Pere Marquette Caboose.

I have an undecorated HO scale caboose that I hope to paint and decal for the Pere Marquette RR so it can run at the end of a freight train pulled by my PM 2-8-4 Berkshire.

The problem is that I cannot find a source for the decals. I’ve checked the historical society web page and some others with no luck.

It seems odd to me that there are several HO PM locomotives and PM rolling stock for that era but no cabeese. I hope I’ve just not looked in the right place yet.

Anyone with information or suggestions feel free to post.

I feel your pain,

I have been looking for PM cabooses at the last few shows I have been at. No luck, though.

I will give a shout out if I ever come across one.

Short answer: nobody makes PM caboose decals.

Champ does have PM roadname decal sets (HN-79), so it’s easy to “roll your own” set using their roadname set and a few Microscale numbers.

http://www.minot.com/~champ/pm-ho.htm

Thanks, I was already considering Champ but wasn’t sure whether the size of the lettering is correct

Actually, I just released a set of Pere Marquette decals for this caboose last month. It will also letter the PM’s A800-series wood cabooses that are virtually identical to the Erie A4900-series cabooses that Gloor Craft offers as a wood kit.

See http://www.wyomingyard.com/decals (Google can be your friend- a search on “pere marquette decals” brings up my site as the first result).

There are a couple of links from the PMHS web site to my decal site, but you pretty much have to find them in context. The whole of my model railroading-related projects on the web can be found at http://www.wyomingyard.com.

Well thankyou very much Fritz. I’ll be ordering a set or 2 from you shortly. Which Cabeese that are currently available d you recommend? Atlas, P2K or Walthers?

I designed the set with the Atlas Trainman caboose in mind for the PM’s A901- and A950-series steel cabooses, and the aforementioned Gloor Craft caboose for the A800-series wood cabooses. These are the only non-brass models that are commercially available that are a close match to the cabooses the PM had while they had Berkshires. Any others involve varying amounts of compromise. Naturally, the amount of compromise that is acceptable is entirely up to you…

The P2K steel caboose only bears a vague resemblance to the PM’s steel cabooses (the old MDC/Roundhouse center-cupola steel caboose that has two windows per side actually looks a little more like a PM caboose), and there’s nothing that Walthers makes that comes even that close to the PM’s wood or steel cabooses. Some of the cabooses that Walthers’ C&O-prototype wood caboose models came to Michigan after the PM/C&O merger, but they were never PM cabooses and never wore PM paint.

I’ve been spending a lot of time digging through PM caboose material over the past year while doing the research for an ongoing series on the PM’s cabooses that I’ve been contributing to the PMHS newsletter. The more I dig into it, the more differences I find between seemingly-similar series of cabooses. There’s enough information to put out a book on them, which is something I’m considering, once I fini***he series in the newsletter in a couple more years.

Fritz, will you be at the Ann Arbor show next weekend?

Also, when do you think you’ll have more switcher decals ready to go?

Yep- although I’ll only be there on Saturday, the decals will be available at my modular club’s table both days. I’ve updated my decals web site to describe where the tables will be.

The PM/M&NE/C&O switcher decals have been ordered, so they’ll be back in stock within a couple of weeks. Barring an extraordinary effort on the part of my supplier, I don’t think that I’ll have the next batch in time for the show this weekend- I’m fairly certain that I reordered too late. I should have the last couple of sets for the Ludington & Northern switcher there, too. When those are gone, I don’t plan to re-run them. I print the other four sets myself, so there should be an ample supply of those.


-Fritz Milhaupt
Web Guy, Rails on Wheels HO Modular Model RR Club
http://www.railsonwheels.com

I have been looking for a PM caboose also for a long time.

I know MDC Roundhouse made one in the past but are very rare to find.

I wish someone would make one finally. A big hint to some company.

Mark

If Ya cant find any PM decals why dont ya run a C&O caboose at the Tail??? Kevin

That’s what I am currently doing as the specific date of my consist doesn’t bother me. But there are those who model the PM before the C&O acquisition and having a C&O caboose on the end of the train would be inappropriate.

But now that I know about Fritz’s decals and can get the Atlas trainman caboose undecorated I may build a few and offer them on that famous auction site.