One type of American OO gauge passenger car that are seen pretty often today are those produced by J-C Models. Introduced in 1939, J-C Models (also known as jc models, as shown in some advertising) of Brooklyn, NY marketed a line of OO heavyweight passenger cars until ca. 1948. These cars had no metal parts, consisting of card sides, wood roof, floor, and details. Models produced were:

• Baggage, 60′
• Combine, 68′
• Coach, 70′
• Pullman, 12 section, 80′

The cars below are Pullmans, put together nicely.

The sides are an interesting material. Painted well the detail matches that of modern plastic models, but it is a die cut cardboard material. In a note years ago Temple Nieter described it to me as follows:

Paper is “wood flong,” stenotype matrix sheet; it is pressed by the die (for this) or by type/cut form for printers. Ask a newspaper older-timer about it.

One problem with many of the cars that are around today is the sides have warped. There really is no fix for this, as there was no provision to remove the roof or sides. Some years back I built a string of these for a friend, the only custom building I have ever done. For those I did work out a way to make the roof removable; it involved reinforcing the sides with wood strips.

One reason why there are a lot of these around is because these were available all through World War II. There were no critical war materials used in their construction (they were sold less trucks and are all wood and card) so the supply of this kit was uninterrupted.

J-C produced a line of very similar cars in O gauge and in HO, this ad for all three running in October of 1947. In fact, this HO instruction on the HO Seeker site is exactly the same as the OO version I have, just with the words HO instead of OO. More of their HO instruction sheets may be found here, including information on their new, post-war line of “Silver Sides” HO passenger car kits. These were introduced in 1948 and were never produced in OO.

Built up examples of these cars can be tricky to ID as modelers added metal parts to the kits, Famoco used exactly the same sides and major wood parts. Good examples are worth keeping your eyes peeled for.