I have noticed that nobody has brought up Atlas's new heavyweight passenger cars? With all of the noise from the MT cars, I figured someone would have at least pointed them out. Maybe I'm the only one who got the announcement...? 60 ft passenger cars !!! Ok, the baggage and RPO MIGHT be good for something, but WHY, WHY, WHY a 60' combine, coach and observation?!! Welcome to the 1960's... http://www.atlastrainman.com/NFreight/tmn60passenger.htm
For those of us with semi-realistic layouts, especially smaller ones, these give a reasonable way to model passenger service. There's no way I could run the long ones, and the Overtons - to me - are only good for special excursion or touristy trade. The Atlas offerings are definitely on my radar.
Well, I wasn't aware Atlas was making these but quite frankly I have more than enough passenger equipment. So I'm not interested.
I wasn't aware of these either. Interesting though that Atlas isn't offering CNJ despite that they are "based upon C&NW and CNJ prototypes".
The Grey and Grandure might be using a couple of those for local passenger service. They may be a nice contrast to the bullet trains passing in the background. Edit: I could see them being hauled by a couple of late generation steam or early geep. Maybe one of the Bangor and Arrotook from the olde days of the Grandure Valley.
Pre-production samples were show at the Springfield MA train show earlier this year and some attendees posted photos. The official announcement was made just this month. You can sign up to receive, via e-mail, the monthly (so-called "insider") new product announcements from Atlas.
The Northwestern cars on which the coach and combine are based are actually sixty feet. One or two of them still exist. They were offshoots of wood open platform cars that Northwestern ran on Chicago locals (one or two of those might still exist). To read what someone (and someone who would know) posted on another forum about these things, the observation is a shortened version of a CNJ car, all three of which still exist. What is curious is that the shortened version has the same eighteen windows as does the prototype. From the photographs, it appears that the prototype was not eighty, or so, feet, but as I have not been able to find dimensional drawings of the Blue Comet cars, I do not know how long the prototypes really were. The coaches and combines are paired window, but the observation is single window, as CNJ ran single window equipment. For those of you who model roads that ran single window equipment, the observation presents all sorts of bashing possibilities, such as butting the two vestibule ends together. There is also the possibility of butting the two platform ends together to make a Lackawanna Boonton coach (somebody actually did that with B-mann cars a few years back). For you CNJ modellers, a shop called Tom's Trains sells decal sheets for CNJ coaches and club cars in both the Roman and Gothic lettering. There is also a set for the NJDOT era, but I did not buy those as it is out of my era. There are car names on the Roman set, but none of them match the three Blue Comet car names. On the Gothic set, there are three number sets that match the car numbers of the Blue Comet cars, which leads me to suspect that CNJ painted those cars Pullman green and lettered them with the Gothic font and used them to haul passengers until one went to M of W service, one became an instruction car (or some use such as that) and the last one became NJDOT(?) #1. Sadly, Tom's Trains does not have lettering for CNJ head end cars in N scale. He sells these things through his FeePay store, The steps on the Atlas are much better done than on the B-mann cars. There are diaphragms, as well. Pretty good detailing for what is supposed to be a Trainman product.
The CNJ prototypes are 72' 6" long so shortening them to the desired 60' length wouldn't have been that difficult to do... And there were four CNJ observation cars, not three... CNJ 1169 Tempel, CNJ 1170 Tuttle, CNJ 1178 Di Vico and CNJ 1179 Biela/Monmouth.
Interesting...just recently sold off all of my MTL Santa Fe passenger collection (8 cars) to make way for the recent KATO El Capitan 10 car set. I'm like some others have 3 passenger sets already on a garage size layout. Nice looking detail.
That answers that question. Just from looking at various photographs, it appears that the CNJ coaches and combines were also close to seventy feet. Further, it would lead me to suspect that you could cut up two cars, butt together the vestibule ends and get close to the seventy foot, eighteen single window CNJ coaches. I have posted my thoughts on the combine. The CNJ combines have fourteen windows. I never read anywhere about Tuttle, but I did read about the other three. Further, I was not aware that Biela became Monmouth. The Roman set that Tom's Trains sells has the Monmouth car name, but not Biela (nor Tempel, Di Vico or Biela, for that matter). The Lackawanna Boonton cars are about seventy feet, as well, and have twenty windows. It would not be hard to get close to those by cutting up two of the observations.
Seems like the best thing is the 60' RPO with the more realistic window arrangement than the MTL 60' RPO.
Info on this site would indicate that CNJ 1170 Tuttle was a coach: http://njrails.tripod.com/20th_Century/CNJ/The_Blue_Comet.htm However, the following site suggests that CNJ 1170 Tuttle is an observation car. The page http://passcarphotos.info/Indices/CNJ.htm has a link to this photo from 1976, supposedly of the 1170: http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?march09/03-07-09/cnj1170_wb@plainfield_nj_06-1976.jpg However, did CNJ still have more than one observation car - besides the 1178, "Di Vico" - in the 1970s? http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=823201
Santa Fe had about two dozen shorty observation cars assigned to division superintendents around the system. Windows are different, but length is right. Growing up I used to see one of them in the LA area. Here's a link to the one preserved in Arizona: http://www.azrymuseum.org/Projects/405/3-2011_Pics/0110.jpg
I suspect that you mean "more common" because the MT model is very realistic... just not the design a lot of roads kept in service. Up to pretty much when N.J.D.O.T. started operating trains. The few remaining parlor or lounge cars were subscription only cars, you had to pay extra to ride in them, but the demand was way down from what it use to be. Here is CNJ 1170 in 1976... http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?march09/03-07-09/cnj1170_wb@plainfield_nj_06-1976.jpg Some commuters were riding in style, what with former FEC Saint Lucie Sound being in use... definitely a cut above the others... https://www.flickr.com/photos/mbernero/30907879845 http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/cnj_jcc0.jpg Now if only someone would do a model of the Jersey Coast Club... now it was really class!!!