Haha, well I’m not sure it deserves its own post
@Sokramiketes , but here’s the details of the train I brought. After sifting through Kevin Holland’s “Nickel Plate Road Passenger Service the Post War Year,” I’ve found out that what I grabbed was more of the Nickel Plate Limited rather than the City of Cleveland. But either way, it was a pretty easy consist to put together. Also, this is probably from the 1948 to early 50s version.
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The power is two Life-Like ALCO PAs that have Kato Shells and TCS M1 decoders. The shells are custom painted with grab irons installed. The painting was a bit of a pain. Charts from the NKPHTS and Tamiya painting tape helped a lot.
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The boxcar is a Micro-Trains weathered with Tamiya paints. It had constant problems with tracking, so I’ve added a few more weights and I haven’t had an incident with it. The DL&W baggage car is from Wheels of Time. This is one of the things that dates the train into the late 40s, as by the early 50s most of their express equipment was in the crème and maroon scheme.
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Here’s the heavyweights, both are Micro-Trains. The baggage car is your stock version with Microscale decals and has been grimed up. The second is a single window coach that was offered as an undecorated model with a decal sheet from the NKPHTS. I really liked the decals furnished by the society, as they’re more in scale and fit the car perfectly.
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These two are the Centralia Shops 52-seat Pullman Standard coaches.
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Perhaps the hardest thing about modeling a NKP passenger train in N scale is the diner lounge. Most of them by this time had been rebuilt in their shops with ballon roofs and smooth outer paneling. I did find one loophole in all of this which was car 127. It was the only one not rebuilt and served as backup if others were in the shop. Surprisingly it still exists today, in this scheme, at the Mad River & NKP museum in Bellevue, Ohio.
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Last of all are the sleeping cars. The first is a Centralia Shops 18 Roomette and Micro-Trains 12-1 bringing up the markers. The roomette is a royal pain to find, and took me nearly four years of eBay alerts until I could get one. It’s a car that makes this train the Nickel Plate Limited rather than the City of Cleveland. The 12-1 is named the White Castle, it’s not in the same configuration as the real McCoy at the Age of Steam museum, but I wanted to honor some friends that worked on the Ohio Central steam program.
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The cars that really would make this consist the City of Cleveland would be these Rowa ones. The Pullman10-6 is a dead ringer for the city series the NKP had, and can be transformed with little work. The City of Cleveland was one of two Sleeper-Buffet-Lounge cars the road had. This one came from a Rowa blunt end observation. Two of the windows in the lounge areas were covered up and a regular car end swapped out the observation side. Union Station products makes these car sides now with proper window spacing, so this one may be retired in the future.
I should note that all custom paint used Tru-Color NKP Blue, their Silver for stainless steel, Pullman green on the White Castle, and Tamiya white on the diner. All decals unless noted, are from Microscale.
