Recently I bought a Bachmann 4-8-4 Northern, Santa Fe #3781, for my model railroad’s historical society to use for excursions. (Not to be confused with the real 3751 operated by the real historical society) What would be appropriate passenger cars to run with it? Are there Athearn blue box models that would do? Thanks
Yes, there probably is Athearn BB passenger cars that will work. If you can’t find them, IHC, Rivarossi, Walthers and or Rapido passenger cars would work as well. Depending on how much $$$$ you want to spend initially & how much work you’ll have to put into them to make them work. I have a few IHC cars that I improved to make them roll freely as out of the box, they were crap.
Would the correct style be heavy weights?
Up to you, it’s your excursion train
The Santa Fe #3700 class locos look fine on the point of streamliner or heavyweight cars. The Athearn blue box cars would work, but they are shorties. They might look extra short behind such a large locomotive. Bachmann makes some nice heavyweight passenger cars. AHM and IHC make both streamliners and heavyweight. They take some work to get running well but have no problems going around tight corners.
If you have large enough corners 30" or larger you might want to consider the Walthers cars.
What is your era? An excursion in the 1940’s or 1950’s would have used whatever equipment the Santa Fe had available, possibly including both heavyweight and streamlined cars. Nowadays the same thing applies. An excursion operator today would use whatever is available. Very few heavyweights are both available and serviceable. Ex-Santa Fe fluted Heritage cars would probably look best.
My layout is Fallen Flag era (1990s). I do have tight curves so I can’t run long cars unless they are designed to run on 22" radius. The Rivarossi cars look nicer than the Athearn but I was worried about minimum radius.
I think I will check these out and compare to AHM Rivarossi heavyweights.
Thanks everyone for your input.
One thought for you: since the conversion of the Amtrak fleet to a standard 480V headend power system in the late 1970s, there has been a gradual change in the equipment available for excursion service. Freight railroads have gradually converted their business car fleets to HEP so that they would be compatible for Amtrak moves, and the privately owned cars typically did the same, since most of their moves were Amtrak-hauled. A lot of excursions use standard Amfleet equipment, typically with an HEP- equipped locomotive, which could be either an Amtrak engine or a freight locomotive that’s equipped for HEP, depending on who’s operating the train and what’s locally available.
Those excursions could give you a great excuse to run all kinds of interesting equipment in all types of liveries- you might want to check out the AAPRCO (American Association of Private Railroad Car Operators) website for ideas- there’s all kinds of interesting stuff running around out there, and it’s not unusual to see a 10-15 car AAPRCO train with business cars in the middle of the consist, coupled end platform-platform.
Thanks, that is good information. I always see the real 3751 with a Metrolink loco if it is staying in southern California or a couple of Amtrak units if it is going out of state. I have also seen it with a trio of Santa Fe dash 9s in War Bonnet livery when they were brand new.
As for cars it seems like a mix of Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and Amtrak but I’m not sure which types of cars they are.
The Athearn BB cars are ‘shorties’, but they are not the 60’ type but,rather, a 71’ type. So, they won’t look all that short behind a 4-8-4 locomotive.
Rich
The Amtrak cars are probably Amfleet Is; there are about ten out on the West Coast, mostly for excursion service (Amfleet cars are the single level cars with rounded, fluted stainless steel sides- there are a lot of variations, but as a general rule, the Amfleet Is have smaller windows and vestibule doors at both ends of the car). iIRC, Walthers just retooled their Am-I line.
Any other cars that aren’t Amtrak-owned will probably be owned by either a historical society, a charter firm, or an individual. The AAPRCO website has a pretty good list, with detail and history. If you go to a picture site like rail pictures.net, you can typically find some photos that show the consist behind 3751, and you can match the equipment by name to the description on the AAPRCO site. Every car that’s approved for Amtrak use has a 6 digit number starting in 800, usually (if memory serves) painted near the bottom on the side at the B end, and those are shown on the individual AAPRCO car listings. There’s an enormous variety in type, make, and paint scheme for PVs: some customized, some lovingly preserved as close to as-built condition as possible, some with extraordinary modifications. The most obvious visual variation, from the modeler’s point of view, will be the sockets for HEP and MU at the car ends.
When the former Milwaukee Road 261 runs, it almost always has an Amtrak locomotive in the consist (and often some Amtrak cars in the train) because it piggybacks Amtrak’s insurance by runnng as an Amtrak extra.
The Friends of the 261 organization have put together a collection of excursion cars that meet Amtrak standards and thus are frequently leased by other excursions opperators, together with a pretty predictable set of privately owned cars that are also Amtrak-approved (Caritas and Pine Tree State being commonly seen examples). So the resulting train is an odd mix of old and new, colors and paint schemes, but the passengers always seem very happy!
The 261 website has a nice display of the cars they have available for lease (and that is how they help pay for the steam locomotive).
Dave Nelson