Rio Grande heavyweight train

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi guys,
Last month I began thinking about building a passenger train for my railroad. Historically I have only run freight, with an occasional mixed train that included the combine I built a few years ago.

I wanted to keep it simple. During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the Grande operated a train called the San Luis. It usually consisted of two or three cars, and the cars were Pullman green or four strip Grande gold during this era:

I wanted to use two of the USA Trains heavyweights to represent the Grande’s 900 series cars. I bought two lettered for the Santa Fe:

Leighton Moreland of Hyacinth Models was kind enough to share the artowrk he used for lettering their HO scale baggage cars. Using that, I drew up the lettering I needed in AutoCAD. Custom dry transfers were made for me at http://www.drytransfer.com/.

The prototype 900 series heavyweights had four wheel trucks, so I bought a pair of dirt cheap Aristo heavyweights on eBay to be truck donors. The USAT trucks were removed and the Aristo trucks added, along with prototypical safety chains:

I also bought an Aristo RPO/baggage car on eBay (also dirt cheap) to be doctored up accordingly:

Last week I began lettering of the cars and painting of the RPO/baggage. The RPO/baggage also inherited a pair of the USAT six wheel trucks; it also got a USAT diaphragm on the baggage end. Grande trains during this era had a variety of colors:

I used Krylon matte Spanish Moss for the baggage/RPO. I was able to remove the Santa Fe lettering from the USAT coaches using a q-tip and lacquer thinner. Each side of each car takes about an hour to letter, but by last weekend I was able to first operate my version of the San Luis:

Here’s that Aristo BN RPO/baggage car after alterations:

More on the fate of the Aristo donor cars later.

Cheers,
Matt

[rmccown-admin (Bob McCown (Admin))]

Really nice work, Mark! And thanks for the pointer to drytransfer.com.

[John_Bouck]

Beautiful! Great job!
Didn’t they call the pullman green “The Chile Line” (I’m not sure if that was it.)

[PeterT]

@John_Bouck

“The Chile Line”

Wasn’t that the D&RGW narrow gauge extension towards Santa Fe?

[John_Bouck]

Pete, that sounds like the route.
I got Matt’s standard gauge mixed up with NG.
Accucraft issued some 1:20.3 NG coaches in green D&RG some time a while back. A friend of mine has the set.
I bought the gold set to go with his.

[Matt_Hutson]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

A few other alterations of note. I removed all of the people from the USAT cars and basted them with Dullcote and weathered them a bit. There may be Shiny Happy People in an old R.E.M. song, but not in the real world! A few of them were re-painted so they were dissimilar from their fellow travelers. Once altered, they were mostly returned to their seats.

I also ordered another set of 1:29 scale people from USAT to “people” the two Aristo donor coaches. The people in the observation car are 3D printed and were purchased from Shapeways years ago.

All cars were equipped with body mounted couplers, mostly Kadee 906’s.

Somebody sent me a back channel email asking about the truck safety chains. The chain is from Micro-Mark. I have now cut up several feet of that chain, eleven links at a time. Yay. These are the brass hooks I used:

I thought I got them from Micro-Mark as well, but cannot find them on their website now. They were chemically blackened with Birchwood Brass Black.

Cheers,
Matt

[Matt_Hutson]

Okay, an update on the Aristo donor cars. First of all, one of them was not a donor. I found an undecorated Aristo observation car on eBay in January for a very good price and made it into a tattered and tired version of the Grande’s business car Granite Canon, appropriate as the real Granite Canon is only a few miles to the north of me. Here’s what I started with:

Its six wheel trucks were re-assigned to the Pullman sleeper - more on that later. This car got a set of the USAT trucks from one of the coaches. It was painted with a thin coat of Krylon Satin Italian Olive and lettered with dry transfers. It got new couplers and a USAT diaphragm. The Aristo marker lights are still on it, awaiting proper 3D class lights from my son. The marker light lenses got a coat of Gallery Glass stained glass paint for now. Today it looks like this:

The first donor car was this:

As you can see, it was a little beat up. I cleaned it up and fixed the broken stuff. It got the six wheel trucks from the observation car, a new coat of paint, new couplers and new lettering. It got some passengers from USAT, along with diaphragms. It now looks like this:

This donor car was also a little beat up. I cleaned it up and gave it a pair of the Aristo six wheel trucks and new couplers. There’s a lady in there, but you can’t see her in this pic:

The RPO/baggage car is now mostly done. It got six wheel trucks and a diaphragm on the baggage end from USAT and a coat of Krylon Matte Spanish Moss. It also got new couplers. You can see I have drilled the trucks for the safety chains but they are not yet installed:

One more thing: the USAT coaches got toilet vents from Ozark Miniatures, blackened with Jax Pewter Black:

Most of what’s left to do on this train is the lettering on the sides of three cars.

Cheers,
Matt

[JRad (Jon Radder)]

Beautiful work. I can’t wait to see this running on your railroad with that awesome Colorado scenery!

[Matt_Hutson]

Thanks Jon! As soon as I can get #1509 off the workbench, I’ll get them all together for a proper passenger train,

Cheers,
Matt

[PeterT]

@Matt_Hutson

It was painted with a thin coat of Krylon Satin Italian Olive

I understood that the problem with the unpainted heavyweights was that you couldn’t get the window ‘glass’ out in order to paint the body. How did you manage? Was the glue so tired after 30 years that they fell out?

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi Peter,
I was unable to get the window glass out of the heavyweight observation car, so I masked the windows before painting.

On that Blue Comet car though, the windows all came out pretty easily, making it easy to bury the Aristo gold leaf window trim using a black paint pen from Hobby Lobby.

One other paint note: I painted the Aristo cars with two different colors of paint, both of which are different colors than the USAT coaches. As modelers, we tend to think of passenger cars as being all one consistent color, but of course they were not. Different cars were painted at different times and colors varied accordingly. Here are a couple of examples of prototype Grande trains showing variances in colors among the cars:

Cheers,
Matt

[Rooster]

@Matt_Hutson

As modelers, we tend to think of passenger cars as being all one consistent color, but of course they were not. Different cars were painted at different times and colors varied accordingly.

This is very true!