IHC has a line of streamlined passenger cars lettered for various roads, including the Boston & Maine. Coach, Pullman, baggage, "checker board window" sleeper, diner, dome car and boat tailed observation are available, about $12 a car new. With an E8 in the old pre McGinnis gold and maroon paint, it could look good. Omit the dome car and the checkerboard sleeper cause B&M never had any. Same for the observation car, but they look so good on the end of the train that I'll pretend I don't know, and put one there anyhow. The IHC cars are a reasonable match for B&M coaches 4800-4807, they have the fluted sides, round roof, 4 wheel trucks of the prototype, and the B&M lettering is OK. They become a better match after painting a red horizontal stripe thru the window area. All my proto type photos show them painted this way. Ordinary masking tape gives a good clean paint line if pressed down well with a thumbnail. One coat of auto supply store red primer followed by a coat of gloss red from a spray can covers the silver well. Disassemble the car and remove the window "glass" assembly before masking and spraying. I lit these cars with the Walther's 933-1049 light kit (made for the new Walthers streamline cars). It's a constant brightness circuit on a plastic carrier. After drilling six holes in the IHC window glass assembly, the light kit snaps into place just like it was made to fit the IHC car. For power pickup, order metal wheels from IHC's web site. I fabricated axle wipers from a bit of spring bronze weather stripping and fastened them to the trucks with a single 2-56 machine screw, lock washer and nut. To improve the brightness of the lights, I spray painted the black plastic inside of the car flat white. Go easy on the paint coats, too much paint and the window glass assembly will stick and make it difficult to re assemble the car. While the car is masked, a coat of light gray auto primer on the underside will kill the plastic gloss and improve the looks. I went overboard and ordered interior kits while at the IHC website to order the wheels. I had to cut down the height of the interior partitions 0.25 to clear the light kit in the ceiling. A Dremel followed with 220 grit sandpaper handled this chore. With the interior kit, the light kit, metal wheels and 8 copper pennies, the car weighs
6.5 ounces, just about right for an 11-inch car. I body mounted Kadee #5 couplers and shimmed the coupler up to the right height with a #6 flat washer under each truck. This caused the car to take on an ugly list to starboard because the factory snap-in truck retaining pins didn't have quite enough extra length to snap-in properly with the shim in place. I replaced the plastic pins with 6-32 pan head machine screws. I tapped the factory truck mounting holes 6-32 and added a lock nut on the inside of the car. The factory holes are just the right size for 6-32. The lock nut lets me set truck tightness just so, and then put enough pressure on the screw to keep it from working loose. So, second car in the train is done. 4 more to go.David J. Starr