Carter Brothers Passenger cars

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have been trying to find out what my 40 Ft Rivarossi old time passengers cars were modeled after ( they look like a size between the Overton and Overland types)

I found pictures and info on Carter Brothers Passenger Cars and it sure seems like them

Anybody ever hear of them ?

Here is a pic of my coach

Carter brothers coach

http://bandb3536.com/meopass/40ch.HTM

2

The Rivarossi old time baggage & passenger cars with a duckbill roof are based on the Virginia & Truckee’s Kimball cars.

3

Carter Brothers was a 19th century California narrow gauge car manufacturer. Made passenger cars and freight cars. there a some beautiful restored Carter Brothers cars at the California Railroad Museum - Nevin

4

Thanks

Yeah it looks just like those

Carter brothers look the same also

So I will go with Kimballs

Wonder why Rivarossi used such a rare unit–probably size

5

Carter Brothers was a California car building company located on what became a Southern Pacific branch. Carter Brothers cars were used throughout California and into Oregon, especially by CP/SP. Carter Brothers is fairly well known today thanks to the heroic efforts of the preservationists at Ardenwood.

Most of the Colorado railroads of the 19th Century used cars from Mid-West builders. The V&T was caught in an odd position. Their only tie to the rest of the world was through the CP/SP at Reno. Yet they were always trying to remain independent from the monster they depended on. Kimball was not an unknown producer of cars in the 19th Century. But Kimball doesn’t benefit from a group of historians like Carter Brothers does.

The duckbill roof was a fashion of a particular era, not a signature of any one builder. The bull nose roof was the successor to the duckbill in the stages of wood passenger car building. Which kind of roof a car had depended more on when it was built than who built it. White’s book on 19th Century passenger cars is every bit the bible on that era that his book on freight cars is.

Wood passenger car length varied widely in the late 19th Century. Pullman was coming out with their 80ft cars, although most short lines used older and shorter equipment. Somewhere around 50ft was probably the most common size passenger car in the West.

Fred W