I recently purchased a Texas & Pacific Athearn Genesis E7A and powered E7B with corrugated sides in blue/gray stripes on silver.
My grandmother rode the traim pulled by the exact road numbers in 1961 when she traveled from East Texas (via Cotton Belt to Ft. Worth) and rode the T&P passenger service from Dallas to Colorado City, Texas where my family lived. I am not sure of my history, but I think that MoPac had just purchased T&P that year and that the E7A and E7B units were pulling MoPac reliveried Texas Eagle passenger cars. I was just 11 y.o. so my memory may be somewhat inaccurate. I did find out that the road numbers I own were in sevice on that route at that time.
I acquired them Dec. 2012. I have them stored safely in my trainroom (HVAC equipped) and they run very smoothly. They are not DCC equipped or ready but they are in beautiful new condition. I have all boxes and internal paper work.
I am not currently ready to part with them, but I am building a new tri-level shelf pike that models a branch railroad that was called the Southwest Orient (newly named Texas Pacifico Transportation Ltd.) which hauls sand and manufacturing raw materials from DFW area to West Texas along with three bay covered hoppers loaded with frac sand for the oil field nearby. Trains turn at the West Texas wye and return with 45' tank cars filled with oil to be interchanged in Ft. Worth before going to Houstion.
I am using only 4 axle diesels and short rolling stock (nothing > 65' max.) so passenger cars will not look good behind the T&P units on my 18" branch line radii.
I am not ready to part with such nice equipment, but if I find I just cannot use them on my road, I need to let someone else have them because they are so rare and of such high quality.
Any interest? Just reply to my post and later, if I decide to sell them I will give you "first refusal right".
PetroTexas
P.S. I have named my pike the PetroTexas and Western RR.
Have you checked out the kits at Union Station Products? They list several MP style passenger cars; and I notice that some have the round "porthole" windows common to T&P passenger cars. I am not an expert on T&P passenger cars by any means; but you might find something that works til someone comes out with suitable cars in plastic.
Some years ago when Rapido Trains released some T&P coaches, me as a T&P fan really thought of purchasing them although I knew that they´re not prototypical since the Rapido cars are based on Canadian prototypes. The reason why I never purchased them is that there was simply no matching T&P power available (except brass), so I didn´t want to purchase them when there isn´t a a chance to have a matching prototype. But today I found out that BLI is planning to release the T&P E8 A Unit in early 2015! Of course I would LOVE to have this engine, but now the problem is the other way round: I have the engine that I wanted but no passenger cars available! I´m not a guy who needs to have everything 100% protypical and correct, so I thought of the idea to put together a nice little "Eagle" train that is made up of 1 Rapido MP baggage, 4 Rapido T&P coaches, 1 Rapido MP buffet-grill and 3 or 4 Walthers PRR sleepers in Eagle paint scheme for pool service (the Walthers MP sleepers in Eagle paint seem to be sold out totally while the PRR Eagle sleepers can still be found on various websites). But it´s impossible to find any Rapido T&P coaches! Rivarossi/IHC isn´t a solution too, because unfortunately their MP cars are lettered for the "Colorado Eagle" and not just "The Eagle"!!! If their MP cars were only lettered for "The Eagle", I would take them for my train!!! It´s so frustrating! What would you recommend me to do? Buy those PRR Eagle sleepers by Walthers NOW and wait for the Rapido T&P coaches and Rapido MP baggage and buffet-grill to pop up on ebay maybe, or simply buy only the BLI T&P E8 and keep on waiting for the day when a manufacturer will finally release prototypical non-brass T&P/MP "The Eagle" cars?