N&W Powhatan Arrow livery

[DIFFLOCK]

My ebay purchase from the States of a set of 8 IHC smooth-sided passenger cars (one of each type) arrived at Parcelfarce on Friday. I got stung by customs, thank you SOOOO much, but I guess sometimes you're the windscreen, sometimes you're the fly eh?

 

Anyway - the cars are in Norfolk & Western Tuscan red and gold livery, some of which have Powhatan Arrow emblazoned on the sides: I bought them to put behind my J 4-8-4 locos for that very reason. B) All the cars have dark brown roofs with the exception of the Vista Dome car which has a black roof. I'm sure the Powhatan Arrow train did not have the Vista Dome car, only the observation car with the rounded back end at the rear of the train, so perhaps the black vista dome roof was prototypical? I also do know that the Powhatan Arrow was an all-passenger car train and so did not have the Baggage, Railway Post Office, Combine and Diner cars. Despite that fact, Rule 1 (it's my railroad! LOL) means that I can couple all 8 for a magestic looking train anyway

 

I've got a video of the train trundling around Bee Lane (thanks to the wrong kind of sky cancelling air travel, the Transatlantic Tunnel was dug in record time and the N&W steam special had a trip down the WCML ) I'll try and upload & link to it FWIW.

 

The black roof looks a little out of place, so I wonder if I should find the right shade of brown and paint it?

 

Cheers,

Diff.

[Oldddudders]

Thanks for getting me off my a**e! The Powhatan Arrow launched in 1946, using cars that had been delivered in 1941, i.e. before Pearl Harbor. Looking at a couple of pics of the Arrow in the '50s, leaving Cincinnati, this is a 6-car train, no head-end as you say, car roofs appear to be black, although somewhat dusted over. Car trucks are black. The IHC sets (don't expect any more once present stocks are gone, 'cos IHC itself is gone) are v good value if a little generic. The tavern-lounge obs should have one of those nearly-car-long roof antenna things.

[DIFFLOCK]

Thanks for getting me off my a**e!

Exercise is good for you so they say!

The tavern-lounge obs should have one of those nearly-car-long roof antenna things.

 

It doesn't - it's smooth as a baby's bum! I know what you're on about, but I don't know what it was for - TV? radio?

 

Thank you for the info!

 

Diff.

[DIFFLOCK]

I guess radio - I found this article re: a Dome car

 

http://www.search.com/reference/Dome_car

[Adrian Wintle]

Did the N&W ever operate any dome cars? A number of the eastern roads didn't because there wasn't the clearance (under the wires?) to operate them safely. The PRR, NYC, and ACL are lines I'm pretty sure (certain for PPR) didn't operate them.

 

C&O and B&O had low-profile domes (originally intended for the C&O).

 

Edit: http://www.vistadome.com/vistadome/ shows a N&W dome in blue.

 

Adrian

[Glorious NSE]

N&W didn't originally have any domes, the blue one linked to was inherited (along with 5x others) when they bought the Wabash in the early 1960s, so it wouldn't have worked with N&W steam pre-dieselisation (although with them keeping a J running in preservation it could have happenned in later years?)

 

IMTS rules can apply as with the RPO etc though.

 

A good site on domes can be found here: http://www.trainweb.org/web_lurker/WebLurkersDOMEmain/

 

 

 

 

[DIFFLOCK]

Thanks for the interesting links guys! B) Seems like the IHC N&W dome car is a fantasy livery, but it still looks good!

 

Found some more interesting info (if I'm allowed to link to another forum from 4 years ago)

http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/80991.aspx

 

Back to the antenna on the roof of the tavern lounge car I guess some kind of handrail offcuts may suffice should I wish to model it?

 

Cheers!

Diff.

[Oldddudders]

Thanks for the interesting links guys! B) Seems like the IHC N&W dome car is a fantasy livery, but it still looks good!

 

Back to the antenna on the roof of the tavern lounge car I guess some kind of handrail offcuts may suffice should I wish to model it?

 

Antenna : yes, that sounds like a good starting point. I'd rather imagine that in the good old days of customising cars, one of the several ranges of US detail parts - Cal Scale, Detail Associates, Details West etc - did such a kit, but I think the quality of so much RTR stuff now has probably slowed sales of those items.

 

IHC - They did at least three ranges of car types, heavyweights/smooth-sided/corrugated-sided, with up to 8 variations in each, and a zillion road-names. Often on half-price sale, too, so silly-cheap. Thus almost any prototype could have its varnish train to get the layout going, while the modeller decided whether to spend a bit more, or a lot more, getting closer to accuracy with brass etc. I have a few brass cars, from the cheap Soho range, which I hope will end up as a Rock Island streamliner, ideally the fabled Golden Rocket - a train for which the Rock Island cars were built, but which never ran, due to partner Southern Pacific getting cold feet. I've been waiting some years to get the tail car - La Mirada, but have yet to see one I can afford!

[DIFFLOCK]

Video is now uploaded to youtube FWIW

 

 

Diff.