I recently obtained these four wood passenger cars in trade, all nice examples of “OOldtimer” craftsmanship.

The RPO

I’ll start with the wood RPO. It’s lettered for the Yorkville and Western of Fred Schorr, and this and the following two cars should all be of his making.

Backing up a step, there were not many RPO options in OO. This car is scratchbuilt with wooden sides and many nice details. The big issue when it got to me was it had no roof! So I worked up a very basic one from spare JC Models roof stock, seems to match the width of the car well — except for the warped sides. I made the roof so that it does not stress the sides in the middle of the car.

You can’t see it in the photos, but the couplers are truck mounted on SC trucks, something I’ve never seen before, but would have helped on tighter curves.

The interior shot shows the warped sides and how Schorr made simple mailbag racks with ladder stock. Also note the yellow label, either from an auction or a seller, for this group of three cars.

The coach

Next we have this nice coach.

When this got to Arizona, nearly every interior detail was loose inside the body.

It was a big project but, canopy cement to the rescue, I did get the interior all back where it needs to be, including a number of figures that ride in the car. The green window shades were a particular issue, as 1/3 of them were missing. I ended up splitting the largest pieces to have shades for all the windows. Also take a look at that brass bus wire, used to power the interior lights, a neat idea and system.

The Pullman

The final Yorkville and Western passenger car is this Pullman.

Well, it’s not lettered as a Pullman, but that is clearly the interior design, it’s a sleeping car. From the side you can see several nice details, including in particular the curtains (made of tissue paper) in certain windows.

From the top you can see the bus wire system for the lights again. It’s not easy to see, but there are some lead weights (they look like “water tanks”) in the interior, it must have needed a bit more weight.

The bottom of each of these is simple. But I have two things to mention in this view. First, look at the roof, it is hollowed out. It’s a bit fragile in feel, but really it is very nice work, the look is much improved over something like a stock JC roof. The other big thing is this car came without trucks. Based on the witness marks it was most likely on 4 wheel trucks of some sort, but, I mean, it’s a sleeper? So I used a special set of 6 wheel SC trucks I had on hand that someone modified by drilling and filing the open spaces. Special trucks for a special car.

BONUS: Baggage

This model is so similar that you would guess that it is for the same train. The color is just a tiny shade different though, and it’s lettered for the Canadian Pacific.

This one should be by Pierre Bourassa. When it got to me two doors were off, and I had to do a bit of surgery to get it back together. The label shows it is from a different lot at the same auction or sales table.

This photo is in the middle of the surgery and shows several things. First, this model was certainly originally built as a standard JC Models kit, then rebuilt with new wood sides and metal doors. The trucks are Kemtron. This part of one side was loose, and two of the doors were loose, so I opened it up here to fix all that.

It had two weights in it, both loose. I glued back in the larger one. The smaller one is in the photo. It’s a cast off piece of Linotype. The word that you can see spelled out on the edge of the slug is “ojcowie.” Turns out this is a Polish word that means “fathers.” Intriguing that the slug must have been used at a Polish language newspaper? That is my guess anyway.

They are all very nearly operable, but I would need to tweak the couplers a bit and remove the labels. Glad to have these though and to fix them up, can certainly appreciate all the work to build these back in the day.