Bangor & Aroostook Baggage Car

[dknelson]

An interesting roof contour on that BAR baggage car in the prototype photo. 

Dave Nelson

[Burlington Northern #24]

Bravo Dstarr! love that scheme, I need to find a Con cor RPO or a Kato one so I can do a model of SP&S RPO #31 

 

[mlehman]

David,

Nice work

I just went through my stash of stand-in cars and got most of them running. It's quite satisfying to run them, even if they're only "close enuf"

[dstarr]

Now that the holidays are over, house guests gone home,  I got back to the all baggage & mail consist which a web posting somewhere said used to run up the Connecticut River branch around Christmas time to handle all the presents and cards.  This post concluded with the comment that probably no HO modeler had attempted this train.  Well, I know a challange when I see one.  I've been picking up baggage cars at train shows.  This is a plain jane Athearn heavyweight that was only like $6 or $7.

 

I wanted something a bit different for a change.  I already have cars painted for B&M, Pennsy, NYC, and D&H.  Checking my decal supply turned up Microscale 87-863 with Bangor and Aroostook decals.  Thumbing thru my Northern NE Color Guide turned up this prototype pix. 

There are a few descrepancies, like the number of door, but we will assume that BAR had a few two door 72 footers once upon a time.  Other photos in the Color Guide showed a fresh out of the paint shop car in white with a blue stripe, and a car with a smoke jack.  Winter can get cold up in Aroostook county.

I like bending up details out of wire so I do it.  In actual fact, the molded on detail looks about the same after the car is painted.  The smoke jack is scratch made out of brass tubing.  The steps under the baggage doors are Cal-Scale castings that I had.  One of the cast on plastic steps was broken off so I used the Cal Scale step on all four baggage doors.  They came out of the envelope somewhat bent out of shape as you see them.  The prototype photos showed the steps equally bent out of shape, from hitting something. so I refrained from straightening the cast brass steps.  Same goes for the end steps, one was broken, so I bent up wire ones.  I sorta went overboard on detail, when drilling the car sides for the last details, I was drilling thru brass wire from early installed details.  Next time, less wire detail on the corners of the car. 

Final paint job.  Rattle cans all.  White primer for the body, wait a day to dry fully, mask off for the blue stripe.  Then decal.  Trucks are light gray auto primer, undercarriage is dark gray auto primer.  Tomorrow maybe a shot of Dullcote, but I like to let the decals dry overnight first.  I might dry brush some dark on the grab irons, but the prototype photo shows them in white, so maybe I won't.