Carriages for steam locos

Stainless steel, or "lightweight" cars replaced the older "heavyweight" cars beginning in the 1930's, and continuing through the end of private passenger service.  Often transition trains would consist of both.  Increasingly they were pulled by diesel, but started out in steam.  Certainly they were all built with steam heat.

The New York Central never owned a dome car.

Jon

That’s near enough for me. If anyone wants to take offence, I’ll put some black tape over the NYC lettering.

I’ve been thinking for a while of looking for a “war-bonnet” F3, I might yet do that.

I’m struggling with the same issue right now, but in N scale.

I just bought Bachmann’s new J3a Hudson, a diecast beauty. Unfortunately, unlike my O gauge stuff, I have no New York Central heavyweight passenger cars for it to haul.

I have easy access to Kato’s recent 20th Century Limited set, but the featured cars are modeled and painted for 1948 and later, by which time the NYC Hudsons prototypically would have been out of the picture for this particular train.

There is an old Rivarossi set I could buy, but I would have to convert the couplers and, frankly, ignore other shortcomings. Micro-Trains has made some very nice heavyweights, but because all of its releases are limited edition, collectible market stuff, hunting each car down would be time consuming and costly.

In N scale, adherence to prototypical standards is stronger than in O gauge. But I’m tempted nonetheless to settle for Kato’s smooth side passenger set.