Anybody out there know if any Cotton Belt (St Louis Southwestern - SSW) passenger cars were ever made in HO scale?
Thanks,
Never seen any, though I’m sure there must be some out there somewhere. I wonder if it would be appropriate to re-letter some SP cars for SSW, being that they were sister roads. Of course that is based on my assumption that they were painted in a similar fashion to begin with.
Athearn made a whole “fleet” of Daylight painted passenger cars for the Cotton Belt, but they were rather generic types. I was lucky to get one of each of them about 20 years ago. I can list car type, car name and Athearn product number if you’d like.
I’d bet some are still sitting around in LHSs. They also did a similar set for the Katy/Frisco Texas Special.
I just saw somewhere that somebody made/is making the “American Flyer” cars in H0. Let me see if I can find that again and I will post the info here.
Edit: Here you go:
The ten SSW “American Flyer” chair cars were built in 1937, originally renumbered 400 thru 409. In June 1940 there were renumbered to 200 to 209. Seating capacity was 76. Complying with segregation laws in which the SSW operated, an interior partition was used to create a compartment of 24 seats. Each compartment had women and men’s restrooms located adjacent to the vestibules. Originally painted Pullman’s Dark Olive with light gray or aluminum-painted roofs, SSW began the Daylight Red and Orange scheme in 1949. It departed from SP standard practice except the roofs were light-colored to reflect heat. All ten cars were eventually leased to the SP, with transfers beginning in 1954, with the last transfer in 1961. SP renumbered the cars.
SPH&TS’s book Southern Pacific Passenger Cars, volume 1, covers these cars on pages 402 to 410.
I wonder if the models will correctly reflect the segregational aspects of the prototypes.
Mark
If you look at the Railway Classics homepage, you’ll see they are in “Hibernation Mode”. While you can still contact them, the owner has had some personal issues along with some problems getting things made at a reasonable cost (last update was 2006, so it could only have gotten worse in the last 3 years based on teh dollar’s valuation).
Too bad as they really had some high quality stuff.
Ricky
Once Rapido gets New Haven out of the way, they’re planning on some SP/SSW Osgood-Bradleys. Nothing “offical” yet, but I asked them.
The Cotton Belt Osgood Bradleys had a different window arrangement than the New Haven cars.
Here is a March 1, 1943 roster of Cotton Belt passenger cars and motor cars.
document from Commerce Public Library Special Collections, Commerce, TEXAS
Update: Thanks to all for responses. And to mreagant, special thanks for leading me to Bev-Bel Athearn SSW diner kit. I’ll be working on it soon.
It sticks in my head that MDC Roundhouse (pre-Athearn takeover) made HO SSW Harriman passenger cars, but it might have been many years back and maybe a limited run of some kind (??)
Rapido Trains in Canada is making “American Flyer” cars in HO at this rime. The cars are based on New Haven cars. Hopefully Rapido will make the cars in Espee and in all the paint schemes.
There was a maker of the cars some years ago in plastic. Eastern Car Works took over the line I think?
The “Owl” trains 57 & 58 on Espee’s Jan Joaquin line usually ran with two of the former Cotton Belt A/F cars in the train until the train was discontinued.
The Owl consist was a couple of baggage cars, A RPO, another baggage , two to four chair cars, the dreaded “Automat” car and a 6-6-4 Pullman bringing up the rear.