NKP Micro-Trains Mail-Baggage car from NKPHTS

[jdcolombo]

Hi everyone.

The Nickel Plate Road Historical and Technical Society is offering a painted, unlettered Micro-Trains mail/baggage car with a custom decal set for the Nickel Plate Road.

$24.95, from our Company Store, here:

https://nkphts-shop.myshopify.com/collections/models/products/n-scale-nickel-plate-baggage-rpo-headend-car

Quantities are VERY limited (especially after I get mine  )

John C.

[Cajonpassfan]

Cool idea, for a historical society to offer a model like this, in N scale no less, with custom decals.
Thanks for sharing,
Otto

[Point353]

[thomasjmdavis]

I think it's great when historical societies offer models or decals.  I don't model NKP, but this is tempting- I wonder if I can find an excuse...
Hopefully, some other societies will see this and offer similar models.

While I am very thankful for the societies that do offer decals, it is surprising to me how few do.  Of course, the largest roads are readily available (even passenger cars) from Microscale.  And several others are available from other decal manufacturers.  But it is surprising how many roads are not readily available.  One easy way to expand the number of modelers interested in your road is to produce decals and kits.  Or projects like this one, that combine an unlettered model with decals to produce a model of the road's equipment.

[jdcolombo]

The problem we constantly run into is that for a truly custom car, the manufacturers want you to commit to very high run numbers.  I think MT wants 200 cars or something like that.  We just can't afford that kind of commitment, and I'll bet most historical societies can't either.

But the painted/undec with custom decals . . . now THAT we can do, because we don't have to commit to a crazy minimum run, and decals are doable at reasonable cost.  And there are plenty of those opportunities - Atlas runs undecs as well as MT.  As the new (-ish) Director of Modeling Services at the NKPHTS, I'm looking into doing more of this.  This MT car is a sort of "toe in the water."  If we're successful with this one, then we'll try putting a whole foot in

John C.

[thomasjmdavis]

John C,
I put in an order for one.  I am not sure what an NKP baggage-mail will do on my layout, but maybe I can come up with a "plausible" excuse to have it move around once in a while.
I think you all did a GREAT job with this.  Allows the NKP modelers out there to have a car for the same price as a common MT release with just a bit of time to do the decal work- but with the decals supplied. I did one in Erie essentially the same way (an undec and decals), but had to find and purchase the decals.  And kudos for doing this in N scale.  I hope it really pays off and you have the opportunity to do more cars. 

Also a cheer for Micro-trains.  Obviously they are making the basic cars available at a reasonable "wholesale" price to the society.  I really do hope other historical societies take on similar projects.

I'll drop a note on N Scale Varnish.

Tom D.

[Maletrain]

I don't think that RPO cars traveled very far from their home roads.  But, full baggage cars were a different story.  You could potentially see one from many different railroads occasionally a mail/express or even a passenger train in the transition era and earlier.  So, those seem like good candidates for historical societies to get sales far and wide.  And, of course, box cars and other freight cars traveled all over the place.  The ones that are very road-specific would make good special runs for just about everybody who models the era.

[btrain]

Very nice, John! I’m glad that you’re in charge of modeling services for the society, N scale will get some much deserved attention.
The custom decal route is a very smart choice for the niche that NKP N scale modelers are in, but I have to admit in the short time I’ve exhibited my layout. There does seem to be a fair number of us out there. I did something similar to this with Microscale decals this past summer. But the NKP script was a bit too crowded in the space above the windows, so I’ll have to order one of these to outfit my trains!
Are you thinking of white decals for the blue highway trailers for your next offering?

[jdcolombo]

Very nice, John! I’m glad that you’re in charge of modeling services for the society, N scale will get some much deserved attention.
The custom decal route is a very smart choice for the niche that NKP N scale modelers are in, but I have to admit in the short time I’ve exhibited my layout. There does seem to be a fair number of us out there. I did something similar to this with Microscale decals this past summer. But the NKP script was a bit too crowded in the space above the windows, so I’ll have to order one of these to outfit my trains!
Are you thinking of white decals for the blue highway trailers for your next offering?

The Microscale decal set has the Nickel Plate Road logo lettering in the wrong size.  That's one of the reasons we did custom decals for this car.  The letterboard "Nickel Plate Road" was 5" lettering; the MS set is more like 7".  They have the streamlined car lettering the wrong size, too, and there are other problems with that set, like a lack of blue numbers for the numberboards on streamlined cars.

