Passenger Car Finished

John Barry stopped by on Saturday for  mini work session. He got to work adding glazing to windows for the warehouses on Aquia Landing. I had pre-painted them, so it was just a matter of  adding the glazing. There were about 80 windows that need glazing and John got most of them done.

In the meantime I did various tasks. First I added a car card box and shelf to the Burnside Wharf area. I have initially grouped the cards for Aquia Landing and Burnside's Wharf in one box. But after a few op sessions, it seems like a separate box at Burnside Wharf might make things easier for  my operators.

I also made a new car card box for Aquia Landing that fit the fascia better.

I then spent a good part of the rest of the weekend working on the passenger car. I decided to rebuild the roof. The first roof I made was warping because the joists were not glued to the roof decking. So I made new joists and purlins. I also cut a new roof deck from 1/32 basswood. I added scribed lines to create the look of planks, but to also to kerf the the wood roof to curve easier. The top surface of the roof is a piece of paper secured with spray glue.

The new roof fits tightly with no warp. It also looks cool when the roof is off.

I finished the rest room details and added the steps, railings and some other minor details.

The decals are from a set I had made several years ago.

New Operation Sessions, Aquia Line 6 and PoLA 13

We hosted another pair of dueling Op Sessions today. JD Drye, Terry Terrance, Mat Thompson, Tom Pierpoint, Joel and John Salmons ran trains on the Aquia Line, while Kent Smiley and Brad Trencamp took care of PoLA.  I had to cancel the January session, so it had been a few months since the last op session, though we did have the kids work the layout in the interim.  I posted a video on youtube showing some of the action from today's session.

My main objective today was to evaluate the operation of the new passenger car. It worked well. However, we discovered that it just barely cleared the Clozet Tunnel portal. That means that if I make a longer passenger car, I will have to be very careful in the width to insure the roof doesn't scrape the tunnels. There also a few places where the mid-part of the body just cleared the switch stands. But they did clear!

Right at the start of the session, engine Haupt went dead. It also had a bug the night before -  as I was test running its decoder made some strange noises. I think it is time to replace the decoder in Haupt with a battery backup. Fortunately, Engine McCallum was available to fill in for Haupt and the session continued without delay. We did not run the General's Special today, but we did run 3 train at the same time.   It is also becoming apparent that I have enough freight cars for now to support a session. If i go to longer trains, I may need a few more.  Everyone liked the new hay bales.

I had replaced the frog juicer circuit that controls 6 turnouts in Aquia Landing prior to the session. The new circuits works perfectly. In examining the old circuit card I could clearly see some components that were damaged.

Newly weathered auto rack 

Kent and Brad got in late, so they got to run PoLA, which pleased both go them. Their session went smoothly and they had a good time. I had added two more auto racks to the scenario. My new plan is to use CMT as the auto rack terminal, instead adding an auto rack terminal as the modular addition. Instead, I will add an additional siding for Vopak as a FREMO module. The geometry here requires a sharper radius around 22 inches, which would be trouble if it was a auto rack terminal. With this design I get to run more tank cars to the expanded Vopak and the auto racks to CMT, along with other loads. Win-Win.

This started out as pan full of cookies.

My mom prepared the snacks today. She made Madeline cookies with bits of dates soaked in marsala wine and a cranberry cake that was delicious. I just got a small sliver, and when I went to get a second piece, it was all gone!

We can log another good session in the books.

A Passenger Car for the Aquia Line

This USMRR wreck train of the O&A has an interesting assortment of cars including a 10-window passenger car. Note there are two wrecked locomotives suggesting that the train was double headed.

 The USMRR freight car rosters that I found in the National Archive show that the Aquia Line had one passenger car in the time period I model. I suspect this was the car that they used to transport officers in accordance with General Hooker's order documented here. That order establishes  three cars for passenger service, but the roster only lists one. They probably used regular freight cars to transport soldiers.

So, I need at least one passenger car on the railroad. The problem is that a full sized passenger car will be trouble on the tight curves of my railroad. When I was laying out the track, I made a simple passenger car from a block of wood. I made sure that the car would clear obstacles like rock outcroppings, fences, etc. I recently used a standard gauge 40-ft box car to verify these clearances. All was OK. But the coupler overhang on these long cars could be a problem. What I really needed was a short passenger car. Fortunately, the USMRR had one. See the lead image for an example of a 10-window passenger car on the the USMRR O&A Line.

I have copies of a drawing  for a 10 window passenger car that was built for the Pacific Road in the 1860s. I used those plans to get the overall dimensions and layout of my car. But I modified some of the details to match the car in the photo above.

I cut the core of the car from 0.13 inch thick acrylic plastic, which was nominally 1/8th inch, but you have to verify the actual thickness if you use tabs and slots in your design. After filling the gaps and rounding the corners with sandpaper , I gave it a couple coats of Krylon gap filling primer, my favorite primer.

Then I painted it a base color of Vallejo Light Brown, which was a slight yellow tint. the interior is Vallejo Burnt Umber.


I made the trim from wood veneer that had been prepainted and sealed to hide the grain. I painted the trim Vallejo Burnt Umber. This was a color scheme that Dave Schneider referenced when doing the SMR Trains USMRR passenger colors, as "two-tone brown."  I wanted the car to stand out from the other freight cars  on the layout. Furthermore, passenger cars in this era were often brightly painted.

However, in studying the prototype photo, it looks to be like the car is a single color, with perhaps a contrasting stipe down the center where the number is. I may repaint car in all burnt umber except for that central stripe.  What do you think?


 I began detailing the interior with trim, rest rooms, seats, and a stove based on other photos of cars in that era. The seats are based on a design for a B&O passenger car form the 1850s.  I made the seat frames with laser cut 1/32 birch plywood. The bottom cushion is a carved piece of 1/8th inch basswood.

The car will ride on a pair of SMR brass passenger trucks. The set comes with brakes on both trucks, but the drawing I have shows brakes on only one. So I will remove one set of brakes.












I plan to install the coupler on a pivoting arm to help with the tight curves. I will use a technique that is similar to how some HO scale 89-ft cars are done. The Accurail  set on the left is an example of a pivoting coupler are.