MODELING Weekend Photo Fun, June 8, 2018

After WWII, the railroads in North America were all eager to replace many of their worn out passenger cars with new light weight equipment. The passenger car manufacturers were inundated with large orders for new cars creating a backlog for deliveries. As a stop gap solution to get by until new equipment was delivered, the Santa Fe rebuilt and modernized many of their heavyweight cars. They came up with the "Shadow Line" paint scheme where the rebuilt cars were disguised as newer stainless steel cars using faux corrugations painted over a silver base. This allowed them to be mixed in with their prewar light weight stainless steel cars and not stand out too much. The illusion sort of worked and other railroads copied the technique on some of their cars. Here is a Rivarossi heavyweight dining car that I modified and applied a shadow line paint job.

 

I had forgotten just how pricey those were....

 

Same as what was discussed a few weeks ago http://www.trainboard.com/highball/...to-fun-may-25-2018.117365/page-2#post-1058498
Shower door rippled Plexiglass with the underside painted and the top left factory shiny.

 

I know a lot of folks don't care for graffiti but this one was kinda cool. Sitting in the yard in Grand Junction CO 06/08/2018.

 

Thanks. That is N scale.

 

I like to think that I had a part in bringing the Shadow Line paint scheme to the attention of the model railroad community. It had sort of been done before, my old 1950s era Marx 027 tin plate Santa Fe set has smooth side cars with fluting painted on the side. However, I was unable to find anything done that way in the 1990s. As a member of the Gulf Coast Chapter of the NRHS, we had an old Santa Fe smooth side 6-6-4 Pullman sleeper that I wanted to model in N scale. I used a Con Cor smooth side car as a core and cut my own sides to mount on it. In researching what paint scheme it wore in 1951, the year my NTRAK modules were based on, I found out it was painted in Shadow Line at that time. I played around and found I could draw thin pencil lines on silver paint and produce an acceptable simulation. The paint job had barely dried when Kato came out with their N scale smooth side cars base on the UP cars and contained a 6-6-4 sleeper. Of course at that time they painted them up in a number of different railroad schemes. I managed to pick up an undecorated 6-6-4 sleeper and painted it up using the same technique. About that time Kieth Thompson came by to photograph my modules for an article in Model Railroader and suggested that I write an article for the "Ask Paintshop" column at Model Railroader. That was published in the February 1996 issue. It contained a history of the paint scheme along with a few prototype photos of cars painted in the scheme. A year after that I was contacted by a gentleman from Chicago, I think his name was something like Ed Bronsky who had a company called Bronze Key Models. He was inspired by my article and needed a similar paint scheme for his HO kits of the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee Silverliners that he was producing. Drawing pencil lines was a little too tedious for including in kit instructions so he had some exquisite custom decals produce for Shadow Lines. He sent me a sample. I found I could overlap two layers of them and double up the lines for N scale. That worked out really nice. I took one of the Kato cars that I had painted and decaled with the Bronze Key decals by the Kato booth at a train show and showed it to Charlie Vlk. A year or so after that Kato released a 4-pack of Santa Fe 6-6-4 sleepers, two in Shadow Line and two in two tone gray. Coincident? You decide. I had ordered a bunch more decals from Bronze Key and was using them for HO cars for a few friends and some of my own along with more N scale cars. I was running out and tried to order more but Bronze Key was no loner in business. So now what? Have my own custom decals made? Just as I was about to draw up the artwork, Micro Scale came out with the 60-1243 and the HO set as well of Shadow Line decals. And I didn't even have to beg them to do it.
Anyway, here is an HO car I did.

 

Yes, number 60-1243. The set also comes with a lot of Santa Fe car names and numbers for the cars that had the paint scheme. However there is a separate sheet in the pack with just the shadow line decals.

Nice CNS&M car there.