This is a busy period for me professionally; it will slow down in a month, but time is a bit limited now. As much as I like writing about American OO trains, I do like working on and running trains more. My most recent project has been getting a passenger train running.

For years and years I have almost always ran freight trains. Sure, I have had passenger cars but never really tweaked them out to run reliably. This photo is the first two cars in the four car train I now have running well.

First is a Scale-Craft baggage. This was purchased years ago from Dave Sacks. When I got it the car was in rough shape and painted blue. Paint stripper and a good paint job do miracles on these cars! But it still took some work to get it really to run right, I had to work on the wheelsets and also had to install longer shank couplers.

The second car is a Famoco combine. This I built up from a kit some years ago as well. The kit was given to me by Temple Nieter. This car looked good but was too tall. I had to spend a while working on the truck mounting to get it to the correct height. This car has Famoco wheelsets in S-C trucks, the wheelsets being the originals with the kit.

Just visible is the third car, which is an S-C coach also from Dave Sacks. He had modified/modernized the windows and it also had an odd paint job. This car I plan to work over more this summer with a new S-C cast roof, to match the one on the baggage car.

Out of sight is the final car in the train, a J-C Pullman, a purchase from a few years back that also needed some work on the trucks to track well on the layout.

The result of the work is that full passenger trains roll on the rails of the Orient again! I hope to get more passenger cars in shape this summer.