RPO's East & West

[Lenny53]

Really hope MTL tool a baggage/mail next.

[Bob Bufkin]

Just receive one of the NH cars.  The new six wheel trucks look good.  Body mounted couplers.  The window arrangement is different on both sides.  One side has 6 windows in 2 groups of 3.  The other side has six windows with one group of 4 and the other of 2.  Don't think anyone will have any problem running them on code 40 track.   The cast on mail hooks do not detract from this mode. I do have a bunch of brass mail hooks it I desire to change this.   Do have a question.  They have brake wheels on both ends - if this correct.

[Nato]

  First off the Brake Wheels on both ends was common to some heavyweight cars. Recieved both a GN & NH car. The best ready to roll plastic heavyweight car out there not counting Wheels O Time cars. A wonderful effort for MT's first real passenger car (not Troop Sleepers). As discribed in the previous post the all new Six Wheel Trucks are highly detailed with extra fine hanger pieces on the sideframe ends. Molded on detail is nice,roof details include a smoke jack and toilet vent. Kind of miss the opening doors found on the Wheels O Time baggage cars and the old Bachmann Combine,but it is not a necessary feature. Painting and lettering is supurb. Too bad we have to have the large size coupler not a closer to scale Z / Nn3 one.The frosted windows hide the fact that there is no interrior, some resin caster could offer an after market one. Only goof I found was in the MT newsletter which appears to have the captions for the NH & GN cars switched with the wrong photos. Laconia was a New Hampshire company and would have built cars for NH while Pullman Standard logically would have done GN cars or maybe a bit earlier Barney & Smith. Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah.

[Sokramiketes]

Yeah, the "frosted windows" are a little interesting, and not just because they're set back so far.  It looks like an attempt to put the bars in behind the windows, but the spacing is tight presumably to allow it to pop out of the mold.  I liked how MTL didn't finish polishing the mold... all the swirls and tooling marks in the glass must be part of the cost savings that made the car so cheap. 

[bbussey]

Here's the official NH diagram sheet for the RPO, which shows the window and interior arrangement.

[SkipGear]

As far as the tooling cost, I think I know where some of it went. This car, unlike just about every other MT car, seems to have a plastic floor with a seprate weight. I wonder if that accounted for some of the savings?

[bbussey]

The mail hooks are not free-standing, and the "etched" glass is part of the roof - similar to the RivaRossi design but better done.  The roof vents are part of the roof but the relief is done well enough for them to appear to be separate parts.  The stamped weight over a plastic floor, as opposed to a diecast floor, also helps with the cost.  Plus, some of the components (or parts of the injection molding tool) might be interchangeable with forthcoming heavyweights which also would help keep the costs down.  Required interiors in future models however will probably move the price point upward for them.

It's a nice design for kitbashing purposes.  The window band in the sides can be altered, or the sides can be removed entirely and replaced with new ones fabricated from plastic or etched brass.  Rubber molds can be made of the roof vents so the existing ones can be removed and resin castings be repositioned.  The underbody hardware can be repositioned easily (since it is plastic and not diecast), and be augmented with other detail parts such as from the ALM core kits.  While limited to a specific prototype as-is, for modeling purposes it fits a lot of roster positions with only moderate work.

What I want to see is if the 1023 coupler can be replaced with the 1015 (or 1016) so that the oscillation will not occur when the consist is moving forward.

[bbussey]

Update on the New Haven prototype - at least NH 3280 had a 2-4 window arrangement on one side, even though the official diagram shows an 0-4/4-0 arrangement.  MTL got the artwork from the 1925 Car Builders Cyclopedia (Train Shed Cyclopedia #65).  Figure #456 shows the exact as-built scheme of NH 3280 that was done.

Finding some documentation of the window configuration on the other side may be tough, but it can't be impossible.

[wcfn100]

In the CB&Q in COlor book, there is a reference to a similar car that originally had an 4-2 like window arrangement but the interior wasn't approved by the USPS so they had to change it.  It ended up with an 0-5 window arrangement. (I'm going here from memory)

Most photos I see* have all the windows at one end.  Could there be other situations like this where a lot of RRs rebuilt their cars with the windows to one end?


edit: *of heavyweight RPOs.

Jason

[bbussey]

Definitely something to consider is that the versions with all the windows were modified to not have windows at one end.  That definitely would explain the as-built photo of the NH car compared to the actual railroad diagram sheet.

[Puddington]

Not that it is of any significant issue to me; I don't really care if it's 100% accurate; but the Great Northern RPO, which is road number 35, would be part of a series from 30-36, according to Morning Sun's GN Color guide. If this is true then the window arrangement isn't like at of the pictured car number 30 on page 16. The shot shows a 2-3 arrnagement as opposed to the 2-4 model... As I said it's not really an issue for me; maybe there were differences but as I'm in a rotten mood tonight (took soon to be six year old son to Toronto to see Leafs vs Penguins; Leafs mailed in a horrible game, got cleaned and then we got back to the $ 30.00 parking spot to find out the car had been broken into and the XM radio ripped off) I thought I'd pour some fuel on the rivet club fire.................. > > > > > > > >

[CBQ Fan]

Puddington, I hear your pain.  Instead of the Cardinals playing to go up 2 games to one they were eliminated.  Dropped fly ball......Don't get me started.

[bbussey]

I came across more data regarding the New Haven version.  The series of 22 cars was built to a 2-4/4-2 window arrangement (as opposed to the 2-4/3-3 arrangement of the model) and clear clerestory window glass in 1913 and 1914.  All of the cars were modified in 1941 to have an 0-4/4-0 arrangement and the clerestory windows plated over.  So I will be modifying the MTL model after all.

Also - all 22 cars were active at least until 1964, with the large majority of them condemned in late 1968.  Five of them survived into Penn Central in active service.