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SP Baggage Cars- 50s/60s?

Hello all,

I've been working on putting together a sort-of-realistic (i.e. as close as I can with what's available out there) short SP passenger train-- something like the Lark or San Joaquin in their later years, say late 1950s or 1960s.

Does anyone know of any SP Baggage cars out there in HO scale that would be representative of what were used on these western routes? From the pictures I've seen, most seem to use a smooth-sided two door baggage car painted green. I'm guessing these were ones built by Pacific Car & Foundry in the early 60s. But beyond that, I'm not sure what kind of car is being used. I've seen the espee.railfan.net site, as well as Mr. Robert Morris' photo archive online.

If anyone has any information on these in HO scale, or just other references, it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance,

Eric

Reply to
skyliner
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In their book "Southern Pacific Passenger Trains Vol 1", Ryan and Shine provide the 1959 Lark assignments as 80' baggage-express #6503 and 70' baggage-express #6500 in the 1st train, and similar cars 6504 and 6501 in the second train, all in 2-tone gray. 6500/1 were 70' Harriman cars riding on 6 wheel trucks, so you might make a model with a splice of 2 of the MDC kits and changing the trucks. 6503/4 were 80' 3 door clearstory roof cars previously used on the Starlight. You could approximate these with a splice of two Athearn heavyweight baggage cars. The authors indicate the Harriman cars were replaced with cars from the 6601-6700 series 66' economy baggage cars from St. Louis Car Co. when delivered in 1960. It looks like you could approximate these cars with the Con-Cor smoothside shorty car or the Athearn car with the fluting sanded off.

Reply to
Geezer

Thanks for the response, I will definately look into those options.

EC

Reply to
skyliner

You're in luck, as a sort-of-realistic modeler of SP like me you can throw a really nice array of head end cars at a train and usually be pretty close to something that might have existed.

Here in Houston behind the main post office (which occupies the site where SP used to have it's pass. term.) the SP used to store quite a few head end cars. Most were solid grey, weathered and sun-beaten with what looked like pink lettering (perhaps old faded white or off-white). Speaking of course circa 1968.

Don't limit yourself, smooth-side, celestory and Harriman all ran into the 60s. A *few* stainless steel head end cars roamed the system, but mostly the older stuff.

Greg

Reply to
Greg Forestieri

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