eagle1030’s recent post on pushing radius to it’s limits regarding passenger cars raised a good question and recieved some good replies. I believe eagle 1030 was thinking in terms of full length passenger cars to be run on 23" radius, slightly below the car’s recommended radius.
I guess what his question got me to thinking about was the subject of ‘shorty’ or shorter passenger cars. I didn’t address them on his posting because I understand he’s more interested in a full length, or at least longer car. Anyway, I always think of the been around forever Athearn cars, both lightweight and heavyweight. I recall when the heavies first came out around 1960 and made quite a stir. Other body styles were added over the years. Now, if you overlook the Santa Fe tone on most of them, about the only car in the batch that’s really a shorty is the Pullman. All of them are in the 70-72 foot range, I don’t recall exactly. and thats just fine for headend cars, coachs and even the obs car if it’s used as an office car. The diner has five windows rather than six, but could well serve as a cafe car. The Reading Company, one of my favorites, had shorter cars than most lines, and this car would serve nicely on a “Clocker” behind a couple of BCW Reading coachs and a combine.
Athearns streamliners are another matter, as most lightweights were over 80 feet long, but even then the RPO and straight baggage-express are very usable as is.And I’ve seen trains using only Athearn lightweights, with a few heavies mixed in and it didn’t look all that bad. If modeling a line that painted the window panels such as MC or B&M, the cars look longer than they are and the effect is pretty fair.
There’s quite a few prototypical cars available that are shorter than ‘full length’ from ConCor, Bethlehem and others. Walthers had a lot of 70ish foot cars in their old kit line that still turn up and I think it was Rivarossi that had a
Curve radius and actual train length, as well as personal desires, drove me to model an earlier era. An era with wood passenger cars that ranged all over the place in length.
While technically built after 1900, the 34ft Overton cars used 19th Century techonology (wood underframe, wood body, and truss rods) to obtain cars that would fit the switchbacks on the Angel’s Branch. And those Overton cars look mighty good behind a Shay (prototypical), Climax, or even a 4-4-0. Narrow the bodies and put on appropriate trucks and couplers, and the MDC plastic Overton cars look great for free-lance narrow gauge, too.
If you want models of the more typical 50ft+ wood passenger cars, they are available in plastic from a variety of manufacturers. MDC’s Overland and Pullman Palace (full length) series do well here. Labelle makes some nice, pretty accurate wood kit models in both standard and narrow gauge.
just my thoughts and experiences
Fred W
…modeling foggy coastal Oregon in HO and HOn3, where it’s always 1900…
Picture Gorge & Western Railway “none more picturesque!”
Port Orford & Elk River Railway & Navigation Co “Home of the Tall Cedars”
I am surprised that more people on this site are not aware that Rivarossi still produces their 60’ HW passenger cars, there was an anouncement not long ago indicating that more road names are being added.
In addition, Con Cor not only produces their 72 smoothside passenger coaches they also produce a 65’ set of HW coaches in their Suburban Line, these come in a wide variety of roadnames, these coaches have interiors and are also lighted.
In addition Con-Cor also has their MP54 cars, these are part of the Electric powered coaches recently released.
Here is a little sometihng I wrote on the subject nearly a decade ago:
Selective compression, passenger car length and other thoughts
A commentary by Sheldon Stroh
The following thoughts came to me after reading the July 2003 issue of Model Railroader in total and specifically the several letters in RPO regarding the recent articles on passenger cars, “At the Throttle”, Andy’s “8 tips for better passenger car operation” and Tony’s “Trains of Thought”. I often disagree with Tony and have written more than once to say so but this time he makes good points without sounding like the ultimate rivet counter. None of the following is intended to disparage anyone or any of the excellent model work that appears in MR, or anywhere else for that matter, but it is intended to challenge some fixed ideas that seem to be prevalent in the hobby press today. These comments are mainly directed at HO, since it is the topic of most of the articles in question and the scale/gauge (let’s not go there) that I model in.
Why are we so willing to selectively compress buildings, scenery, track (radius and switch number), and number of cars in the train, but not the train itself? OK we are modeling the train and these other things are just support players, or are they? If we are modeling the “railroad” than maybe the case for all this exact to scale equipment (especially passenger cars) is not as strong as one might think? In virtually all recent conversation in the model railroad press, less than scale length passenger cars (like Athearn) are completely excluded. What snobbery! And how unfair. Athearn passenger cars are well detailed and run well for their extremely modest price. Also one of their biggest features is what is not included, no lousy molded on underbody detail that has to be removed to improve the detail level. Athearn heavy weight cars can be easily detailed to levels that far exceed many brass impor
I have several trains of Athearn passenger cars. Both light and heavyweight. I have made some of the modifications you mentioned to the lightweight cars, but never tried to modify the heavyweights. I was particularly interested in your methodology for adding diaphragms and for proper spacing between cars and locomotives.
The ‘shorty-cars’ operate flawlessly on my 22-1/2 and 20-1/2 inch radius mainlines and seem to fit my layout better than their larger/longer brothers.
I have several scale-length cars from Walthers, Bachmann and Riverossi. While they may look a little strange, these cars run well on the 22-1/2" line and I have modified many to run on the smaller main line.
I intend to apply many of your modifications to some of my ‘shorty’ cars for better realism.
