To me there is nothing that speaks more directly of the golden era of railroading than steam engines pulling "old varnish" passenger trains - wooden coaches and baggage/mail cars with open front and rear platforms, clerestory windows and a potbelly stove in one corner. On my imagining of the TFRR the passenger business is stronger than ever - a mix of public transportation, tourist excursions, and seasonal/event specials in an alternate universe where the crude experience delivered by the gasoline engine remains a distant second to the comfort and convenience of rail travel in the mind of the public.
So far the TFRR passenger fleet consists of these two cars: a baggage/mail car and an observation car, which is a passenger coach or lounge car with a bit of a fenced in platform out the back door. This platform would be the place for passengers to see the scenery roll by while moving and politicians to make speeches while stopped.
As noted in the previous post, both of these were gotten for a song on ebay, leftovers from the vast fleet of forsaken "
Big Hauler" Christmas-tree-friendly train sets made by Bachmann Trains. I really like the look and weight of these cars. They don't the museum quality detail of cars by
Accucraft or
AMS, but do not succumb to what to my tastes (and for the TFRR) is the overly-cute look of the shortie passenger car fleets offered by
LGB and
Hartland Locomotive Works.
The black and white photos I've seen of prototype TFRR passenger cars give no hint of their actual color, so both of these were painted with this yellow and brown paint scheme that I imagined the railroad might have had or adopted.
At some point I'd like to add two more coaches to this train, then "name" each of the three passenger cars for a waterfall found in each of the counties where the TFRR ran:
Panther Creek Falls (Habersham),
Minnehaha Falls (Rabun) and
Big Laurel Falls (Macon). Needless to say, they all also need basic lettering.
My observation car started in a maroon "New York Central Lines" paint scheme with a broken rear step and deck.
Here's the "after" shot of the same car, where you can see that rather than repair the broken step I removed both rear steps altogether to increase the space on the enclosed observation deck. Since I'd removed the steps there was no need for the grab irons, so I removed those and filled the mounting holes with wood putty.
I also simplified the enclosing rail, trimming out all the diagonals and painting them green. On the very back I carefully trimmed out the right mix of struts to leave it spelling out a blocky "T" and "F" - a small short line railroad's answer to the fancy illuminated tail signs of the big, wealthy railroads. But I'm not completely satisfied with the yellow paint used for the "TF", as it tends to disappear against the yellow background of the car's wall when viewed from the rear.
Three passengers can be glimpsed through the windows, waiting for the train to leave the station. It amazes me how a few figures can instantly bring some life to the scene.
The interior got thin washes of brown paint that matted out the shiny plastic look, plus brought out wood grain cast in the floorboards. There was a large plastic blob left in the center of the car by the injection molding process. Rather than carve this thing out, I drilled a hole in the center and painted it gold, producing what I hope resembles a spittoon at first glance.
Here's the baggage/mail car.
I plan to model one end as a Railway Post Office (RPO), which was a special kind of mail car in which a postal agent actively sorted the mail picked up as the train rolled down the track, providing same-day mail service to the towns directly served by the railroad. (To learn more about the operation of RPO's, click
here for a great 1936 documentary on the mail trains on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.)
The other end will be modeled as a mix of passenger bags, boxes and the various mix of other items that was transported by the railroad - anything from a crate of chickens to a bundle of apple tree seedlings.
This car is also missing some handrails on one end. At some point I would like to replace all of the rinky-dink plastic handrails and grab-irons on these cars with some simple brasswork - tubing and/or solid wire.
Still to do on these cars:
* All lettering!
* Interior details of baggage/mail car
* Complete Kadee coupler conversion. Right now there is a motley mix of one Bachmann coupler, two body-mounted Kadee 830's and a truck mounted Kadee 909 that looks grotesque on the end of that long arm.
* Finally, I'm hoping to win permission to use the cool reimagined TFRR corporate logo that you can
see at the museum in Rabun Gap between the doors on the baggage/mail car. Or I may modify it into my own version by adding some simple mountain peak outlines to the inner circle.
