It's payday at Peters and the pay train has just arrived! |
At each joint in the engine jacket was a band of brass 4 inches wide. Dome, sand box, chests and cylinders were encased in brass polished until you could have seen to shave in it. Her front end and her dainty straight stack were rubbed with plumbago until they shone like a small boy's heel. All her brightwork was smooth and spotless and glittering, while all the rest of her surface was striped and curlicued with all the colors the general shops could mix.
Coupled to the engine was a wheeled palace built on graceful lines in freshly varnished paint which rivaled the brasswork on the engine in brilliance. The plate glass windows were curtained in bright-hued brocade. Not a speck or a flaw was to be seen. Even the wheels bore only so much dust as had been gathered on the day's run."*
Employees at Peters await their turn at the pay window. Yes, The S&C does employ women telegraph operators. |
I wanted the S&C to have its own pay car. Information on them is not that easy to find. There are a few old articles about the process and some text books advising how many men with rifles, pistols and cutlasses should be on the car but nothing really good for modeling. Most of the photos I saw were older, lighter locomotives but very well kept up with older, well-kept coaches converted to pay service. Based on these facts, I built my car.
Built from a Bachmann old-time coach, the Aurelia serves as the S&C's pay car. |
Every once in a while, in a photo of an older car, you see molding arranged in an oval on the side of the car. This was used for the car's name or number. I wanted this effect on my car. The oval piece is from a Grandt Line structure dating set. This set comes with several "shields" on which to place the building date and one of them is an oval of about the right size.
After painting in the standard S&C scheme, I added decals proclaiming the car's purpose along with its name, Aurelia, which is from the Latin for golden being, of course, what the car carried.
The locomotive, the C.A. Coscia, is the dedicated engine for the pay train and was discussed in my post on October 31, 2013.
* __________, The Passing of the Pay Car. The Railroad Gazette, New York: July 26, 1907.
Don,
ReplyDeleteThis looks really spectacular. What type paint did you use for the Ochre?
I used a mixture of 2 parts SP Armour Yellow and 3 parts Reefer White (all Floquil enamels) to get the body color. Roof Brown was used for the trim.
DeleteDon
Who produced the decals for the coach, like for the letterboard linework, scrolls and lettering?
ReplyDeleteThe artwork was developed by myself using Adobe Illustsrator and based on a Virginia & Truckee restored coach in the Nevada State Railroad Museum. They were printed on my Alps printer.
Delete