Question Re Kato & Intermountain's C&NW smoothside cars

[skytop35]

Re the dining car, Jim Scribbins writes this in his "The 400 Story" (p 107) - In the summer of 1956, an ex-City ACF diner ran in the Dakota 400, along with a tavern-lunch counter car. From then on, either those diners or ACF ex-City cafe-lounges were operated on the Dakota in preference to the 400-type cars. By fall of 1957, the ex-transcontinental diners were newly painted in C&NW yellow and green, but Union Pacific "Streamliner" livery remained at least until summer 1958 on the cafe-lounges.

Does that not imply that the Kato scheme is correct for the dining car (at least as of 1957)?

Thanks,
-Mark

I'm going to disagree with Mr Scribbins here and prove my point with a photo from his own book. Look at page 118 which has a photo of the Dakota 400 in July 1959. He states the last car is a ACF built ex-City Diner-Lounge. Look closer and you will notice it is actually one of the transcontinental diners. The three small forward windows are evenly spaced and the last window is small which indicates a diner. These features were different on the diner-lounge cars. The diner is still in the UP paint at this time.

Here's another photo showing the UP paint on a diner. This time the date is January 1960.


I have also seen the diners in the C&NW simplified scheme. I can't prove the diners were painted in the earlier C&NW scheme without a photo but I think I have proved it may have been possible. However Kato should have gone with the later simple scheme as a sure bet!

[altohorn25]

Sorry Nate, I located a few photos showing various combos of lettering on the E8's. Here's just one. The lettering is definitely dark. As I understand it, at first they changed from the silver lettering to black and then later to green lettering.

My mistake Bill and all.  I had looked through all my books (including the Scribbins book) before posting and your photo is the first I have seen with the green lettering and the Electro-Motive designed nose wing.  Sorry for the confusion.  That's what I get for posting when I think I know the answer to something.  I will go back to my trolling of everyone else's posts now......   

Nate

[mcjaco]

The Velvet Hammer has spoken!

[Sokramiketes]

Mike, I hate to disagree with you but some of the C&NW "Cities" cars were painted in the earlier C&NW scheme with black stripe. Scribbins "400 Story" p.107 has a photo of car #8227, a RPO/Storage car with 30 foot RPO section in the early paint. I modeled this car for my Dakota 400. Also the C&NW color guide p.19 has club-lounge #7900 in the early scheme and dated October 11, 1962. I have also seen a photo of one of the sleepers from "Cities" train service in the early scheme as well.

So, it's hard to tell how many cars received the earlier paint before they switched to the later simple scheme but clearly at least some did.

Well excellent.  Guess I'll have to reevaluate my purchase of a set.  So does anyone have an actual date on the simplified green/yellow then?  When did the shops start?

[skytop35]

Mike,

As far as I can tell, the simplified scheme started at the time the C&NW started upgrading the coaches to the 800 series. About 1959 if I recall correctly but I'd like to hear from anybody with a clearer explanation or date.

[spookshow]

Was 8227 a former "city" car?

Thanks,
-Mark

[skytop35]

Was 8227 a former "city" car?

Thanks,
-Mark

Yes.

[lashedup]

So here we see a few of the most knowledgable passenger car people I know trying to sort out prototypes, paint schemes and dates and there seems to be a crazy number of variables. I'm starting to understand what a PITA it can be for manufacturers to sort this out. Any given manufacturer might as well start saying, "Well we modeled this set based on XYZ specific date during XYZ specific year with XYZ specific equipment. Then we looked at a sh!t load of photos, books and more and found pictures that we think might have matched the set on that specific date and year. At least until someone on an Internet forum finds that one photo that shows otherwise of course..."

Kato still took the easy way out on these new sets rather than tool some new pieces.

 

<edited because typing on an iPad still sucks>

[spookshow]

Yeah, I think Kato's decision to include a dome-obs pretty much pinned down their attitude towards these new sets right from the get-go (not intended for the proto fidelity crowd). But oh well, I'm happy enough with the RPO and the diner as they are. And like I said, if the stripes and lettering ever start to annoy me, I can always just fix them myself.

The good news in all of this historical chaos is that there's virtually no way to categorically prove that certain paint schemes (or combinations of cars) didn't run together at one time or another. You simply can't "prove" a negative 

Cheers,
-Mark

[mplsjct]

Still would've loved to have had Kato style quality, accurate Northwestern passenger cars, a couple is better than none I guess.

[lashedup]

Especially since it has been quite a while since we've seen an all-new passenger set out of Kato.

Last rumors were Milwaukee Road Olympian Hiawatha with Little Joe's and UP Heritage set with FEF 4-8-4. So far nothing though...

I'd like to see North Coast Limited myself. That's why I'm working on trying to piece that together so Kato will make it right about the time I get it done. 

[CBQ Fan]

They are selling fast so that must mean something.  It also shows they don't plan on doing a full set of cars in any of the upcoming or recent road names.

[mcjaco]

Don't forget about the Silver Streak set, Jamie  They threw that one in there, but yes, otherwise it's been very quiet.

[arbomambo]

is the E8 an accurate paint scheme?...any particular year?...and is it accurate for the shell that Kato used? (e.g.-the older ATSF Kato E8 is beautiful-correct pilot and headlight arrangement for the ATSF E8ms...but has dynamic brakes whereas the ATSF rebuilt E8ms did not)
~Bruce

[jmlaboda]

One of the former City dining cars, 6958, got green by 1963.  Here is a video that was shared on the Fuzzyworld 3 forum showing it on the Flambeau 400... no sleeper but an otherwise really nice looking train... interesting rocking at the station stop around 2:40 minutes and again at 3:40 minutes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLG1y_S5KAc