I have finally found a site with color renderings of both sides of these cars, but not in very great detail. I have side elevations and floor plans.
I can’t tell from any of this material whether the roof was a finer corrugated material than the sides or was plain. I bought 4 IHC “Congo” sleepers, but they have the wrong window configuration.
The side corrugations are nicely done, but the roof is smooth with horizontal ribs on 3 foot centers.
These were Budd built and I seem to recall seeing Budd roofs both plain and corrugated.
Can any of you Pennsy fans clear this up for me re: the Congo-Senator consist?
Corrugated roofs on all cars. And nobody makes the square end tail car so you will have to alter one. Haven’t seen any comments regarding the Walthers cars but it may take some brass sides to do everything correctly.
These cars were imported by S. Soho & Co. a while ago — more than 20 years — but still often become available from brass dealers at remarkably good prices. Soho imported the whole consist. The Walthers Budd lounge car is actually a Congo 29 chair 1 DR parlor car, so you can get at least a piece of the consist without investing in the brass one.
I’ll order a couple of those lounges from Walthers. I saw a few other Walthers Budd cars on an internet site. I’ll see if I can find that info and get a couple of those too.
I have seen a casting for the roof end of the flat end obs on one of the parts mfrs websites. The rest shouldn’t be too hard. It was plain, not corrugated though, but I seem to recall pictures that the corrugating ended before the curves of the roof. If not, I can sculpt one from Kleen Klay and make resin castings from an RTV mold.
I have purchased some 0.10 polished 6 x12 stainless steel sheet from Micro Mark and plan to etch the sides. The problem would be bending it to the right curvatures using a wood mandrel. If I use 0.05 sheet that might work.
I was hoping to find a core kit that has the Budd roof and the correct ends and underbody detail. I have all of the materials on hand, but would like to have the core kit so I can etch the sides to fit it. I could probably etch the roof if I had a picture of it.
Train Station Products makes an awesome Budd core kit. They also have a veriety of other details including roof vents and underbody details. How do you etch this stuff yourself? I have not had a problem curving the skirting on brass car sides, although I don’t use a wood mandrel. I actually use a socket. I couldn’t get the curvature I wanted with the wood.
I couldn’t find the Walthers Lounge. They only show four Budd dome cars. They did have some Train Station items listed so I ordered four of the Budd 85 ft corrugated roof core kits. Union Station Products also offers the Train Station Core kits and details but no Congo sides. I e-mailed them to get on the stick and produce them. The more the merrier, maybe we can get them to offer them for us ardent Pennsy and NH fans.
They do offer strips of corrugated siding for both the large and small corrugations that can be applied to a styrene car side so I ordered some of those. I will be deciding between etching stainless steel sides or making an RTV of a pattern of built up blank sides. I can then resin cast as many as I want and cut the windows out for the various cars as needed.
Etching is not very complicated, but a litle time consuming. The materials can be purchased on a variety of web sides. I also bought the etching kit offered by Micro Mark and some extra supplies.While the materials included are designed for small etchings, about 3 1/2 square, it isn’t hard to go from there to larger etchings. 85 foot car sides are about 11 3/4 inches long so 12 inch material is required. The ink jet negative material provided with the kit is only 8 1/2 x 11 so it is necessary to splice two together with scotch tape. The resist material comes in 15 inch lengths so no problem there.
A larger exposure frame can be made from 1/4 inch thick plexiglas. Exposure is under direct sunlight which is no problem here in sunny Scottsdale, AZ.
I obtained the side drawings from a Pennsy web site and they are easy to replicate in my TurboCad software. The secret is to draw them in feet and print them in HO scale which is about 71/512s to the foot. They have to be reverted in Photoshop to negs which is easier than the mind numbing problem of drawing them that way.
From what I understand, Union Station Products is pretty good about requests. I think they even advertise that on their site. Hopefully y’all can get the models you need.
Thanks Tom for the Walthers link. That is PRR PP85, 5 on the Congo and 3 on the Senator so I ordered 8. I entered every combination in their search box but never came up with that car. It is undec, so PRR didn’t work.
I have been correponding via e-mail with Union Station Products. They have agreed to furnish the sides for the entire Congo/Senator consist. They also can ship the core kits with the order.
As soon as I get the gory details, I’ll post them here.
Now I am going to need the interior colors for these cars.