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Walthers HO scale bi level commuter cars
When C&NW President Ben Heineman first acquired the full-s8ized cars of this type in the 1950’s he (and/or his staff) chose to get cars with exterior paint and to wash them enough to keep them clean. When I first rode them in 1967 and 1970 they were still looking great. This was in contrast to the stainless steel commuter cars serving the Philadelphia area in the Sixties, which seldom if ever got a good washing.
I wasn’t the only Philadelphia-area railfan and modeler who liked the looks of the green and yellow C&NW cars. I made just one visit to the home of the late Bill Schopp (for decades the creator of “Layout Doctor” track plans and kitbashes of brass HO locos featured in Railroad Model Craftsman), in Trenton, NJ. His own pike – a real “bowl of spaghetti” with lots of track and very little scenery – had at least a half dozen such cars that he’d built from kits made by Holgate & Reynolds. He’d kept the C&NW colors but decaded them for the Reading!
The center doors and “gallery” make the interiors of these cars very different from those of the double-deckers used by the Boston area’s Commuter Rail. The C&NW quickly learned to add “modesty panels” to protect the privacy of passengers on the upper level from the gaze of riders on the lower level.