Should GGD rerelease the Harriman cars?

@prrhorseshoecurve posted:

One of the items NOT discussed in the latest Lionel catalog is the Grand Canyon RR set. While Lionel did do some research in what will hopefully be using Reading RR round roof passenger cars, its quite obvious Harriman ex SP passenger cars are quite different than the Reading RR round roof cars. Should GGD announce a rerun of the Harriman cars?

No, in my opinion, but you probably should send an eMail directly to Scott.

I think it would take new dies to get the roof curvature correct.  That may be why it is not happening.

The PSC Harrimans are quite accurate, and show up on eBay for around $300.  They are well worth it, even without interiors and paint.

We are talking about two different cars here. The Harriman’s were used on both the SP and UP railroads. Originally they had a upper sash glass that was later plated over. On the end platforms, the letter board runs continuously to the end of the car.  This results in a door that is short. If these cars ended up at high level platform the passengers have to duck under the letter board to get on to the station platform. The cars that were built for the San Francisco to San Jose commute service never had upper sash and the letter board stops short of the platform.  This results in a full height door. These cars are known as Subs, not Harrimans. The Subs are the cars recently made by GGD and are the cars used at the Grand Canyon.

Did not know that.  Are the roof contours different?

I believe that the Harriman car roofs have a higher arch to the roof. The SF to SJ line was to be electrified, like the East Bay, LA , Marin County and Portland lines were.  The Subs were to have electrical equipment added. Some of the cars had end windows for cabs. By the time of retirement all of these had been plated over. I assume the plan was to put pantograph on them, like the East Bay cars. A high arch roof would be detrimental to this plan.

I looked.  The class 72-IC-1 features the end doors you describe.  59 of them were delivered.  They look just like Harriman cars except for the windows and end doors.  I am not an expert on the plastic GGD Harriman cars, but I believe their brass series had several different body types.

I do have most of the PSC variants.

Roof arch is just like the other Harriman cars.  Best photos for comparison I could find are on p.25 of the Morning Sun "color guide" book.  The term "sub" is new to me - I took the time to ride in these things during overnights in Burlingame.

I think there were four series in the class IC-72, all built by ACF.  Maybe about 130 cars all together.  IC stands for Interurban Coach.  Sub was short for “suburban”, which is what we always called the SP commute service out of SF. The IC cars were interesting in that ACF made the interiors look like wood, but everything was steel. ACF roll formed the sheet steel into shapes that looked liked milled wood.  The steel had wood patterns  lithographed on it. Kind of like a really big Marx train. I have seen the lithograph wood under pealing paint, but no way to restore a car to original appearance as lithography has to be done prior to the roll forming the sheets. The cars did have wooden sash and arm rests, but that was it. The Harrimans had much nicer interiors as they were intended for long distance travel.   As I recall the cars seated 96, with one toilet at each end.

The Sunset brass cars are 72' cars as I recall whereas the plastic cars were the shorter 64' cars.  I did the graphics on the plastic cars.  Personally my favorite Harriman car is the 30' baggage cars.  Just interesting cars.  For whatever reason I think the GCRY cars are former 72' Harrimans.  It's been a while since I've seen them in service.  Usually when I'm at the canyon the cars are mostly de-motored RDCS pulled by the former Amtrak F40s.

I just checked GGD ads - I did not realize they did HO versions.  I am with Jonathan - I like the baggage cars, and would have purchased Sunset brass if the roof line had matched my PSC.  I saw entire trains of these things behind Cab Forwards when I was a kid in southern Arizona.

To answer the original poster’s question: a resounding YES to another run of these cars. I bought 6 of them in SP green from the original run and would like to get more. Scott only did 2 car numbers for the baggage and I really wanted 2-3 more for building my Coast Mail train. I’d also like to get a couple cars in TTG.

The Harriman plastic cars are rarely seen on ebay, especially SP models. I think many people saw how nice they were once they were finally released and would jump at a second run. If another run were done, I’d be in for another 5-6 cars.