Seaboard Air Line Pullman-Bradley Coach

You are welcome.  Beautiful work.

Mikeg

Thanks Mike!

Here's a closer shot of the car:

I'm going to look into whether or not the 2nd car can be turned into a SAL combine:

Blanking out the windows and doors , and adding the baggage doors may be a bigger task than I'm willing to tackle right now.

Beautiful work. Well done sir! Love that Seaboard!

Yeah.  How did you get those silver windows so uniform?  Paint and decals look great.

Bob, you must be using the 3-foot rule of viewing things today , up close you can see those lines aren't so straight.  I used a silver Sharpie around the window frames and had to go back and forth with it and a fine paintbrush with Badger Model Flex SAL Pullman Green (#16-185) to try and keep them straight (and some of them are straighter/cleaner than the photo shows ).

I think I've seen a floor plan for the combine, just can't put my hands on it right now.

Excellent job Mr. Delbridge. Was considering hacking one of these cars up for a NEW HAVEN grill car  the window strip cuts easily with a zona saw?

Thanks!

Fairly easy, but you really have to keep an eye on it as you cut.  I started using the thinnest Xacto blade I could find and finished the cut with an Xacto saw.  You don't want to slip!  There's molding lines that can be used as a guide for the cuts, but be prepared to slap some putty where ever needed or fill up a groove that's too wide/deep.

After I cut out both sides I realized I could swap the cutout pieces to get the 3 windows going in the right sequence.

Wow, neat looking coach and great model work!

I grew up very close to the old SAL main from where it came in off the L&N in North Florida, on to Jacksonville. But there never seemed to be any local interest in local stuff among the model train and railfan guys where I grew up. And now I know next to nothing about what got used through history in the line near where I grew up.

I wonder if these ever got used, say, on named trians like the Gulf Wind through that area?

They were originally purchased in 1936 for use on the Orange Blossom Special, according to Larry Goolsby's book "Seaboard Air Line Passenger Service".

They were also found on other trains such as the Palmland, Sunland, and Silver Meteor (might be the combine only, his book shows one painted in aluminum).

834 is listed as running from New York to Miami on train 9, southbound Palmland, March 1967.

832 is listed as running on train 10, northbound Palmland, Dec 1964.

835 is listed as running on train 31, west coast Silver Meteor, Oct 1945.

I did see a blurb about the Gulf Wind saying it remained all heavyweight, but I haven't looked thru all my books yet so there may be more to come!

That's some nice work Bob!

Thanks Howard, the decals came out perfectly on this car.  It's been painted the green for a number of weeks and we finally had a warm day this past weekend so I sprayed a coat of gloss coat on then applied some old Champs decals.  Once the Walther's Solvaset did it's work I washed the parts and sprayed a final dull coat on them.

I'm glad I had a 2nd car because I had forgotten where all the different size screws went.

The Kadee couplers were easy to install, just had to make a 1"x1"x3/16" thick, stepped shim.  The way these cars are made the shim attaches to the two end pieces (vestibules) and not to the actual floor.