The black sand I found had a glossy texture, which is perfect for lump coal. I just smeared flat black craft acrylic paint on the carved foam and sprinkled the black sand on it. Worked like a charm. I should also mention I also picked up a bag of white sand from the same store to experiment with. It is far too light for limestone in this region, I'm thinking I could color it with gray of some sort and come up with a closer color to limestone.... perhaps a budget alternative to ballast. I don't think I'll have time to work on that in the next couple weeks, so that is something to keep on the back burner for now.
Beautiful scene and stainless steel look. I especially like the lamp post, trash can and bench. Those are the kind of details that really turn it up a notch.
Thanks, guys (and girls!). Interesting trivia with these baggage/mail cars; the mail portion was supposed to be at the head end (behind the locomotive) as it was a secure area, so the baggage crew didn't have to go through the mail area to get to the rest of the train.
This looks so nice. Just like the days when we had real passenger trains, and the railroads were proud of them.
It's difficult to see, but it appears the mailbag hook opening is facing the engine. I wonder if mailbag hooks could be removed and mounted facing in either direction so RPO cars wouldn't have to be turned at terminals....does anyone have information on this?
At first I was going to say that, especially on bag/RPO cars, the catch hook would be reversible. It just might be, but for the reasons I mentioned above (someone correct me if I'm wrong) the open end of the hook would always face going forward in bag/RPO cars like Russell's photo shows. (An all-RPO car would conceivably have the hook reversible, though.)
Josta, you probably are correct, but that would require the most, if not all RPO/Bag cars be turned at terminals which seems inefficient and labor-intensive.
It's been so long now, there might not be a lot of the clerks left who could answer this question. Sure would be interesting to know more.
I guess that makes sense when a company operates a name train as a unit, and is proud of its image. Be interesting to know if other companies did the same.
With the RPO at one end and a blunt end 10/6 sleeper at the other, it was kind of a given. On the #1, the Jim Crow car was pulled out in El Paso and picked up by the #2 going the other way back to New Orleans.
Ooo. Nice close in view! From this, it looks to me as though it could be reversed. If the stop at left of the top rod can be loosened, it could be done.
In this photo you can see a spline on top of the rod to the right of the stop. The stop is weighted so that it rotates the keyway to the bottom. To remove, you rotate the stop to line the keyway up with the spline and slide it away from the bracket on the car. Then just slide the whole hook assembly to release the back from the pocket by the handle and then pull the rod out of the bracket on the left. There is a little wind screen that clips onto the side of the car to let the person operating the hook to shield from dust and deploy the hook at the right time. It can also be move to face the other side by clipping it onto the attachment points on the other side of the door.
From Model Railroader: " The mail catcher was simply slid into permanently-installed brackets on the two sides of the personnel door. To remove it, the mail clerk pushed it toward the open end until the stub at the closed end came out of the bracket. Then it would simply be pulled inside the door line and moved away from the closed end until the open end slid out of its bracket. The catcher could be installed in either direction, or moved to the opposite side. Usually there was only one catcher in place at any given time. "
