A Selley Baggage Car?

For those not in the know about vintage HO scale rolling stock, Selley was one of the early manufacturers offering a set of short passenger cars.  These were kits with metal parts including the roof, truck frames, end platforms, really everything except the wood block floor and some clear acetate for window glass.  Producing cast metal detail parts beginning in 1941, the company made a small number of freight car kits but a wide variety of freight car parts including doors, sills, underframes, etc.  The coach and combine made their debuts, respectively, in February and March of 1960.

I fell in love with the combine at a train show in Ohio, buying the kit and bringing it home back at the turn of the century (is it too soon to use that phrase?).  Eventually I found another, and two coaches to match. However, that's all Selley ever made.  While other manufacturers added baggage cars, observations, parlors, etc. in their range of passenger offerings, Selley only ever made the combine and coach, marketing the combine as a complete one-car train.

These are short cars*; 6 inches long, an attribute that enables them to handle tight curves without that ugly overhang, according to the manufacturer.  So when I stumbled across a vintage metal kit for a baggage car with a similar length I was intrigued.  Who had made this?  It didn't take long to discover it was New One, a manufacturer from Japan.  These kits were similar to Selley's, only the roof was wood and the parts such as the end steps and railings were more crudely stamped metal instead of lovely detailed castings.

The New One car, or rather, "re-kit"** I bought is a real basket case.  It was missing the roof and one of the end steps and railings but no matter; those were parts I didn't need.  At first sight I immediately began forming in my mind a cunning plan to combine, pardon the pun, one of my Selley combines with these sides to make a "Selley" baggage car.  The big question was whether or not they would fit together. 

The Selley construction was different from other manufacturers' methods.  Instead of offering sides and ends and roof as separate parts or casting the body as one piece, they cast part of the roof with the sides, leaving the top bit above the clerestory windows to be attached.  So in order to fit the baggage sides to the Selley "roof", the lower roof parts will need to be cut away from the old Selley combine sides and added to the New One sides.  Then the length (width) of the New One sides will need to be reduced by just about an eighth of an inch on each end.  A real kitbashing challenge!

My Selley kits are still unbuilt but from time to time I take them out, inhale that glorious vintage kit aroma, and admire all the gleaming metal parts.  I'll add the New One baggage parts to the same box as the Selley kits.  For now that's where they'll live, but someday they'll get their day on the workbench and after that, time on the high iron conveying passengers - and their baggage - to their destinations.  Of course I'll need to rebuild my New One ten-wheeler to pull the whole lot...

*While the Selley cars are short, they're not "Sierra" cars, a moniker often assigned incorrectly to any short combine/coach pair that vaguely resembles the cars used on the Angels branch of the Sierra RR.  Those cars were much shorter and sagged noticeably.  The MDC Overton cars are shorter than the Selley cars; the Binkley shorty cars shorter still.  The Ulrich one-piece cars, another combine/coach pair, are about the same as the MDC, maybe a little shorter.  There were other metal side cars; New One, already mentioned above, and Alexander alongside Mantua.  However, much longer than that and we're leaving "shorty" territory and getting into the 50' and larger range.

 **One of my YouTube videos is about re-kitting a Wabash box car.  Sometimes it is best to crack that old glue, clean off the parts and rebuild the car.  This baggage car is one of those cases, though I'm going to re-kit the car before kit-mingling the parts with the Selley combine.  Re-kitting is just the first step.

Combine Countdown

Having finally put a coat of primer on the now-detailed Binkley Shorty Baggage, I can turn my full attention to the remaining car in the Milk & Mail trio, the Binkley Shorty Combine.  This car I purchased from an eBay listing that supported a model train club in Vermont, if memory serves.  Clearly someone put some time and effort into it, building an interior, shaping the roof and applying some sort of contour putty to it, then painting it a garish red and black.*  Still, time has not been kind to this car, and I must rebuild it and put it to work on the Ocali Creek.

This post is titled, "Combine Countdown" because I begin working on this car with a good idea of the sequence of events that now lay before me.  Having upgraded the baggage car - mostly the roof - I know the steps to take that will bring me closer to completion.  First was to clean away the detritus and damage to the roof so that I could rebuild it.  This was done a while ago as I was assessing what would need to be done to this and the other car.  

Now I could proceed to extend the clerestory roof edge down the bullnose - a challenge for any kit that requires you to shape the end manually, though Northeastern has a jig for their wood kits, but I digress.  I did this with HO scale 4"x4" styrene strip.  Warm the strip in your mouth a minute then roll it under a firm round object, like the handle of an Xacto knife.  Continue until it holds a curve similar to the roof.  This will make gluing it in place a great deal easier.  I cut a little divet off the end to let it snuggle up to the lower roof edge.  This isn't crucial, as plastic putty will fill any gaps - and boy are there gaps.

Up next, putty, sanding, and preparing parts for the clerestory roof screen.  Thanks for reading.

*Garish perhaps for a train car, but lovely for other things.  The lyrics to a song I once sang spring to mind: "Morning sun greets many banners on its westward track.  Fair to us above all others waves the red and black."

Milk & Mail - Baggage Improvements

Making progress again on the Binkley Shorty Baggage.  Here are two images; the roof and its improvements, and the underbody detail.

