I picked up some G-Mark Old Fashion Streetcar kits on the bay for a reasonable price and thought they might be fun to fool around with. These are 1890s-style trolleys that ran on Japanese streets, but they are so similar to American (and European) streetcars of the period that I thought they would do for one or more Connecticut prototypes. They are a nominal 1/45 but are OK for 1/48, since these cars typically had body lengths (exclusive of platforms) of 16 to 20 feet. Looking thru my Acadia streetcar books (a great series!), I came across the West Shore Railway's "Woodmont," a car that ran to an amusement park in the New Haven suburbs.
I had to slice and dice a little, especially to get the little stained-glass end windows. The Brill sideframes that come with the kit are spot on, but since I belong to a three-rail club, I substituted a Lionel trolley drive. It rides a little high and the sideframes stick out a little, but I did not have much luck getting the plastic-wheeled drive that came with the kit (battery powered) to run on three-rail track. Scale railings would have been nice; maybe I will substitute Precision Scale pipe fittings on the next one.
What I like about the cars from this period is that the decoration hearkens back to horsecars and carriages; some of the 1890s electrics actually were converted horsecars. I used a combination of PhotoShop and MS Word's WordArt to create the shadowed gold lettering, then printed it out on thin photo paper and glued it on. This seems to work pretty well; we'll see if the glue holds up.
My plan is to use the same drive for the other kits, just swap out the bodies. The conceit is that the club's 1950s/1960s layout includes a trolley museum.
BRUCE
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