HOn3 Parlor Car for the B&SGE

[VagelK]

Sometimes adding to a model railroad's rolling stock roster isn't so much a model-building task but only a matter of purchasing a brass piece, then painting and decalling it (if it isn't already factory-painted for a prototype).  This was the case with the presidential parlor/business car for my Blacklog & Shade Gap Eastern.  An EBay score several years ago brought a NWSL Ohio River & Western parlor car - painted an appropriate shade of green and lightly weathered - to the roster, where it languished in unlettered and unnamed limbo until now.  This is the car ready finally ready to go into service:



Clerestory window frames were filled with Evergreen .010 x .060" strip styrene affixed with superglue.

I over-sprayed the car with Tamiya Clear Coat to provide a smooth surface for lettering and numbers.  The road name is from one of 50 original sheets I had printed by Rail Graphics in the mid-1990s; they are in surprisingly good condition, with the clear film not brittle.  I have lettered this car and a combine (SEE "HOn3 Combine - EBT Prototype" in this same sub-forum) and had only one tear.  The car numbers came from an equally old sheet of EBT freight car decals from the Friends of the EBT Co. Store.

A railroad's business car has to have a name, and I chose "Hadessa," for my maternal grandmother, without whom I might never have discovered narrow-gauge railroads in general, and the EBT in particular, as a child.  Gramma Locke, known throughout lower Huntingdon County as "Dessie," rode the EBT on her journey to wed Pappy Locke back in 1912 and had a feeling of nostalgia for it, so when she learned that the EBT was going to reopen for rides during that fateful Homecoming Week in August 1960, she asked Mom and Dad to drive her over the mountain to "ride it one last time before they rip it up."  Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

That long-winded preamble leads to this:  the sign is printed on regular white paper glued to a 3x5 card backing, trimned to size and glued to the car side with Aileen's.

After decals and signs were applied and over-sprayed with Testors Dull Coat, I added .005" clear styrene, affixed to the interior with Micro Krystal Klear, to represent window glazing.  A final touch was to paint the rear railing brass.



Now, at long last, the B&SGE can finally keep up with the Jones's next door.

[ReadingBob]

Oh man! That looks great. We'll done.

[jbvb]

Nice finish work, Vagel. The operators, photographers and LPs aboard won't care if it was built on the other side of the Date Line.

[VagelK]

Thanks, guys.