Aerojet
Active Member
All right boys and girls, we are about to open the vault and take you back to 1978. The reason for my posts is not to show off, but to educate on what was in the past, and bring some life into that -- hopefully by inspiring people like you to get into this hobby deeper than just buy a cars and run them.
For your edification -- I have spent some time looking thru my old catalogs, this is Walthers 1978 ... a few selected pages ...
At one time you could buy a passenger car in pieces, and build the thing yourself, right down to gluing the whole thing together, painting it and lettering it and finally adding trucks and couplers which did not come with the car ... A lot of these detail items are still available on the net if you Google "HO scale passenger car interiors"....
So what does this mean? More what did I do with this information?
Built a car! What else? Although I did not originally use a Walthers car, I did in time build two of the things one in HO and one in O which sits on the mantle. What I did was to take a Riviossi car which would not run on my tracks -- I learned early that 80+ foot cars would not run -- and -- made the Queen of the Rails into my personal Executive Car --- # 100 ....
The left side ...
The right side ...
Looks like just another ordinary car with some kind of something inside of it.... RIGHT?? Hang on to your sox ...
Interior one view ...
So in the end I did buy the Walthers Executive car interior kit, but then rebuilt it MY WAY on my own car, not theirs ...
Another view of this heavy weight Queen of the Rails ...
The wires over the back are for the car interior lighting. That is my contact for those to work. This car does not run on any layout I currently have, but it can be used if I ever had to. NOW it sits in a specially designed and built case on my book case as a display of the old days and what I could do with a car interior.
So what about today?
Well here is an interesting car going over Bender Pass ...
This is a 70 foot observation car in Chicago & Northwestern paint. Doesn't look like much again as it whizzes by behind the last car of the freight train, but that should give you a clue as to what it is. Old timey passenger cars get rebuilt to Amtrak standards, then get pulled by Amtrak... Passenger cars which do not get pulled by them and are on either the head end of tail end of a freight belong to the company.
This is my current, built in 2009, executive car ... and it as well has a finished interior ...
When I got this far in building, Walthers did no longer sell those craft train car kits. I got a lot of this stuff from "Red Cap" and a couple of other outfits. A lot of small wooden pieces were fashioned and some other things were made by hand, like mirrors and the bed ---- This car could not be dissembled further than you see here and I had to work around the factory magnets used to hold the roof on. It is a Round House model if you need to know ... so...
TO build this I had to take a sheet of basswood, and cut three notches so it could go into the car, then build the interior on that sheet of basswood. Once finished it was then slipped into the car and Viola! we got a winner!! Where the notches were interior details were added in later. This was planned in advance as I designed the car interior.
Also, I have the original Oscar and Piker, although I doubt the Piker will ever see the road again due to a small child accident..., The Oscar is seen in a lot of my photos and carries the car #1 and is in the original Royal Point and Western dressage, and is running all the time on the current pike as well as the C & NW car..... but before they were out of stock I did buy the new ones ---
]
These two are all plastic, and do have an interior, unfortunately the cars are hard to pull apart and view the insides of so you have to look thru the windows to see what is in there -- go back to the top and look at the #2 Walthers page for O & P - and you will see what they put in there. I also bought another Hustler also dressed in Amtrash colors and this makes for a cute little passenger train .. or executive train -- or rail fan expedition -- or what ever ...
I hope this look into the past will start some kind of conversation and interest in reviving the past of building craft trains.
Thoughts and comments are always welcome.
The Aerojet ..
For your edification -- I have spent some time looking thru my old catalogs, this is Walthers 1978 ... a few selected pages ...
At one time you could buy a passenger car in pieces, and build the thing yourself, right down to gluing the whole thing together, painting it and lettering it and finally adding trucks and couplers which did not come with the car ... A lot of these detail items are still available on the net if you Google "HO scale passenger car interiors"....
So what does this mean? More what did I do with this information?
Built a car! What else? Although I did not originally use a Walthers car, I did in time build two of the things one in HO and one in O which sits on the mantle. What I did was to take a Riviossi car which would not run on my tracks -- I learned early that 80+ foot cars would not run -- and -- made the Queen of the Rails into my personal Executive Car --- # 100 ....
The left side ...
The right side ...
Looks like just another ordinary car with some kind of something inside of it.... RIGHT?? Hang on to your sox ...
Interior one view ...
So in the end I did buy the Walthers Executive car interior kit, but then rebuilt it MY WAY on my own car, not theirs ...
Another view of this heavy weight Queen of the Rails ...
The wires over the back are for the car interior lighting. That is my contact for those to work. This car does not run on any layout I currently have, but it can be used if I ever had to. NOW it sits in a specially designed and built case on my book case as a display of the old days and what I could do with a car interior.
So what about today?
Well here is an interesting car going over Bender Pass ...
This is a 70 foot observation car in Chicago & Northwestern paint. Doesn't look like much again as it whizzes by behind the last car of the freight train, but that should give you a clue as to what it is. Old timey passenger cars get rebuilt to Amtrak standards, then get pulled by Amtrak... Passenger cars which do not get pulled by them and are on either the head end of tail end of a freight belong to the company.
This is my current, built in 2009, executive car ... and it as well has a finished interior ...
When I got this far in building, Walthers did no longer sell those craft train car kits. I got a lot of this stuff from "Red Cap" and a couple of other outfits. A lot of small wooden pieces were fashioned and some other things were made by hand, like mirrors and the bed ---- This car could not be dissembled further than you see here and I had to work around the factory magnets used to hold the roof on. It is a Round House model if you need to know ... so...
TO build this I had to take a sheet of basswood, and cut three notches so it could go into the car, then build the interior on that sheet of basswood. Once finished it was then slipped into the car and Viola! we got a winner!! Where the notches were interior details were added in later. This was planned in advance as I designed the car interior.
Also, I have the original Oscar and Piker, although I doubt the Piker will ever see the road again due to a small child accident..., The Oscar is seen in a lot of my photos and carries the car #1 and is in the original Royal Point and Western dressage, and is running all the time on the current pike as well as the C & NW car..... but before they were out of stock I did buy the new ones ---
]
These two are all plastic, and do have an interior, unfortunately the cars are hard to pull apart and view the insides of so you have to look thru the windows to see what is in there -- go back to the top and look at the #2 Walthers page for O & P - and you will see what they put in there. I also bought another Hustler also dressed in Amtrash colors and this makes for a cute little passenger train .. or executive train -- or rail fan expedition -- or what ever ...
I hope this look into the past will start some kind of conversation and interest in reviving the past of building craft trains.
Thoughts and comments are always welcome.
The Aerojet ..
