Jersey Builder?

Or full repaint:

NJT 4334 E8, S. Amboy, NJ. 6-28-1980 by JACK KUIPHOFF, on Flickr

Notice another unpainted renumber unit behind it.

I did a little more digging, and confirmed that these went their entire short NJT career without any lettering other than being renumbered. The "Southern" lettering was painted out with a kind-of-close green that wore off in about 2 years, probably because E-Port didn't wash the panels before painting.

You could spray green onto decal film and trim it to shape to make it easy to add if you want a fresh patch, and the numbers can even be crooked.

www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3865973

Conversely, if you want a worn patch, I would do the following:
-mask off everything but the lettering you want to patch
-spray over the lettering with hairspray
-airbrush the green patch color and remove the masking
-use a damp q-tip to partially scrub off the patch and leave the original lettering to show through

I did something similar on a freight car to show worn and fading paint. It works because the hairspray lays down nicely but can be washed off.

At that rate, don't forget to add the air tanks and super-large boiler tanks underneath. Plus, running with the front door open seemed pretty common--surely a rules violation, but common.

You could use E8s for a Jersey Builder, but my understanding is that the E8s generally stuck to the ex-PRR trains, and the Jersey Builder cars tended to stick to the CNJ trains. By the Conrail era there was more mixing, however it doesn't appear to be as common in the photos. You'll only ever see a few Jersey Builder cars behind a GG1, for instance.

Well, the Palace Car steps appear to be just the ticket. Per Mark Malmkar at PCCo, "The steps are .360 wide, .343 high and .383 front to back. They look similar to your photos. They may be a bit narrower."

0.360 works out to 2'9" in HO. Checking against the cars with calipers, the steps will work almost perfectly for the ACF 44-seat cars, and are just a bit narrower than the folding traps on the ACF 6-seat cars.

At 4 step boxes per package, you can get 2 cars each.

From looking at the photos, the following will get me the 90% solution:

- Change out the folding traps for rigid steps
- Patch out original lettering
- Add NJDoT logo
- Add car number
- Weather finished car

The hardest part (as it stands) would be repainting the broken hockey stick car...a really easy paint scheme, I must say. I'm going to resist the temptation to upgrade the underbody to match the coaches more closely.

NOW...for additional fun, I looked again at my 60-seater, and Walthers did not include window gaskets in the castings, and we don't really seem to mind. This gets me thinking that a brass car side would actually look quite good.

I had a long conversation last night with the owner of Brass Car Sides, and he is still amenable to modifying the older GN etching to be an NJDoT etching. My thinking is that it would reduce costs and make a better result if the etching excluded the vestibule. If it were a single flat rectangle, we can chop the side, splice in the brass, add a strip styrene rail along the bottom, and glaze the windows. The existing sides have no other detail except for the bottom rail...no rivets or gaskets...and a grab iron.

Is anyone else interested? I'd only need one car myself.

The kit that Dennis and I are discussing here hasn't been designed yet, but will be made to use the Walthers 60-seat ACF coach as a core. The TSP core would be too much work, and the Rivarossi core isn't worth the effort, so we settled on the Walthers because it is so similar to the 48-seat Pullman.

The etching would be designed from scratch to match the deskirted NJDoT era, because the current BCS kit matches the as-delivered GN car.

Because the Walthers vestibule is better than what an etching would provide (and will save design time), we decided to reuse the original vestibule doors and just etch the remainder of the side. It will look better when done. I'll try to mark up some photos to explain better.

The way Walthers sides pop off, it should be really easy once we get the etchings done. But that will require some initial orders before Dennis will commit. I'm hopeful we could come up with at least 8 cars.

OK...so after months of on-again, off-again research and parts chasing--interrupted by a full basement remodel--I've got some actual progress to report.

It took some fiddling, but I think I've almost figured out how to mount the Palace Car Co. steps to the Walthers car.

I ended up disassembling the cars pretty far to get the job done. I had to remove the roof, sides, trucks, and couplers, which was really hard to do without breaking snap-in tabs. These cars are made to go together, not come apart.

In prepping for the step well castings, the screws that hold the body together at the vestibule end need to be moved. These two screws hold the cover over the swinging drawbar, but they also hold the floor to the core castings. So, I drilled two pilot holes and ran the screws in where they would be out of the way of the steps. I haven't reassembled the cars to check for truck clearance, and if they don't clear the trucks I will have to move them again.



The sides need to have the folding trap detail cut out of the doorways. On the floor, the folding trap wells can be sliced off, but then I had to notch the floor and the core casting to clear the step well. The step casting is about 2 scale inches narrower, but works pretty well for an 85% model. I did a test assembly and glued in one step well casting, and think it will work as desired. Eventually, this car will be an ex-BN car.



Compared to the original, it should be a pretty clear difference when finished.