Will, this is a problem with Walthers. They paint items in
non-prototypical schemes, with non-prototypical combinations of
appliances and trucks. That's why I mentioned era and such. That's
really not a slam on Walthers either - they once put out a corrugated
car in "stainless steel" and since it wasn't a Santa Fe prototype,
they didn't paint it in Santa Fe. And subsequently got hundreds of
complaints about it. Well, it was a NYC prototype, and they figured
no one would want a New York Central car painted as a Santa Fe car.
They HAVE to sell x amount of cars in order to be able to produce the
next car in the line. If that means selling x amount under a bogus
scheme to people who don't care that it's bogus, then all the better.
The place where that falls down is where it's sold and the purchaser
doesn't know any better. The 10-1-2 is a perfect example, in the Rio
Grande scheme. Rio Grande owned no HW Pullmans. The Pullman Company
painted 4 leased 3585 10-1-2's in the 4 stripe scheme. Branchline
painted them correctly. The Walthers model painted them with the
Flying Rio Grande (as they did with the 8-1-2s). That becomes more
of a problem, for a number of reasons, but it isn't Walthers fault or
concern. Since then, they have put together the so-called "Holy
Thirteen" of railroads that sell well regardless of what you
produce. Santa Fe is one, Rio Grande another, and fortunately (or
not) Burlington is also one.
Why fortunately if it's not prototypical? Well, some cars make good
stand-ins even though they aren't close to the prototype. The
Trainline baggage and RPO are examples. They are C&NW cars, their
roofs, underframe and ends are completely wrong for the CB&Q. The
sides are slightly less wrong. But they make convincing stand-ins
when you make modifications. The Walthers diner is not real close
to a Q diner, but it is a LOT closer to one than the old
AHM/Rivarossi AT&SF diner. The 3-2 Obs and the soon to be coming
Solarium aren't close to anything that the Q owned, but you can make
some modifications to the Solarium (I hope) to make it look close
enough. And so on. And, depending on your tolerance for such
things, they might be "good enough" for you, and that's great.
Branchline started as a company that did custom (prototypical) paint
jobs. That still shows in their projects. They sell specifically
named cars for specifically named paint jobs and plans. They are
well researched and they are 99% of the time, correct, with the
correct A/C and as far as can be accomplished, trucks. The reason
you haven't seen the AT&SF versions of the Branchline Pullmans is
exactly because of this concept - the parts are taking longer than
expected to make. When completed, those cars will be offered. They
could have sold a LOT more cars by offering them without the proper A/C.
One continuing issue is that there are no 24/xx25xx cores available
to the industry to create the cars that might be used to fill out the
truly correct cars for a given assignment. The dorm cars on the Expo
is one example. But there are myriad others. There *might* be one
coming down the road, as at least one manufacturer has seen the
glaring need. But that will be at least 1-2 years down the
road. But once that core is available, a lot of options open up for
the other cars, like the 2585n 10-1-2s and the 13 section, 14 section
and 16 section cars that would show up on the Expo and other Q trains
(not to mention the various 2410 12-1 incarnations).
So, yeah, if you want the exact model of the exact car, go
Branchline. Walthers makes very nice cars, and in a lot of
instances, their cars may be exactly correct for a given
application. It depends on where you want to spend your research
time and modeling time.
Re: Walthers Standard 8-1-2 Sleeper
I went looking thur some of the web and found this out. The Walthers
8-1-2 sleeper is based on the pullman plan 3947-A (242 cars built).
Looking at the pullman records from pullmanproject.com. CB&Q, C&S,
and FW&D did not have any of this type. I am still try to figure
out all of the CB&Q pullman cars were but the seem to be 8-5, 12-1
and 10-1-1 (I know C&S and FW&D had all three types)
Will Jensen
Bob Webber
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