Since I just recently converted my pike to Erie, circa late 40’s/early 50’s, I have been treated to some really excellent rolling stock kits which I like to mention. First would be the caboose kits from JJL…both steel (Dunsmore), and wood. These are beyond excellent ! Then I finally built the older Quality Craft and Gloor craft wood cabeese sitting in boxes on my shelves for decades…also.excellent ! Bethelhem Car Works supplied me with two very excellent wood baggage car kits, which I would highly recommend, and last and hopefully not least would be the Erie Stillwell coaches from Funaro and Camerlengo. I have already built 10 of these with 20 more on order. Their combine is simple to modify with styrene plugs for baggage area windows.
Point: I had forgot how much fun it is to actually build car kits rather than buying…and then the pride and feelings of accomplishment ! I have always built kits, but somehow I had thought the heydey of rolling stock kit building had come and gone. I was mistaken. Few of us can build a car better than the current Chinese imports, but somehow stuff that you build seems to have soul which to me is priceless.
I’m with you brother! Let me have kits! Of a roster of 125 pieces of rolling stock, maybe 4-5 are RTR cars, the rest are kits. I have a list of kit manudacturers I could P.M. you, if your interested.
Howard, I agree, it’s fun to build kits, and those JJL models Dunmore cabooses are some of my favorites:
Kitbashing is another one of my favorite things to do. I’m working on converting one of the new BLI USRA light pacifics into a B&O P-5a right now. There were three of these up here on the Buffalo division.
If you need any rolling stock diagrams for the Erie, please let me know. We have a lot of diagrams at the Salamanca Rail Museum, and we always share our stuff!
Howard, check out this pic. It is probably the mid 1950’s in Salamanca NY. Look at the MW car on the right. It looks to me as if it might have been a broad gauge coach long since converted to standard gauge, and fitted with some type of tanks on top. Whatever it was, it surely served the Erie well!
Those older Quality Craft and Gloor Craft kits are some of my favorites! Here’s the Erie kit I built and lettered for my own RR.
I do prefer kits over RTR myself and would prefer to keep building as many as I can get my hands on.
Problem is I already have WAY too many![:$] Plus I have about another 25 resin and wood craftsman kits to build. Looks like I’m gonna have to get rid of some of my Athearn, MDC, and Accurail kits.
I don’t model the Erie, but have a few Erie freight cars which move on or off the layout via interchange. Except as noted, all are lettered with C-D-S dry transfers.
A modified Athearn car:
Modified Accurail car:
Slightly modified Athearn:
A re-detailed and re-painted X-29 from Red Caboose:
This one is from Bowser, slightly modified, but with factory lettering:
Another with factory paint and lettering, a re-detailed Train Miniature car:
Here is my Gloor Craft Northern Pacific Caboose, one of my favorite and I wish Gloor Craft was still producing kits! When did they stop/have they stopped producing kits?
Pretty nice work! Your pike also looks quite nice. Care to share some photos of the layout? My layout can be seen on www.zanestrains.com , but it is being reworked to represent Erie ops from Port Jervis west.
Thanks for sharing these photos. In my post, I said that I love building wood and resin craftsman kits. I did not mention if I thought they were good enough to photograph and post. Currently I’m building a train of Labelle passenger cars including their new ABPS chapel car for use as a tourist train. The loco will be a NJCB Erie L-1 0-8-8-0. Rationale?? Prototypical? Simple explanation as this class of loco was torched decades prior to my operating theme…The 2601 was discovered stored in a huge shed, restored, and used as a tourist loco on an abandoned branch line. Perhaps when I finish the train, and if it meets my standards, I’ll post photos.
Actually I’m impressed with all of the photos posted.
