The camouflage has been my understanding as well. I have seen photos of the early Budd Chair Cars on the Scout with black roofs even before Pearl Harbor. When Japanese Zeros never materialized over the horizon as the war went on, they stopped applying it to cars. It may have been well after the war was over before they got it removed from all the cars. Head end cars probably the least priority. I don't believe the roofs would have deteriorated. They were made from large sheets of corrugated stainless steel with few joints and would not have corroded. A few days ago I took this photo of one of the ex Scout cars that now belongs to a museum in Arizona. It was in San Antonio for some work to be done on it. The roof seems to be OK. We have a pre war Budd RPO Baggage car at the Museum in Houston and it has never had a leaking roof problem.
Thanks for the info on the dark roof. The Budd RPO baggage looks very much like the one built for the original Super Chief but not used, the SC not being a daily train for mail reasons. Ben