Scale Daylight Models - A Photo Sharing Thread and Discussion on Accuracy

Well your eyes see differently than mine.  For me, the one on the right is darker, but not much.  I guarantee that in real life these cars are a muddy red.

 

K-Line definitely had alternating big and small corrugations on their first run Daylight.  I took the time to remove one corrugation and enlarge the windows on an observation car.

 

I had for years been using Kasiner cars to duplicate the Daylight, but when the Speer extrusions became available my Kasiners became inaccurate.  Te Kasiners are correct for NYC Pullman carbodies, and the K-Line pretty much duplicated the Kasiner extrusion with minor changes.

 

 

I'm sure glad that Bob Turner (bob2) weighed in on the passenger car discussion. I do NOT profess to know anything of any importance concerning SP daylight passenger equipment. Back in 1984, we hauled an absolutely beautiful "painted to match" Daylight painted passenger consist all the way from Portland, OR to New Orleans and back, and to be honest, I don't think I walked through that whole train more than 5 or 6 times. We all had enough to worry about with 4449, so most of us never left the first two cars during that whole "death march".

 

I have seen bob2 post in other areas that he feels the Golden Gate Depot fluted SP Daylight passenger cars are some of the nicest pieces available, especially for well under $200 per car. I am ver pleased with my GGD set, and looks spectacular being pulled by the newest Sunset/3rd Rail BLACK & SKIRT-LESS GS-4. 

Something not mentioned so far is the original 1937 and 1939 cars were built by Pullman Standard. GGD cars are based on PS as is Lionel. The identifying feature being the smooth panel formed into the fluting above the windows. The roadname is printed on the smooth panel rather than on a "billboard" on top of the fluting as on the Budd cars that K-Line modeled. This is another reason why GGD is the most accurate of the mass produced 3 rail models. All the rest are compromised for one reason or another.

Bob's Speer cars lack only the full width colored diaphrams seen on the GGD model. Lionel offers them unpainted on their cars.

Pete

I will get a shot of the Speer extrusion with the corrugations highlighted with contrasting paint.  Just waiting for the Southern California sun to provide enough light.

 

For Hot:  Oerland produced some really, really good Daylight locomotive decals - silver, with black outline.  Microsoft did the hard work.  These are worth looking for.

 

Barring that, my decal guy has figured out the font, and we now have semi- perfect SP steam decals for ten bucks a sheet.  He can add black outline for an additional fifteen bucks for the first sheet.  

I somehow missed leaving's post above.  The GGD coaches are as accurate as you can get fully finished. The Speer extrusions are slightly better, I think,  but never converted to kits, and may be in danger of being scrapped.  That's a rumor. And opinion.

 

The only flaw I have so far noted for the GGD is the well for the coil spring on those "Napoleon Hat" trucks.  I have not seen the cars in person.  Scott has been doing spectacular work with extruded aluminum models.

Here is what I think is the definitive O Scale Daylight extrusion:

 

 

I hit it with some primer, then wiped it off.  The shiny areas are obviously higher than the bottoms of the corrugations, and you should note that window and letterboard surfaces are at max height.  The NYC Pullman cars are the exact opposite - a mirror image, if you will - the tops of the corrugations are outboard of the window sheet metal.  And of course, the letterboard is not full length; the corrugations  continue above the windows.

 

Not being an obsessive rivet counter, I was happy with Kasiner, modified with auto body putty for a full letterboard.  But now I have these extrusions, so I am a bit more picky.

 

Here is one of the Kasiners.  If you blow it up, you might be able to see what I am trying to point out.  No, the SP never painted journals silver.

 

 

 

Looks like Kasiner got the color wrong.

 

Man you sure like to stir the pot! I'm almost afraid to ask.... who exactly do you think did get the color right, besides the same pictures you continue to pick out from the 1000's online?

Kasiner didn't paint that - I did.  That is Scale Coat, and it is fairly dark.  The colors are not important to me because I paint even the locomotives, and have decals made.  The corrugations were not important either, until I saw the Speer extrusions.

 

I am quite happy with my Daylight stuff - and enjoying the conversation.  Hope I have added something.

 

 

A work in progress - lifetime bronze.

The only difference between the Speer and the GGD extrusion is the width of the marquee panel and it is correct on the GGD extrusion.

  

 

 The Lark used Daylight GS-3/4/5s

 

 

 Richard

 

You hit the nail on the head! This is the same gentleman that argued profusely, some time back, about the "color difference" between the Southern Pacific Daylight trains and the Shasta Daylight, all based off a poor color advertisement brochure of the Shasta Daylight train. The argument went on for pages, and pages.