Upgrades to the roof include a screen overlay and framing for the clerestory sides, simulated canvas covering for the roof, and drip strips over the doors.  Prior to these additions I also used square styrene stock to extend the clerestory overhang down along the curved ends of the roof.  This is a detail often missing from these cars where the modeler has to shape the bullnose ends.  Here the bullnose profile has been provided as a metal casting but it must be filed to match the width of the clerestory sides and the overhang profile extended somehow.  I precurved the styrene and attached it with cyanoacrylate adhesive.

The floor received an air tank made from dowel 'turned' in a drill and shaped with files to simulate the bands around the tank and reduce its size.  The kit came with a brass casting for the tank but I will use it on the combine.  I chose to add the brake cylinder and levers casting though the instructions don't call for it.  It is a Binkley/Red Ball part.

Next will be a little more work on the sides, adding the end railings, assembling the Walthers trucks, and priming.  After that I will apply a similar roof treatment and underbody detail to the combine.  I may just get these cars completed by Christmas...but I'm in no hurry, so we'll see.  Thanks for reading and following along with this project.

The Morning Milk & Mail - A First Look

A few days ago in my post, End-of-Year Goals, I described the projects I hope to complete by the end of 2021.  One of those is the set of cars that will become the "Morning Milk & Mail", an all-stops passenger train that leaves early in the morning, handles the mail and picks up the milk on the Pine Branch.  I also have a set of Selley short passenger cars that will become the limited express hot-shot which will make no stops, but I decided to start on these Binkley cars, and the Red Ball (Binkley?) Fruit Car that will run with them. **

Originally I had planned to use a Selley Combine on this train, but then I found the elusive P-35 Binkley "Shorty Combine Caboose" that was marketed as a companion car for their "Oldie" Baggage.  These weren't "Sierra" cars*, or "Overton" cars; at least they weren't marketed that way that I've seen.  Interestingly, if you take the Binkley 1870 Baggage-Mail car and chop it in half right down the middle, you'll get the Shorty Baggage and the Shorty Combine.  Is that what they did?  I can only guess, but I think I'm on to something.  It would explain why the baggage door isn't centered, and why the small baggage door on the combine is so close to the windows.  Hmmm...

What I'm starting with are three cars in varying degrees of completion.  The Fruit Car I purchased used.  It was missing one truck and had some damage.  Close examination reveals it may have taken a tumble to the floor at some point.  I will be replacing the damaged parts and making a few upgrades.

The Baggage is a complete kit - but with incorrect parts.  Instead of the two-part end sills per the instructions, it has a nice set of end sill castings from Binkley made for their Business Car et al.  I will be building it as instructed, making few changes or upgrades.

Finally, the Combine is a real challenge.  Somebody built it years ago and it has seen better days.  Fortunately it only needs a new baggage door and some cleaning.  I will do as little as possible to repair this car with the aim of bringing it up to a better standard of construction.

So many rolling stock 'orphans' I see were built with good intentions, probably by someone just starting out in the hobby making the kind of mistakes we all might make, even being careful.  But these cars aren't the Athearn or Roundhouse plastic shake-the-box kits of my youth, or even some of the more complex plastic kits.  These were kits that summoned the craftsman in the builder, using terms in the instructions like 'measure', 'shape' and 'cut'.  Simple words, but they are qualitatively different from 'assemble' or 'insert'.  They require the builder to think differently, to assess the work and make decisions based on the state of construction and desired outcome.

*Binkley did market a set of Sierra cars, but these were the cast metal bodies from the same molds as the Laconia Sierra cars, later sold by Ulrich and Walthers.  I have a pair of these, have built one, and the other is awaiting construction.  They're narrow enough (for me at least) to be HOn3 cars if riding on suitable trucks...

**At the time I'm writing this I'm waiting on decals for the Four Flats project.  Turns out I didn't have the ones I wanted to use, but thankfully I located some on eBay.  Hated to lose the momentum I had going on that project, but glad to put my energy into this one!

End-of-Year Goals

Yes, I know it is only August.  But August is nearly over, the kids are back to school, and the Chinese Pistache trees are beginning to blush.  So, I'm looking ahead to what I'd like to accomplish by year's end.  The Fall brings birthdays for my wife and both my boys as well as the holidays.  Not sure if we'll make it to Thanksgiving in Nevada this year, due to the virus, the weather, or both.  

All that to say, I'm trying to be realistic about what I might accomplish.  The Trail Drive of Christmas 2020 stretched well into the Spring of 2021.  I do have a tendency to fall prey to the planning fallacy.  That said, here's a look at what I'm thinking I'd like to accomplish.  All are projects in need of completion:

Firstly, the 0-4-0 Shifter.  I started this project not long after I got married...in 2001.  It is time to complete it.  Back when I started I had planned to use incandescent micro bulbs for the headlights.  I need to decide if I'm going to keep them or find suitable LEDs.  Next, the Ice Factory.  I have all I need to complete this scene, it is just a matter of chipping away at it.

Finally, the Fruit Car and the two passenger cars are going to become the Ocali Creek's Morning Milk & Mail train, an all-stops out-and-back on the Pine Branch.  Once completed the 2-6-0 will pull this until I detail and repaint the 4-4-0.  Not that this train will actually go from anywhere to anywhere on the railroad as built - I'll need staging wings on the main line to make this a reality.  Until then it'll run loops just for fun.

I'd also like to get track painted and weathered, and perhaps some scenic contours roughed in, but I'm not going to put that on the list.  Same with installing the passenger station scene or streets.  And of course, I'm going to finish the Four Flats first.  I'm in no hurry, but I'm ready to set some goals again and work towards them.  This post is, in a way, going on record and staking my claim.  Here's to a productive Fall!