Thrifty Yankee Boston and Maine, running between Boston and tiny rural towns (no where's ville) , never had a flashy name train in the class of the Senator, the 20th Century, or even the Merchant's Limited on the New Haven. That hasn't stopped me from wanting a model of such a train, fresh off the wash rack, plush interiors showing through the windows under the glow of interior lighting, all streamlined equipment, no beat up heavy weight clearstory roof clunkers. "What might have been..." The core rolling stock has been the IHC flute sided streamliner cars which can be had lettered for the B&M. The series has coach, diner, baggage and a boat tailed observation that are plausible. They also have a dome car and that sleeper with the checkerboard window pattern which I decided just didn't fit in New England. IHC makes interior kits to fit all this stuff. The window cars really need some interior, if nothing but rows of seatbacks showing through the windows, otherwise they look empty. The IHC interiors come molded in bright primary colors which need a coat of paint to tone them down. Left unpainted, they color the interior lights to blue or red or whatever they were molded in. The insides of the cars come through in black plastic which needs a coat of something light, otherwise the black soaks up all the light. The bulbs aren't all that bright and need all the help they can get. The ceilings need something opaque to keep the bulbs from shining through the car roofs. White paint or some silver metallic CHristmas wrap. I've tried battery lights but they just are not bright enough. I'm using the Walthers light kit 933-1051. This is a constant brightness deal, a molded plastic ceiling assembly with the bulbs in the light bar. I had to cut down the interior partitions to allow clearance for the light bar. Juice comes from home made axle wipers made of phosphor bronze weatherstrip and attached to the IHC trucks with 2-56 machine screws. Motive power is an AA pair of Proto2K E7's in the old pre Mcginnis B&M maroon and gold. So far the train has 5 cars (2 coaches, diner, baggage, observation). This is a little short, especially to justify the two E7's. To make it longer I can build some more IHC B&M coaches or pick up some connecting road cars, PRR or NH or Canadian sleepers or baggage or RPO's. Or I can repaint/reletter some other car types for the B&M.
David J. Starr