NKP caboose???

I made one over 40 years ago, Silver Streak I think, but it was buried with my grandfather.

While the NKP is not my most favorite or most studied road, after chasing

759 and 765 I had to have a NKP Berkshire, and that in turn required a NKP caboose. My love of the variety in cabooses caused that to grow to 3, all with the "Nickel Plate High Speed Service" white band.

The oldest is an Ambroid "Heritage Line" basswood kit (number H-10) for a

1000 series wooden cupola caboose. According to photos and information in Harvey's book "Cabooses of the Nickel Plate Road" (NKPH&TS 1992), this appears to be a very accurate model of this class car. These craftsman-type kits still show up unbuilt at train meets, and probably on ebay.

I also have a limited run paint job on a standard Athearn bay window caboose. This was done by the Cuyahoga Division of the NMRA several years ago (I got mine at the 1993 NMRA National at Valley Forge). It is not completely accurate for the NKP 400 series cars (the windows are different, and most noticeably missing the "upper bunk" windows that intrude on the "High Speed" lettering band, but it looks close enough to satisfy me. I expect the Division is sold out by now, but you might find one of these on ebay.

Just last week, I picked up the new Atlas NE caboose (item #6304-1) from my local HS. Comparing it to photos in the book, this appears to be dead on for the NKP 761 to 784 series cars based on an inherited W&LE design. These are also cupola cars, and with the W&LE cars, were the first steel cabs on the Nickel Plate. This model should be readily available to you. Gary Q

The NE-type caboose that Atlas offers in NKP paint is a very nice model that looks nearly identical to the NKP's ex-Wheeling & Lake Erie cabooses, though there's something about its proportions that strikes me as not being quite right- it's either the size of the side windows, their location up the side, or maybe the height of the side itself. Regardless, this is the plastic caboose that is the closest in details to one that the NKP ever ran, and it's very close to dead on. I'm using a pair of them on NKP transfer runs onto my layout until I can build a couple of the wood cabooses they would've used on the runs I'm modeling.

The style of caboose Atlas offers came to the NKP with the 1949 merger of the Wheeling & Lake Erie into the NKP. From what I've read, they usually stayed on the former W&LE trackage.

Assuming that we're talking HO scale here, Athearn has a bay window caboose they offer in NKP paint. It's their #1176 (see

). It's their standard Southern Pacific-design bay window caboose, but in NKP paint. It lacks the distinctive upper and lower bunk windows that the NKP's bay window cabooses had, but whether it's close enough depends entirely on how many compromises you're willing to accept.

-fm Webmaster, Rails on Wheels, Washtenaw County, Michigan's HO Modular Club, at

The address in the header of this message is deliberately bogus to foil address-harvesters. See my web sites for my real address.

Would the Atlas caboose look somewhat proper behind an S1 classs

2-8-4? The Athearn Bay window caboose is definitely an SP prototype. I modeled the SP most of my life............been there done that. I gave up on the SP when brass got priced out of sight..................so now I freelance. I can run what ever I like, but I like to have a somewhat matching loco and 'boose for some showing at times.

John

John,

Visit the Yahoo egroups; there is an NKP group that discusses just this kind of question.

Probably the most recent caboose offering to get our group excited has been the Atlas model. It is mentioned elsewhere in this thread. The roof appears to be the only major difference in the model from the prototype. As I recall, the W&LE model had a riveted roof with no ribs.

Some of us have bashed rather credible cabooses from an MDCwooden caboose. It involves cuttng the car into three pieces, turning the middle piece end for end, then gluing everything back together again. Kind of fun and rather simple if you like that kind of stuff... the scribed siding of the wooden car makes for easy cutting.

Hope this helps...

dlm aka "The Guv" on the NKP egroup.