One of the things I'd like to do is get more CORRECT decal sets for various cars in multiple scales.  But that's going to take a while.

Meanwhile, we're almost sold out of these cars (we might actually BE sold out as I write this).  I'm trying to see if we can acquire a few more.  I really had no idea how many to order - we've never done an N-scale offering before, and I didn't know what the demand would be, although I suspected there are more NKP N-scale modelers out there than people on the NKPHTS Board thought.  I'm looking for another N-scale project - I'd love to do a Freuhauf trailer, but it requires us to be able to find the appropriate model, get decals done, etc.  If Micro Trains ever releases their single-window coach, which has been promised for two years now, that will definitely be on our list - it is a pretty good substitute for an NKP 60 or 90-series heavyweight coach. There may be a way to do custom painting of an undec freight car and keep the price reasonable, but we're still looking into possibilities - and the manufacturers often are either sold out of undecs or don't run them at all.

This stuff isn't as easy as it looks!   

John C.

[wazzou]

I'm on the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association's Modeling Committee.
We are constantly offering models and decals for sale.
Admittedly less so in N Scale but still a fair amount.
I would say early Fall just about the time of our annual convention is when the most offerings are made available.
These usually debut at the Convention and are then offered from our Company Store.
You can find a link in my signature.

[thomasjmdavis]

I don't think that RPO cars traveled very far from their home roads.  But, full baggage cars were a different story.  You could potentially see one from many different railroads occasionally a mail/express or even a passenger train in the transition era and earlier.  So, those seem like good candidates for historical societies to get sales far and wide.  And, of course, box cars and other freight cars traveled all over the place.  The ones that are very road-specific would make good special runs for just about everybody who models the era.

I agree that a baggage car would be more "interchange-able" (I have several NYC, PRR and others for just this purpose).  By all means, bring on more baggage cars. 

However, even for the mail-baggage, there are possibilities.  For instance, in 1964 N&W took over both NKP and Wabash, and there was a period of time before equipment was all repainted for N&W (and I would bet older head end equipment was last on the repaint list).  So it would certainly be in the realm of possibility for NKP head end to be mixed with Wabash and N&W on trains of any of the 3 roads.  And in the 40s or 50s, it would be plausible (not saying it actually happened) for Wabash or Erie to lease NKP equipment, or for an NKP car to be pooled with DL&W as they partnered on some trains NYC-Chicago via Buffalo.  After all, C&EI RPOs ended up in Atlanta, L&N RPOs went to Chicago (sometimes) and AT&SF RPOs did a lease stint on the New Haven (IIRC) in the 1960s.

And again, I don't know if this applied to NKP, but in the 1950s and 60s, many roads "converted" mail-baggage cars to baggage-express cars.  In some cases, these were completely rebuilt, but in other cases, all they did was remove the mail equipment and the partition between the mail and baggage sections, even the window glass left in place.

[thomasjmdavis]

Bryan- you have some nice N scale depots showing on the site at the moment. (buildings are another good choice for historical/modeling societies that want to promote modeling of their road).

John C.- I got a confirmation of my order earlier.  So hope you aren't quite sold out.

[wcfn100]

I don't think that RPO cars traveled very far from their home roads.

On the joint CB&Q/RI Zephyr Rocket, between Minneapolis and St. Louis, the RPO wasn't even allowed to make the full run.  In Burlington IA, the RPO car would be swapped out.  The northbound mail would be unloaded from the CB&Q RPO and loaded into a RI RPO and vice versa going south.

Jason

[wazzou]

Bryan- you have some nice N scale depots showing on the site at the moment.

Thank you.
Not coincidentally, all of the N Scale structures on the site were built by me during the course of writing instructions for them.
I also constructed the master for the N Scale Signal Maintainers Oil House.
I do believe we plan to offer some more decals in N Scale other than the Freight Locomotive set currently offered.
We have them done by Cartograph which I think is widely held as the preeminent decal manufacturer in Scale Modeling.

[jdcolombo]

Bryan- you have some nice N scale depots showing on the site at the moment. (buildings are another good choice for historical/modeling societies that want to promote modeling of their road).

John C.- I got a confirmation of my order earlier.  So hope you aren't quite sold out.

If you got a confirmation, you’re good to go.  Our software keeps track of inventory and won’t process an order if we are sold out. 

John C.