Friday, 8 December 2017

Railway Post Office Service on the Grand Trunk NEL

The Grand Trunk (NEL) rostered  three Railway Post office Cars #'s 7810-7812.  They were built by ACF in 1929, possibly for subsidiary GTW and transferred at a later date.

The Canadian National Historical Society magazine CN lines Volume 9 Issue 1 has a article pertaining to these cars and similar RPO's used on the Central Vermont and Grand Trunk Western.  Here is a picture found in Morning's Sun Colour Guide to Northern New England Cars.


I am going to kitbash one of these cars using a Branchline Coach as the base model.

I recently discovered Joe Smith's Blog "Signal Station 199" regarding his efforts in building a New Haven themed layout. He has a set of blog entries showing his techniques to kitbash a similar RPO for the New Haven.  Go take a look, but I warn you Joe's modelling and blog are top notch so your  going to be there for a while.  Here's the link...

https://signalstation199.blogspot.ca/search/label/RPO

Now that your back, here's where I'm at with this project. Follow along as I put what I learned from Joe to good use.

First off I enlarged a drawing provided in the CN lines issue and copied the dimensions over from the soft copy, that were blurry when enlarged.


Next I cut the floor and spliced it back together to give an length over the couplers of 66' - 61/2".

The floor is braced with a sheet of styrene and some square stock.



The second photo shows the floor sections I removed.  I also removed the side vestibule doors and walls on either side of the end doors.


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7 comments:

  1. George Dutka8 December 2017 at 10:31

    Hi Ryan:
    Think Central Hobbies made a kit of these years ago for their shop. I recall seeing some still on his shelf's last spring. They are in Syracuse, NY...right on the way to Springfield...thinking Bethlehem Car Works also had one, but kit-bashing is always fun...George

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    Replies
    1. Ryan Mendell8 December 2017 at 13:53

      George,

      Correct you are, I of course found this out about two weeks after I cobbled together all the parts to kit bash one myself. I will need least two so maybe I will look into a kit for the second one.

      Ryan

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  2. Joe Smith9 December 2017 at 18:21

    Hi Ryan,

    Looks like a fun project and one I would enjoy myself. Nice start, will be looking forward to seeing future progress reports.

    Have fun with your build, Joe Smith

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    1. Ryan Mendell11 December 2017 at 07:44

      Joe,

      Thanks for your interest, I probably woun't have attempted this with out your Blog tutorial!.....I have a question regarding your NH RPO's. What is the corrugated material you used for the Mail room windows? It looks excellent.

      Thanks

      Ryan

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    2. Joe Smith11 December 2017 at 13:23

      Ryan,

      The mail room windows have individual horizontal bars on the inside. The bars are brass rod. There are 2 vertical styrene blocks glued inside, one on each side of the window with holes drilled for the rod to slip thru. Did not get any photos of this when building the cars.

      Joe

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  3. Yaggerbomb10 December 2017 at 06:20

    Hello Ryan, BCW makes this kit PN 1041, I have one of these built along with the CV version but haven't painted them yet, I could send you a photo if you like. JOHN

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    Replies
    1. Ryan Mendell11 December 2017 at 07:46

      John,

      Yes BCW makes these but I wanted to try my hand at kit-bashing, to improve my skills. I have a bunch of Passenger Cars to build and I figured if I did the hardest one first the rest would be easy. I would love o see a picture of yours.

      Thanks

      Ryan

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