Turn of the Century Varnish

[Specter3]

I was born in NY and finished high school in Hopewell Junction NY which as the name suggests was a railroad town. My mom and brother still live there and I visit for an extended period yearly. As I have gotten older the modeling interests have swung from 70s Southern Railway(still my main focus) to this early 1900s Northeast flavor. Hopewell was initially a spot on the Newburg, Dutchess and Connecticut railroad in the 1870s with an eastern connection with the New England Central coming to Hopewell in the 1880s. The Dutchess COunty Railroad linked Hopewell and the CNE to the Poughkeepsie railroad bridge in 1892. The Pittsburgh and Reading took over the NEC and the Dutchess County RR and controlled the bridge. JP Morgan who controlled the New Haven at the time realized this new large railroad immediately to his west that controlled a strategic crossing of the Hudson river was a serious competitor froze the P&R out of New England by the usual tactics of the day, subterfuge, espionage, corruption, and outright force. When the P&R folks realized they had been aced out they sold out to the NH. The CNE ostensibly ran as an independent RR until 1907 or so when it was just absorbed into the NH.

The above is what I have learned in the just the last few years about the area that I consider my hometown and there is much more that I dont know. The research side has been amazingly satisfying but I still like to model. I have modules that follow NTrak standards and am building a junction module that will have a single track takeoff that will allow joining FreemoN style modules to my club's NTrak layout. The largest difference being the height of the freemon style single track modules. I have a large module that is the remains of switching layout I built many years ago that since this new interest has cropped up I have decided to place time wise in the 1920s or so. In fact the more comfortable I become scratch building rolling stock, the more likely that the date will creep back into the teens. The model does not represent any particular place but I want it to definitely have that early 1900s New York flavor. So Central New England/New Haven junctioning with a much smaller ND&C is the overall flavor I am looking for. But to get that time period's flavor you need 70 ft passenger equipment in both wood and steel, 36 ft and shorter freight cars, and lots of early steam with large drivers.(the NE roads likes larger drivers than what is commercially available) So that is where I am headed.

[Specter3]

Here is a car with rivets but long with an open end.



Here is a good shot showing end detail

[jmlaboda]

"Here is a car with rivets but long with an open end. "

Yep... that's one of Lackawanna's Boonton cars.  They came in coach, baggage - coach and mail - coach flavors (the mail - coaches rebuilt to baggage - coaches later on).

[Iain]

http://rr-fallenflags.org/acfx/ns-s265asw.jpg
Norfolk Southern's entire passenger fleet at the end was wood cars.  Most of them looked like the one in the linked photo above.

[Puddington]

The Canadian Pacific ran "turn of the century" wooden truss rod cars into the early 60's and one series of cars into the 70's...

60' baggage express... ran into the early 1960's in revenue service



Combine baggage-express/passenger - run on numerous branchlines until the end of steam in 1960....



The CPR used Horse Express cars built in 1919 until the mid 1970's..... !



A Crossen Car (Cobourg, Ontario 1909) was used by CP Teelcommunications to check lines into the 1960's.... Wood and truss rods !



I'd like a selection of wooden truss rod cars if for no other reason than to have a source of base models for kitbashing.....

[R L Smith]

"I would like to end up with some models that would represent these kind of scenes:(all these pics are from the out of print 3 part book on New England railroading that costs a fortune)"

What a small world.  I was on vacation this past week, and on our way home today we stumbled upon a small hobby shop in Canaan CT.  Amazing enough that it was open at 10:00 AM on a Sunday, but even more amazing is the above-mentioned 3 volume set was there for sale too.  Indeed, the set does cost a fortune and I am glad the CNE is not a primary interest of mine.  My girlfriend is even more glad...

 

Ron

[Specter3]

I hacked into some Bachmann Overton cars and continued to work the ends of the riveted coaches. For these I am not working toward a specific prototype(not yet anyway) but more working on my kitbashing skills with the hope that I can improve a bit while making some foob background cars. If this is successful enough I will hack into some Overland cars when I get the chance.









The ends and platforms in these pics came from the cut up overton cars. I know the ends are wood on a steel car but I am thinking about how I am going to address that. The platform seems to look right based on pictures from earlier in the thread. I really need to figure out how to make a reasonable door in a new styrene end piece. As a picture earlier shows windows are not necessary. My thought is a commercial door from say Grandt line and a cut piece of styrene. New skills are definitely necessary here.

[jmlaboda]

"Here is a car with rivets but long with an open end."

The Lackawanna's [i[Boonton[/i] cars were not the only steel cars with open-platform ends... both the Burlington and the Chicago & Northwestern also had this sort of design employed in commuter service.  While not noticeable at first glance, the platforms were slightly wider than on a typical steel car from the same era to facilitate passengers disembarking and boarding more quickly, so as to not delay the train.  These cars were unique in that htey were built with complete steel frames visas the earlier cars that were resheathed with steel siding, which often received only a steel center sill and platforms along with bolsters, which still required that the truss rods to be used to keep the car's carbody straight.

[mcjaco]

Really excellent stuff.  This has got me thinking about bashing some of these to make some Barney and Smith cars with MT heavyweights used as well.

[nkalanaga]

Absnut:  What did they haul in that car with four trucks?  Fat-cat bankers and their gold bullion?

[Specter3]

Continuing to plug away on these. This is my first major kitbash attempt. And blown up this spliced coach looks like crud. i got some putty and will fill the gaps. then a coat of primer and we will see.







sanded the rivets off the bachmann cars.

[sd45elect2000]

Wooden baggage and express cars seemed like they never went away. Of course they were rebuilt many times over the years to "modernize" them. WW2 was a sort of renaissance for wooden cars, a splinter fleet perhaps.

 I also want some nice wooden truss rod baggage/RPO cars. I'm a little irritated by the fact that most if not all of the N scale RPO cars to date have been full RPOs. The cars with smaller RPO sections were more common, I'd like to see cars with 15' or 30' RPO sections perhaps steel but prefer wooden cars. I am also at a loss to find nice truss rods. I have some etched brass truss rods from Fine N scale but they are made for flatcars and short freight cars, obviously too short for a long passenger car.
My next experiment will be with monofilament line .. I just can't find scale turnbuckles and queen posts. Maybe some HO scale turnbuckles would be good enough ??

Randy

[Specter3]

What do you do with the other Overton cars in the sets? Hmmm....Frankenparlor baggage....

This is a rough mash up but it measures 70 ft and I will pull an Ed's law and say it was a shortline car, say from the Newburgh Dutchess and Connecticut that was absorbed into the CNE and then the NH and is still used on a branchline somewhere...yeah, thats the story...







Got roof and all ends on the former riveted cars. Going to get the steps and walkways on and figure out a coupler solution.



Idea is to lightly scribe the lower panel to give the idea of it still being wood. Will it happen? Yes. Will it turn out? Who knows, never tried it before.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

From the photos, it looks like the cars aren't being re-assembled completely lined up, like there's a "hump". If they're not all sealed up, you might want to try reassembling them on a flat surface.

I'm concerned that that's going to look strange when the vertical boards adapt look like //////|\\\\\\.

Then again, it might just be the camera angle.

[Baronjutter]

I'm really surprised with this era being so popular the manufacturers don't make these sorts of coaches.