 

If one was to purchase the Richard K. Wright VERY EXTENSIVE book, "Daylight, Trains 98 & 99", there is documented extensive painting & lettering data for Southern Pacific passenger equipment. As I recall, the SP had a part number for "red" and a part number for "orange", i.e. EVERYTHING received the SAME RED, and the SAME ORANGE!

Hi Richard - photos not found.  Jack said there was an inaccuracy, but wouldn't say where it was.  I had not found it, and was close to counting corrugations.  Without your photos, can I assume the Speer extrusion lettrboard is not quite wide enough?

 

I could go four more pages on colors, even though I agree with Hot.  Fooling around here takes less energy than does firing up (and cleaning) the old airbrush.

 

This is an interesting phenomenon - once one makes up his mind, it is time to find facts to back up the mindset. I tried that to justify this tender, which is an exact model of a one-of-a-kind, behind an MC-6:

 

Took one of the GGD cars outside at high noon today. Here's what they look like in the prototype's natural outdoor lighting conditions. As you can see they brighten up a fair amount from the comparatively drab indoor fluorescent lighting in my train room.

 

 

Great shot.  I put your GGD photo in my file, and am hoping to be able to do a side-by-side with my Speer photo, so I can see what Richard is pointing out.

 

I still say the GGD is the best Daylight yet offered in O Scale, but I think Jack came closer on the corrugations.  Dunno yet about the "marquis".

Nick....very good idea and convinces me that both GGD and K-Line are very, very close as far as color.  I am not anxious to see a K-Line car and GGD car side by side.  Looks like one could really mix them well together....

 

Alan

Does anyone else not see the pics I posted?  I do see them here.

No, I still do not see them.

Now?

 

 

Yep, the photos show now.

 

I had to go back and reread a lot of this discussion. So much great info got posted in such a short amount of time that I missed or forgot a lot after the first viewing. I also need to change the thread title at this point, as the advanced info we've gotten here is not advertised for potential readers.

 

One thing I noticed now - The correct style for Daylight cars should be alternating large and small ribs based on Bob's outstanding info. Upon studying both it appears GGD modeled small ribs only and K-Line modeled large ribs only on their respective Daylight sets. Then, ironically, I glanced at my MTH Premier Penn Central passenger cars on the layout right now and see they actually have alternating large and small ribs. They still fall short for Daylight in the order of the alternations and the non-molded in letter board, but it was still funny to see a mainstream manufacturer do this where some premium ones didn't.

 

MTH cars are based on ACF cars. K-line's are based on Budd cars. GGD SP cars are modeled on Pullman Standard who built the prototype ribbed Daylight cars.
Basically K-line cars are correct for say NYC Empire State Express cars but not for SP daylight cars.

Pete

Thanks for the clarification Pete. Learning more with every post 

Yeah, this is interesting.  The K-Line Daylight car I modified had Pullman- style corrugations - a big one and a small one, alternating.  As far as I can tell, K-Line did three different extrusions - smooth, Pullman, and Budd.

 

The big fat problem is that Pullman did all kinds of things - the Daylight is unique to SP, Santa Fe, and possibly Rock Island.  New York Central used Budd and Pullman cars.  The NYC Pullman cars had external alternating corrugations.  K-Line used that extrusion for some of its Daylight cars.

 

Bob Delbridge proved that some Pullmans even had corrugations on the roof!

Here we go, just noticed something else huge.

 

Went back to the first page to change the thread title, and glanced back through. John Korling's GGD set is featured on page 1, and borrowed one of his photos seen below:

 

 

Would you look at that, alternating large and small ribs, and in the correct order as per Bob's info I believe. The difference is this is a photo of the observation car out of GGD's core 5-car set, and my photos are all of GGD's add-on 5-car articulated set that I found at York. The articulated set I own consists of a 3-car articulated diner and 2-car articulated chair section. All of which have small ribs only, no alternation.

 

Those educated on the Daylight prototypes, what do you make of this? Is this prototypical for the articulated sections or a mistake by GGD?

 

John and other owners of the GGD core 5-car set, do all 5 cars have the alternating large and small corrugations?

This further substantiates the statement Jack (Hot Water) made a while back that K-Line had different releases of their Daylight cars with possibly different shades of color. I never was able to find out more about this, and according to the Legacy K-Line website their 21" Daylight cars only ever came in one item number each for the 6-pack and 4-pack.

 

As for how many different corrugation styles K-Line did, there are actually four that I can account for based on info so far. Smooth, Alternating Pullman (as per the Daylight car you worked on), and then my Empire State Express Cars and Alan's Daylight cars are totally different variants of Budd (?) so that would make four different styles?

SP and ATSF prewar PS fluted cars have the same fluting.  So all Daylight, Lark, Chief and Super Chief prewar PS fluted cars are the same.  It should be the same for all GGD Daylight cars.  I don't have the cars to compare but I would find it hard to believe two different extrusions were used.  That old thread that had all the descriptions and pics is probably long gone by now.

