Heavyweight Passenger Car - width of the Clerestory?

one of my background projects is trying to gather some information about early Capitol and National Limited train consists for a P7 locomotive i have.

from the Joe Welsh book, the first shot is of an early National Limited with what looks like a Pullman, 10 section Obsv-Lounge...

looking further up the train, though, you can see what appears to be a B&O (owned) Dining Car with a noticeably wider clerestory roof.

the next photo (dated 1935) shows a 12-1 Pullman sleeper behind a now converted Pullman Baggage-Club Car...

the older 12-1 sleeper definitely shows the narrower roof.

this last picture of the 1930 Capitol Limited probably features the newest Capital series cars, all apparently with the wide clerestory roof.

so i guess to answer your question, various roof profiles are acceptable; depends what train and what era you're shooting for.  i would think the Capitol and National Limited trains would tend to be more "matched" than the less major routes which likely got the hand-me-downs.  as for exact dimensions, i'd go to back issues of Mainline Modeler and look at some of their fantastic car plan drawings.  keep in mind that the PA used many of the exact same Pullman plans as the B&O.

cheers...gary

Pullman built heavyweight cars came with at least two different roof profiles.  Most sleepers had the standard narrow 5' 11 7/16" width clearstory profile.  Parlor cars and solariums often had a 7' 4"  wide clearstory roofs.  This is especially noticeable in photos of parlor cars retrofitted with AC.  The roof ducts on AC'd parlor cars are quite abrupt - tighter radius with near verticle sides.    PRR designed heavyweights such as the P70's, D78 diners, and B70 baggage cars had  a 7' 7"  width clearstory.  It may be possible that some B&O built cars used the PRR roof profile as in the early years of the 20th century the B&O was under PRR influence.  I have some custom milled PRR profile roof stock available if that helps.

Ed Rappe

I just checked the width of the clerestory on my GGD PRR B-70 and it is 7'7" +/- across the roof line.

Ed

Ed,

You're welcome.

Bob

Thank you all for your responses. So I'm talking about a 1/16 of an inch on a model for the GGD cars? Hmmm. Bob... do you have any more roofs? 

Gary,

Send me an e-mail with what you are looking for.