We need to see som L&N and Erie Cabooses in HO Scale.
I'll take a couple.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on that; especially Erie. I have tried for years to find a plastic version of the Erie class N3A caboose. About 20 years ago, Overland Models had a brass one available - - for $160 to $180! Needless to say, I didn't take them up on that.
BRAKIE OT Dean As mentioned above, model manufacturers often bring out paint schemes that must've come to them in a dream and back in the Blue Box Era, the plastered various road names on Santa Fe steel cabooses at random. Deano,I think that was because they needed a caboose to go with their locomotive road names and presto a SF or SP caboose style became good enough for filling that need. I still chuckle over a PRR sidebay or a Santa Fe type caboose lettered for C&O.
OT Dean As mentioned above, model manufacturers often bring out paint schemes that must've come to them in a dream and back in the Blue Box Era, the plastered various road names on Santa Fe steel cabooses at random.
Deano,I think that was because they needed a caboose to go with their locomotive road names and presto a SF or SP caboose style became good enough for filling that need.
I still chuckle over a PRR sidebay or a Santa Fe type caboose lettered for C&O.
Hey, I still have one of those Blue Box Santa Fe type cabooses lettered for C & O! I believe it is one day either going to be used as a de-throned maintenance shed on my layout or it is headed for the silent auction at the fall meet that my round-robin group puts on in September.
olson185 I came across this: Milwaukee Road -Silver No. 1256 -Kit No. 2256 -Ready To Run http://www.ho-scaletrains.net/athearn-rollingstock-resource/id206.html
I came across this:
That looks like an early version of the Athearn ATSF caboose, which has been painted for umpteen other paint schemes. They've probably gotten nearly as much mileage out of those molds as they have the Globe F7!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
OT DeanAs mentioned above, model manufacturers often bring out paint schemes that must've come to them in a dream and back in the Blue Box Era, the plastered various road names on Santa Fe steel cabooses at random.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Pure fantasy. As mentioned above, model manufacturers often bring out paint schemes that must've come to them in a dream, and back in the Blue Box Era, they plastered various road names on Santa Fe steel cabooses at random. I was born and raised so close to the MILW that during the steam days, cinders rained down from passing trains. How my mother ever got our laundry clean is just short of a miracle!
The MILW used 8-wheel wood cabeese with offset cupolas and bobbers, built in the West Milwaukee Shops, augmented by hacks from roads they'd absorbed, right up until they started bulding the familiar ribbed-side bay window jobs. As someone said, they frequently added bay windows to old wood cabooses--and I faintly recall seeing one with both bay windows and cupola, but that might be my imagination at work. My brother worked in the yard as a switchman at "Five Rings," where Jim Scribbins put in his time, and he was a model railroader, so he hauled me into the Muskego Yard's margins quite a lot. The earlier 8-wheelers with cupolas were mostly boxcar red in the '50s--and I remember seeing some of the long ones with either swaybacks or humpbacks.
If you're going to model the MILW, I highly recommend joining the Milwaukee Road Historical Association, as I did back in the '90s when I started modeling equipment for the (fantasy) Mineral Point RR/MP&N in O scale. The MRHA publishes great slick paper quarterly magazines and books. Joining these historical organizations is a good way to get a good feel for railroading through the decades. (I also belonged to the C&NW and Burlington groups and was never sorry for it.)
Happy Railroading!
Deano
And they were in the diesel era. The Burlington wood cabooses in the steam era were painted 'oxide'...
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
And yet, the Burlington managed to field a whole bunch of "silver" cabeese for quite a long time.
Ed
The Milwaukee rebuilt some older wood cupola caboose to a bay window configuration for transfer service. They were painted in an aluminum scheme with the idea that they would be 'reflective' at night. All that resulted as a paint job that attracted coal smoke soot and got very dirty looking. They were repainted into the standard orange scheme.
Several models of various manufacture have be produced in the aluminum scheme - All wrong...
dknelson Walthers has offered authentic HO Milwaukee Road bay window cabooses in a variety of paint schemes.
Walthers has offered authentic HO Milwaukee Road bay window cabooses in a variety of paint schemes.
The closest the Milwaukee Road came to a classic "Athearn style" caboose (an AT&SF prototype) was its steel drover's cabooses. Those were in fact the first steel cabooses on the Milwaukee Road. They had the offset cupola of the Athearn type caboose, so the general outline is not all that far off, but the window arrangement on the sides differed, and the windows were large, almost like a passenger car (because in a sense that is what they were). Originally painted boxcar red, in the late 1930s they were painted silver/aluminum with black lettering, numbers and grab irons. There was a large C. M. St. P.& P. herald on both sides below the cupola.
Alas the silvery aluminum faded to gray so at some point they were repainted orange. And once stock movements ceased on the Milwaukee Road the cars were released to general service -- I photographed one (painted orange) on the back end of a train heading west out of Milwaukee in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
When they were painted silvery aluminum they were virtually exclusively seen on the west coast which is perhaps where Irv Athearn saw them.
So to answer your question, the paint scheme is kind of authentic -- perhaps more than the plastic car shell itself -- but only for a fairly brief period of time.
My source for this information is Milwaukee Road's Steel Cabooses by Jeff Kehoe, a soft cover book published by the Milwaukee Road Historical Society. If information of this kind is important to you, I strongly recommend joining the Society.
Walthers has offered authentic HO Milwaukee Road bay window cabooses in a variety of paint schemes. They have also been released in brass. Fox Valley Models has authentic Milwaukee Road bay window cabooses in N scale. At one time they also had authentic transfer cabooses that some hobby shops might still have.
Dave Nelson
The only silver Milwaukee caboose I found is a Minitrix N scale model. The shell appears to be a redused copy of the Athearn cupola caboose. I am sure it is not based on a Milwaukee prototype.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
I went through rrpicturearchives, and got the same result.
If ya want a Milwaukee caboose, you probably ought to suck it up and get brass. I see 4 on Brasstrains for about $200.
I wanted a WP bay window woody, and I bought a brass one. I assure you, I'm happy with my purchase.
Looks like you have to sign up for RailCarPhotos in order to view anything. I know it's free, but you can't see anything until you sign up/register. Same way with their site on locomotive pictures.
Mike.
My You Tube
Probably modelers license and here is why.
Athearn's blue box based cabooses are both based on specific prototypes AFAIK:
- Athearn off-set cupola caboose is based on an Santa Fe steel caboose; most other paint jobs are fantasy schemes unless they are of a RR that happened to copy the Santa Fe caboose type; I am not aware of any but I'm not a walking caboose encyclopedia.
- Athearn wide vision caboose is based on International Car Company caboose built onto box car frames on the Rock Island RR. Technically they are only accurate for those home-built wide-vision cabooses AFAIK.
- Athearn bay window caboose is based on the Southern Pacific CA-40-x class; AFAIK, they only represent those.
I did a quick search of MILW caboose at RailCarPhoto's and all of those shown were bay window types - most have horizontal ribs - I'm not sure what the best source of MILW cabooses are in plastic.
http://www.railcarphotos.com/Search.php
all the photos i've seen are orange or orange and yellow. the athearn book lists the silver ones as OP3 or OP4 making them as early units.
That's a new one on me. Orange and yellow are all I've seen. I don't think I've seen a model of MILW caboose in silver, this is an Athearn? I'm not a MILW expert, only going by what I've seen.
Hello all. I aquired an older Athearn Milwaukee Road caboose in a silver with black lettering paint scheme. Is this prototypical or were these released based on modeler's license only? Thanks and Happy St Patrick's Day!
Modeling the Chicago Great Western and Milwaukee Road along Minnesota's Cannon River Valley.