If this is the case then I come up with three explanations:

 

1) The articulated diners and chairs were made by someone other than Pullman Standard

 

2) The articulated diners and chairs were one of those Pullman Standard variants as Bob talks about

 

3) GGD made a mistake on their 5-car articulated add-on set

 

I personally lean toward #3 but eagerly await more info and discussion on this.

A fourth explanation for the differences is build date. It appears that designs changed over the years even by the same manufacturer. It might be time to get a copy of Richard Wright's Daylight book. That one is unfortunately missing from my library.

 

Pete

Nick I just looked at all 14 of my cars, and they all look the same. They have an alternating large/small rib pattern. I have the two 5-car sets, plus 2 additional coaches, and 1 articulated coach set. A few of the cars were really hard to tell, because at first glance all the ribs look the same. Upon further/closer inspection, they all look identical to me. The different sized ribs are very clear on my 3 car articulated diner set, but yet very hard to see the difference on 1 of my articulated coach sets.

 

Maybe the amount of paint applied to the different cars, I don't know, but all mine are the same, you just have to study them hard.

I just got done sticking my eyeball up to the ribs on my set, and I still couldn't make out a clear larger rib over a smaller rib. However in John Korling's photo of the observation car, it's not even really a close up photo and I could clearly see an alternating pattern. It's just so weird to me that I simply cannot come up with the same on my set.

 

I will continue to try and find a pattern on mine, but currently it still looks like there's no alternation. Were you able to blow up my close-up outdoor photo full-size? Does it look like your articulated set?

Now it is really interesting.

 

I have not seen the GGD cars in person, but the photos I had seen indicated no alternating rib.  I was corrected, and accepted the fact that photos do not always tell the story.  It is marginally possible that the die was damaged, and a new die was bungled, or the other way around.  Let's hear from Richard and/ or Bob Heil, or even Scott on this one.  I doubt that paint would make little ridges look like big ones.

 

I am going to OSW come heck or high water, so maybe I will find out there.

 

Let's look at those trucks next?

Okay, I think I just figured this out. Seems I've been duped by an optical illusion.

 

The name of the game is shadows. I just realized in all the photos where you can clearly see the alternating rib sizes, the shadows being cast by those ribs are very helpful in recognizing the pattern. In both the "family photo" I posted earlier and John Korling's photo of the observation car, the lighting of those photos is such that the ribs cast alternating sized shadows. The effect is similar to how Bob highlighted the ribbing on his set by spraying it with primer then wiping it off. Now in my photos, the cars were always under harsh fluorescent lighting and so the shadows were nowhere near as noticeable. Looking closer at my outdoor photo and also shining a light down on the cars, I can now see the alternating large and small shadows that help to reveal the correct alternating rib sizes on the GGD cars.

 

So in the end it's a false alarm and another lesson in the tricks that lighting can play on your eyes. But I'm happy to have confirmed now there's nothing wrong with the GGD cars, and another accolade for that set in accuracy.

 

Alan, here's a funny thing for you, and this goes along with the whole optical illusion thing. Remember how you said the K-Line ribbing looked more like the prototype in the "family photo"? In reality, those cars only have half the number of ribs! I just counted, and there are 11 ribs running through the marquee board on the prototype. There are also 11 on the GGD cars, but only 6 ribs running through the marquee board on the K-Line cars. Yet they still manage to fool the eye into thinking they look more like the prototype. You were right, this stuff can drive you crazy!

Nick I know exactly what you mean. I edited my post a few times because every time I looked at a different car, I saw something that changed my mind. I had to get out a magnifier but they are all the same, they do have alternating ribs, they are just very hardto distinguish with the naked eye, even up close.

Here are some photos of the trucks on my set. Not sure if they'd be any different on the core 5-car set.

 

Non-articulated chair truck:

 

 

Articulated chair truck (I know, I have to conceal those wires better):

 

 

Articulated diner truck:

 

Pretty much exactly what I went through as well in coming to the final realization of what was going on. I suppose the fact that the different ribs sizes are so hard to see with the naked eye is a testament to the precision of these cars, lol!

Same trucks as what my cars have, you should get some of the fabric, painted diaphragms from GGD for those articulated cars. Hides the wires and closes the gap, not to mention the paint matches.

Do they work on O-72 curves?

Yes they do. They have double sided tape to mount them, and I only stick 1 side so they still come apart.

Would you mind posting a photo of what they look like going around an O-72 curve? I remember looking at my set going around my curves and dropping the idea of ordering the diaphragms, lol!

Sure it might take a few days for me to get them back over to the layout where I can photograph them. My overhead layout is too high in the air and too dark for photos. I know Jack has the diaphragms too, maybe he might have a few photos.