The steel car era started at Pullman in 1907, with the construction of the "Jamestown," and mass steel car construction started in 1910. Now, most commercially available models that I have seen of Pullman-built cars reflect the look of the equipment from the 1920s onward, but in outward appearance, the very first steel Pullmans were distinctive and interesting. Commercial models of them in as-built configuration are also almost completely unknown.
From 1910 to 1916, Pullman cars- sleepers and parlors, but also business cars- looked much more like their wood predecessors than later steel cars. It may sound strange, but the first steel cars were designed to look as if they were wood. The sides were covered with a specially designed interlocking steel sheathing that was clearly meant to resembled the wood sheathing on later-model wood cars. The windows retained the transoms. Save for the lines of rivets and some generally larger and thicker members, these cars were often hard to distinguish from their wooden predecessors, and only a few survive in anything close to their original condition (WM 203 at the RR Museum of PA is one of the few I have come across.
Using techniques outlined years ago in MR by the late W. Gibson Kennedy, I am building a car that combines some aspects of both WM 203 and the Southern Pacific's "Guadelupe." Pictures will follow in the next message.....
http://mprailway.blogspot.com
"The first transition era - wood to steel!"
Proof, side blanks, and car floor, painted "B" end at right, A end and obs platform visible to the right of the car floor.
Closeup of the roof and side blank. The rooftop wiring is the main electrical conduit and branches, installed on the exterior of the car body at this time. The rivets are Micro-Mark rivet decals, applied after the side blanks got a coat of sanding sealer, followed by a coat of gloss.
Looks interesting, but I'm wondering why you opted for constructing with composite (wood and plastic) materials rather than all-wood or all plastic - the latter would have been my choice.Do you have any in-progress photos of the roof construction? That's certainly a more complex construction than I'd attempt.I look forward to following your progress, as I hope to build a couple of wood passenger cars when I get a bunch of other projects out of the way - using all-styrene construction, of course.
Wayne
MidlandPacific:
Neat project!
I have a couple of LaBelle kits that will require shaping of the ends of the roofs. Helps to see your example.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
The white substance isn't styrene- it's Strathmore art paper. Used it where I needed something finer than wood.
Very impressive and precise workmanship. I have some recollection of reading that before Pullman cars became "Pullman green" they were painted a gloss brown which some maintain is rather like the brown of UPS trucks. But I do not know if that brown color survived into the steel car era.
Dave Nelson
No, it ended right at the turn of the century, and a dark Brunswick Green replaced it- what we typically call "Pullman Green." This car will eventually be dark green, with a graphite/aluminum colored roof, since I am trying to capture a lightly modernized look- you may have noticed that the transoms are plated over with a double-width fascia, like the prototype WM car.
For the roof, here's what I did. I got a LaBelle roof shaping kit, and made a couple of small sanding blocks from pieces of shim and a couple of grades of sandpaper, from about 120 grit to 220 or so. Start on the corner of the lower clerestor, and use the sandpaper to put in the curve- it's time-consuming, but the LaBelle templates will help you get the curve right. Once you have it, cut out the curved bead pieces from the LaBelle kit for the upper clerestory. Then cut away a piece of the molded bead on the upper clerestory so that you can glue the curved pieces into place.
You may need to sand the lower clerestory a bit more to accommodate the curved bead for the upper template. Whatever you do, make sure you have sanded enough away so that the curved bead fits smoothly into place, without leaving a hump in the rooftop. As a side note, the curved roof bead is very thin, and it's worth getting a new Exacto blade - thinnest you can get, preferably - to cut it out. I found it easiest to use the knife tip to punch small holes in the laser cut line, then cut with the grain to sort of scrape the excess waste wood away.
Once you glue the bead In place, you just start sanding - and sanding, and sanding. Time consuming, but you get very good control over the final product, and You basically just sand the excess down to the line of the curved bead. I overused the coarse paper and didn't like the result, so I filled it with Squadron Green putty and then resanded with finer sandpaper. Once it was done, I sprayed it with sanding sealer and put the details on.
doctorwayne Looks interesting, but I'm wondering why you opted for constructing with composite (wood and plastic) materials rather than all-wood or all plastic - the latter would have been my choice.Do you have any in-progress photos of the roof construction? That's certainly a more complex construction than I'd attempt.I look forward to following your progress, as I hope to build a couple of wood passenger cars when I get a bunch of other projects out of the way - using all-styrene construction, of course. Wayne
Actually, the roof is just a milled piece of solid wood from Northeastern- all I had to do was cut it to length and then sand the ends and corners. The detail is applied, and not yet complete- the junction boxes are just 6" tall pieces of scale 6x6, and the rest is wire (although the vents are PSC castings). Not so much hard, as time-consuming!
Ah, I am familiar with the milled wood roofs, but thought you had built it up from stripwood. The Strathmore board with wood construction makes sense, too. Looking forward to more.
Thanks for the tutorial on shaping the roof. I wasn't aware of the roof end profile kits so I just bought two. All that comes in the kit are paper outlines for the profiles.
"Sanding, sanding, a sanding we will go...!"
Thanks
It's time consumin, but the good thing is that it's almost impossible to overdo- the shaping process is slow, but between the templates and your own intuitive sense of what looks righ, it's much easier than you might thin.
Then there is always the old standby - body filler!
I used Squadron Green putty to fill in a couple of areas where I overdid it with the coarse grit sandpape, but you could probably get good results using ordinary wood glue as filler, for small area.
If I mess up the sanding I have three different fillers. I have the Squadron Green, Tamiya white and a tube of auto body glazing. Of the three, I prefer the auto body glazing because over time it has stiffened up somewhat. That has made it easier to mould, it doesn't stick to my palette knife as much and it doesn't shrink. If I have trouble getting it to adhere to a surface I just soften it with a little styrene liquid cement.
Progress has been slow, but most of the body is done, save for the "A" end and the obs platform. Sanding sealer was drying on those, but here's the rest, painted for a friend's house road as a surprise gift. Did the rivets with MicroMark rivet decals, which have a bit of a learning curve. Only real alternative to punching them out of brass, styrene, or Strathmore, though.
Completed, photographed, and mailed to the intended recipien, who received it partially demolished, courtesy of the USPS. These are the only photos of it as completed; I hope you enjoy them!
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
BruntonNot seeing any pics...
May I implore the OP, and others with the same ‘problem’, to take the trouble of setting up photos on a new host other than PhotoBucket and then editing all the links with photos to point to the appropriate pix on that new host?
K.P. Harrier on the Trains site did this for probably thousands of photos and is a good reference to contact for practical advice.
Apologies- Flickr link enclose; computer and time issues on my end.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/140609652@N08/
This is a textbook example of how frustrating it is to have a truly instructive thread with good photo illustrations (which I recall pretty well) be made less useful due to the original photo postings going away. It would be useful to go back and find those construction photos and add them to the Flickr pages or re-post them in the original spots.
I understand MR's and Kalmbach's original desire to not itself be the "host" for posted photos but when vast swaths of wonderful postings on these Forums become significantly less useful over time, the Forums themselves become less valuable as a resource. A new solution is needed. Think of all of Doctor Wayne's postings over the years for example. We need those photos.