SP Daylight passenger set with articulated cars, built from wood kits any suggestions on getting it to run? how wide a radius?

Boxcar Ken - Ken Caswell and one of his buddies.  Called B-C Models.  Still available I think from Right-O-Way (our buddy Jay C).  These are very nicely built.  You should be happy, and not tempted to cut them up.

My articulated coach needs 74” radius.  That diner looks like it would need more.

just in case you are thinking 3-Rail, that’s O-148.

Nice looking cars!

@Erik C Lindgren posted:

Nice looking cars!

My first thought as well...👍

Mark in Oregon

I am surprised to see the 6 wheel plain bearing truck under the articulation.   As I recall the SP light weight cars, the only 6 wheel truckS were under the business car “Sunset”.

@David Johnston posted:

I am surprised to see the 6 wheel plain bearing truck under the articulation.   As I recall the SP light weight cars, the only 6 wheel truckS were under the business car “Sunset”.

I checked my copy of the Richard Wright book on the Daylight and the three unit articulated diners did have a 6 wheel truck under the articulated ends.  However the articulated chair cars only had 4 wheel trucks.

And in the beginning all were plain bearing.  (Solid bearing?)

I'm a BC-Models fan (so you know...opinion) I think these are some of the best (from a prototype standpoint) composite (metal-wood) passenger car kits ever manufactured. The white styrene ALW's were very good but far too fragile (and again opinion, also really hard to build) in my experience. I covet these BC-M's and particularly this SP PS series and it looks like you have some really well built examples there to boot.  As far as "getting them to run" please be specific, are they shorting? I generally avoid less then 50" radius with scale 80' cars unless they've been "goosed" as in shortened length between bolsters, extended coupler shanks etc. My experience is the BC-M's (if assembled correctly) are as generally robust as  any equivalent composite kit build like Walthers, AN or Chester etc. pretty straight-forward design.

I have one particularly well-built example, and concur.

I personally prefer Speer extrusions for Daylight cars.

If you have to tinker with them to get a smaller radius -- and it would be desirable to know what that is first -- here's my suggestion:

It looks like [ based on photos # 5 and 6 ]  the articulated ends all pivot about the same point, which is the c/line of the truck.  I would add a short [ length of the truck, say ] section of flat underframe, mounted rigidly to the truck, and make new pivot point posts on either side for each carbody.  I think I would experiment first with perhaps a couple of trucks mounted on 'boards', with a cardboard end superstructures, to find the best  dimensions.  Once you've established that, I'd create a 'cylinder' [ well, a squished, incomplete one ] painted black, that would mount to the truck and fill in the between-body gap.      Disclaimer:  I have not done this.

The window gasket treatment on those cars is very well done.

SZ     

I like Bob's, below, better -- quicker and easier.  I think I did the above over 50 years ago, but in HO, and I forget why I did it that way.  

I have done it,  the pivot point is determined by a fixed "tongue" that extends from each car out to the truck kingpin.  The length of the tongues, along with the design of the diaphragm, determines the radius.

Here is a photo of my articulating pin area.  It was taken to show my diaphragm technique, but it should show the pin arrangement.  On second thought, you really have to look hard - the diaphragm is a spring-loaded snap-in affair.  Probably should patent it.  Covered with ribbon, spray-painted to match.  hooking and un-hooking takes three seconds.

As an aside, I have seen photos of an articulated coach with six wheel center truck - it may have been an afterthought, or something peculiar to the Shasta Daylight.

Well, I got them out of order, but you get the idea.

Thanks to all for the info. suggestions. Today I was able to get into my local hobby shop and pickup some Kadee # 746 long centerset couplers. All day today I had my grandson over to look after and we set up some of my track that I normally use for train shows. I have some K-Line O Gauge track that snaps together quickly so we lay down some sheets on the carpet and set up a large 0-120 loop 60" radius and he spent the entire day getting me to get him more 0-27 freight cars. He likes pushing trains not running them with power. By the end of the day we had a long circus train running all through the house with the engine nearly touching the caboose. At the end of the day I cleared the 0-27 wired the track to run 2 rail scale power and got out my SP MTH 2 rail engine. I brought up the SP passenger cars and worked on them this evening.

I installed a long Kadee coupler on one end of each passenger car and this was just enough to get the train to run around the curves. For the articulated cars I only had time to do 1 set. On closer inspection it was easy to unscrew the flat plate that couples to the next coach and move it closer to the end slightly so I had enough clearance for the curves. It works when I roll it around but found the 3 rail truck shorting out so will have to tinker with that when I have time. Otherwise here are some shots of the train running around. The trucks on the passenger cars are just about scraping on the underframe this tight but they just make it. The tail car the lights are pretty bright can I assume they are likely 12 volt bulbs? which I will need to re-wire to dim them down a bit.

So I am pleased with this progress, now know that when train shows start again in the future I will be able to run this train occasionally at a show set up on the K-Line 0-120 loops I have. And with our garden railway club I expect when we add the dedicated O scale loop to the predominantly G scale track set up  I am hoping we will have room for a minimum of 70" radius curves.  Perhaps in the future I can squeeze in a 2 rail ceiling loop in my back room with enough radius to run these will be some work to make it fit.

Incidentally when were these cars  built by B-C Models? and what do they go for on the market now? (I received my set from an estate for work I had done helping build a friends layout and taking it down when a friend passed away.)  Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

These cars were available in the 1950s, and as far as I can tell, more or less continued to be available, if you know where to look.  Used prices are all over the map, but a really good model should bring $100.  There are some on eBay right now, but they are not identified as B-C.

I am happy to say that Ken Caswell called me out of the blue a decade or so ago.  I feel privileged to have known so many O Scale pioneers.