I ordered my full set today.
I agree with Ray.
My preference is for the Deluxe (Imitation gold yellow) RIBBON style font with the Pullman green paint with black roofs & black trucks.
My understanding is that the RR Roman font was used by the BR (Burlington Route: CB&Q and subsidiaries C&S and FW&D) in the pre-WWII era to conform to the Pullman Company's standard RR Roman fonts. In that era, most of the sleeper cars were owned by Pullman & leased to the RRs.
The following two items affected the BR's adoption of the RIBBON font on their heavyweight passenger car fleet in the post-WWII era.
FIRST:
With the introduction of the 1936 shovel-nose Denver Zephyr, BR was one of the first RRs (maybe even the first RR) to use sleeper cars made by Budd in gleaming SS (stainless-steel). Santa Fe & a couple other RRs also bought some pre-WWII Budd SS sleepers. Worried about loss of sleeper-lease revenue due to RR-owned Budd sleepers, Pullman started to refuse to staff the Budd sleepers with their legendary Pullman porter staff & service. CB&Q, AT&SF, and the 2 other RRs sued Pullman based on the anti-trust laws. The case was resolved by Pullman being forced to either give up its service business or its sleeper-lease business. Pullman chose to keep its service business and to sell all of its sleeper fleet directly to the RRs. At this point, Pullman staff service was offered in all sleeper cars, regardless of the original manufacturer (i.e., Pullman or Budd).
SECOND:
BR's off-season for passenger service was in the winter when the demand was low for outdoor vacations in the western dude ranches & national parks due to the severe cold weather. As a result in the winter, BR leased many of its idle heavyweight passenger cars to south east RRs, including ACL (Atlantic Coast Line). While in the ACL's care, some of the cars were repainted with the Deluxe RIBBON font to better match ACL's home fleet. Upon their return to BR in the spring, BR's management was impressed with the Deluxe RIBBON font as an easy & inexpensive way to give the heavyweight Pullman green cars a more "modern" updated look in the post-WWII streamliner era. While the SS Zephyr fleet carried BR's premier trains, the BR's heavyweight Pullman fleet carried BR's secondary trains, including many steam fan trips.
You can view samples of the RIBBON font on Microscale Decals' website. 48-274 is the BR Deluxe (imitation gold) RIBBON decal set. 48-275 is the BR Black RIBBON decal set. During the post-WWII streamliner era, a few of BR's heavyweight cars were painted silver to augment the SS Zephyr fleet during peak summer season travel. The black RIBBON font was used on the silver heavyweights.
So for anyone wanting to model the steam-diesel transition era with BR heavyweight passenger cars, my understanding is that the RIBBON font is much more representative than the RR Roman font.
You can see for yourself in Morning Sun Books' CB&Q Color Guide to Passenger & Freight Equipment. Of all the heavyweight passenger cars, only one photo shows the RR Roman lettering; at least 20 photos show the RIBBON lettering. Most of the heavyweight photos are also in the Pullman green paint with only a few in the silver paint.
I am also fine with the ~70' scale length (~18" actual size) for these heavyweight car models. My layout will only have O-72 & O-84 curves, on which this size looks very satisfactory to me. The BR's heavyweight fleet included car lengths of 40', 60', 70' and others as well. To me, these are scale models.
To me, it is appropriate for the inclusion of Berwyn's announcement in the 3R Scale SubForum.
Thanks for reading & Enjoy these cars !!! Thanks to Berwyn & Atlas-O for offering these cars !!! Thanks to OGR Forum for facilitating our discussion in this thread !!!
Everywhere West !!!
