According to Bob Webber of the Rio Grande Modeling and Historical Society (http://rgmhs.drgw.org), BLI is considering doing a future run of these cars as the RGZ. Considering the great reception these cars have received, this is a distinct possibility.
Brass is nice, but a brass RGZ will be a real budget-buster at that price.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Thanks Mike for telling me that. Do you know if that will include the other RGZ cars as well, like the 1230 Baggage, 1231 Combine and 253 Boiler car/Power car?
Yes you are absolutely right about the brass cars. I’m sure they will be great, but the price, no no…
Hi electrolove,
Since the BLI RGZ cars will be variation of the CZ cars, I doubt they have plans to do the other RGZ cars, but you never know.
I think someone mentioned on the DRGW Yahoo list the other day that brass versions of the 1230 and 1231 either are out or will be, but each will be in the $300 to $400 range. A little more affordable than a whole train, but still steep. I think Brass Car Sides or someone else makes etched sides to build these onto a core kit.
As for the 253, you can often find P2K PB units for very reasonable prices on Ebay. Depending on the era, you can use the Alco trucks. At some point, this heater car had those trucks replaced with unpowered EMD Blomberg B trucks. For either era, body modifications have to be made. There was a brass version of the 253 imported some time ago, but the last one I saw on Ebay went for somewhere over $400.
For a few cars, the work put into kitbashing is certainly worth keeping the extra money in the pocket.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Have patience with BLI. I emailed them about selling the CZ cars both undecorated AND no exterior details (some CB&Q cars could be easily modeled that way). They emailed me back and said they would explore it. I think miehman hit the nail on the head, BLI has to be pleased with how well these things sold (out).
Well that particular picture doesn’t have a sign. That doesn’t mean it never did. I can’t find any data that says it never carried a sign but I would just change the sign to say RGZ instead of CZ. Or since you are going to have the gorge, how about?
The other thing that changes is the train name printed on the cars. If you got the D&RGW BLI cars and didn’t want to use them in the CZ. Then the “CALIFORNIA ZEPHER” sign at the top of each car should be removed too. THAT would be a much bigger project because it would ruin the plating.
Pointing out the obvious again - BUT Your original thought or design point for this layout was the changing of the power from CB&Q to D&RGW then again from D&RGW to WP. The RGZ never did this. The passengers would arrive on Amtrak and switch trains to RGZ. There was no motive power swapping.
1983 it definitely had the Alco trucks. It might have had them in 1984. I am quite certain they wer gone by 1985. I could tell you exactly if I sorted through my photos. I was sooo glad that I got pictures of it before they changed. To me the EMD trucks really ruined its look. The really stupid thing is that I didn’t run down to the shops and see if I couldn’t have saved those trucks.
Hi TZ,
Thanks for an approximate date on the switchover to the B trucks on 253. Yeah, it was kinda ugly after that.
All the reference books are up on the shelf around here for the duration. so I’m only picking my brain to relax here on the forum a little. I’ve gotta hit the sack soon, but here’s a few thoughts… Being a grad student, I’ve got other things to read these days, but am looking forward to hitting the scenery’building gang on the layout sometime around mid-May.
You’re right, depending on the era, electrolove will get diifferent results for operations with such a layout. But with that much space and enough storage track he could very well have two (or more) sets of power/rolling stock to fit the era he wants to run at any particular time.
The real rub is wayfreights. If you concentrate on through traffic, then all you need to do to switch eras is to run the trainsets from a certain year into storage and dispatch the era of the day. If you have loose cars scattered at every siding or so, then you have to do that cleanup to really switch eras. On small layouts like mine, this is not a really big issue.
Fortunately, the Rio Grande is the perfect prototype to model if you like your eras a little slippery. The scenery/structure array to model it tracksid changed slowly until the 1980s. All you really need to do to get close is to run different, era-appropirate mixes of freights through it, keyed to traffic flowing at those times. With some thought in the planning stages, it should be possible to accomodate a mix of eras over a fairly wide range on a Rio Grande layout.
In my own case, the space available is much more limited. I’ve built a couple of rolling drawer units that hold excess equipment. I have what is bascially a double ended fiddle yard and can set up a train or take if off the track and store it easily. If I had the space, it could simply be diffferent equipment off different tracks. The only drawback here is that things ge
