Hi, can anyone give me a color scheme for the old wooden open platform passenger cars used by Southern Pacific, or maybe point me to a website that can give me the info, or a picture maybe. I have spent ages searching the net to date with no luck so far
Funny thing, I have been thinking about getting some. Way back in late’50’s I was a third trick oiler and later an apprentice carman on the SP in Oakland and they had several old woodies’ without trucks around the yards, used for crew shacks and we used them for the carmen and oilers locker/lunch rooms and while waiting for a train to come in or be made up. Had old potbelly stoves in them and used a fusee to light the coal! I’m 68 now and can still smell the coal smoke hanging on a crisp crack of dawn.
Standard Dark Green was the system standard, now if reclassified as a caboose it may or may not have recieved oxide red paint, those transfered to MW duties, of which many were in the 1920’s, oxide woulds apply as well… That being said, for a in service wooden car go with the standard dark green aka “Pullman Green” with black underbody and though my research is incomplete for my S projects on exact roof shade, here’s what i’ve learned: Dependent on canvas source or tarpaper source, how it was applied and sealed plus age could range from light grey to charcoal black. For lack of anything more specific, i’d lean towrds black to be on the cautious side. SP kept wooden open platform coaches in secondary passenger service well into the 1920’s often mixed with all steel construction, many lasted decades longer in MW service.
Dave
This is a narrow guage car, but I figured I would post it anyhow…
http://www.spcrr.org/images/SP1010.jpg
Here is some standard guage stuff, although not color…
Thanks for all your responses. I eventually did find a website with some old time coloured postcards of SP trains. They did show a dark green body with a darkish gray roof (although I did see one with red roofs, it was the train to some spa, I forget the name of now).
Although I model the late fifties, on a small 4 x 8 layout, I wanted these passenger cars because they look better running round tight curves than the looooong modern cars. My excuse was that they were going to be a special historical excursion train pulled by steam power!! That should be permissable I think.
Thanks again.
The 1870s/1880s era passenger cars (including one Southern Pacific) at the California State Railroad Museum are in fact dark green. The roof is black but fades to dark gray with sun, smoke and soot. For a Fifties layout, such a set of passenger cars would definitely be the worse for wear. There is no telling where such cars might have been: at least one former SP wooden passenger car was equipped with an electric motor and trolley poles and used as an ungainly sort of city tram in northern California!
I agree that modern cars would be too long, have you considered the old Roundhouse 60 foot Harrimans, if still available? They should do nicely on a 4x8. True, you could plausably use the wooden jobs for a special excursion, why not, the SP was noted for strange consits when a special was put together…
I believe the spa you mention, was either Shasta Springs or Del Monte in Monteray. SP ran a specific consists for a train of the the name and a counterpart the Suntan