I built an Athearn UP caboose kit today I picked up at a recent trainshow. It has matching holes on each side above the window (see pic below). I don’t know if they are factory holes or if a prior owner of the kit drilled these holes. The holes do not appear to show the factory yellow paint inside so perhaps a prior owner drilled them. The roof I note is black, whereas a RTR version I bought has a Tuscan(?) red roof. So perhaps the owner painted the roof black and drilled the holes but then quit.
In any event, can anyone advise on a purpose for these holes? Looks too big for a chin-up bar or clothes rack for the crew. Lanterns?? If they should not be there, I can ultimately fill them in, color match reasonably and hide with weathering (when I get to freight car weathering).
The lettering says “RPKD YER 4-15-89”. Would this be when built? Retrofitted? And would this be correct vintage for such lighting? Do these things work with DCC? Most likely I’ll fill the holes, but curious to learn.
Just a guess: I think maybe the previous owner was going to install marker lights on this caboose. The fact that the roof color is wrong and the marker lights may not be in the right locations simply indicate that he didn’t know where to put the lights and didn’t know the roof color to be wrong. Fill the holes if you want. Yes, they can be made to work with DCC.
Markings like that indicate when the journal bearings were last maintained. RPKD stands for “repacked”. YER would be indicating the shop where this was performed.
Although it looks like the model have been given roller bearing trucks, so that’s a bit of a contradiction.
I am not a UP expert, but what is that big letter P on the extended cupola? Like someone intended to make it the first letter of Pacific lettering that would be continued in smaller lettering, but then the smaller lettering included the P.
Years ago, when I was still modeling in HO, I had one of these Athearn UP cabooses. I remember it’s roof to be black also. So, while the previous owner may not have located the holes exactly right for marker lights, assuming that is what they are for, the color could be original factory paint.
I’m not sure the UP (original, pre-merger UP, back when they used cabooses for more than shoving platforms or gang cars) even had any wide vision cabooses when Athearn first released them.
Assuming you mean the Utah Pacific marker lamps, I do not know about era. I think they are “good” through the end times of cabooses. I have used them on wide vision caboose before and never been nitpicked about it.
The marker lamps I am talking about are hollow, so one can illuminate them with whatever bulb or LED they desire. They also come with various colored lenses so one can position the red/yellow/green as desired (I’m in the all red school). Personally I use the 1.5V micro-minature lamps (used to be sold by PFM), powered across a full wave rectifier and ballast resistor. Doesn’t matter what power is put to the trails it they will light. Throw in a capacitor or battery and the flicker is reduced/eliminated. I always worried I would over charge the battery and never got around to designing a circuit to prevent that.
Athearn was known for not getting color schemes correct. Their Northern Pacific F-7 locomotives where painted green and should have been black, although the pine tree trim was the right color and shape. Now, before you go telling me that N.P. did have green F locos, The butter knife paint scheme was overall black, with a green butter knife streak on the sides and the Lowey scheme was two tone green without the Pine Tree trim. Athearn kits were over all pretty good; but, did have some glaring screw-ups.
If nothing else, it’s got me very curious.