Western Maryland Baggage Cars

[coachayers]

I need some help from WM fans. I just picked up a older Bethlehem Car Works kit for a WM Class BA baggage car, kit #530. The car has two sizes of door openings, one single and one double sized on each side. On most cars I have seen, the car sides are mirror images of each other so the large doors are back to back, and same for the smaller doors. The sides in the kit are identical, which would put one double door and one single door back to back on each end. Is this correct for WM? I have seen cars where the doors did not match back to back, but they seem to be rather rare.

Thanks,

Bob

[Mark300]

Bob,

If they have 2 doors, per side, you would be right, they would be back to back; singles at the end and double doors in the middle. Check out pages 257, 258 259 & 260 of Cook & Zimmerman's 'Fireballs & Black Diamonds.'

The WM did have some single door combines they used in WVa; see pages 264, 265 as well as 268 (in Westminster) in the above book.

By the way; It's neat (though doubtful) if you can hang 'end of train lanterns' on the car as the WM didn't always put the baggage cars behind the engines (like the NYC, B&O etc) and instead kept the cars as a group and ran the consist back and forth. On west bound runs the baggage cars would be at the end of the train. Since the WM ran to connecting points with other railroads, it was more efficient not to change the direction of the cars. Most photos of WM passenger trains, show the baggage car at the east (or Baltimore) end of the train.

Good luck with your model!

HTH (Hope This Helps)

Mark