Hi,
I’m looking for a suitable type caboose to go with a C&NW GP7 display. One of the choices is the bay window type - boxcar brown - made by Athearn years ago. Was this around in the '50s?
I grew up next to the C&NW racetrack on the northwest side of Chicago, and I just can’t recall if they were being used then or not.
Thank you!
CNW started getting their steel bay window cabooses from International in 1955- they were painted bright red with black/white lettering and yellow handrails. Unfortunately the Athearn car is not the correct color, nor is it the right kind of bay window caboose (it is an SP prototype). Walthers released a later version of the International CNW caboose they got in later orders- it is the correct car with the right colors and right numbers for that series. (The only down side is Walthers did not give it full ladders and a running board- probably because the original tooling was based on a much later MILW International caboose)
Walthers also made some 1950s appropriate wooden CNW cupola cabooses some years back too- those also were painted bright red with white CNW markings/herald.
Actually there are a couple of lettering issues that fussy CNW modelers have with the red Walthers bay window caboose, but it is a nice looking model and a far better choice than the dark brown Athearn caboose.
In the mid 1950s a C&NW Geep, particularly back when they had the “Route of the 400s” slogan on the side such as with some of the runs of the Proto 2000 model, would have been often seen with a wood caboose, also painted vivid red.
Mullet River makes a laser kit of the wood bay window caboose and the C&NW on-line modeling magazine has a good article about how to build and detail it. 24 pages many in color! I saw the model built for this article and it is perfect.
http://www.cnwhs.org/cnwhs_modeler/Modeler_4-2.pdf
The CNW also had standard cupola type wood cabooses as can be seen in a famous Kodachrome shot from WWII era:
http://www.shorpy.com/files/images/1a34685u_0.preview.jpg
Walthers had a similar model, as did Model Die Casting at one time and perhaps still.
Dave Nelson
Thank you guys, you were a major help.
I’ll skip the bay window, and get one of the Walthers wooden ones with end cupola that I can detail. My “specialty” is the Santa Fe and IC, but I just had to pick up this C&NW GP7 (route of the 400…) for my display case - completing the three major RRs of my youth.
Thank you all again!