Reply to "How-To guide on making “The Little Nugget” lounge car"

Update 09/24

Last week in another passenger car thread @Hancock52 wrote "Finishing touches" often means that you haven't finished, or won't ever finish at all. Well guys, he is correct. As I was looking over old photos I took during my last visit to The Little Nugget realized I was missing a few finishing touch details on my miniature O-scale version. The first item I needed to add was an access ladder under the bar/pantry service door.

I looked in my spare parts box and found one. Okay, now it’s fixed.

I was thinking this gray ladder rest on The Little Nuggets roof would be a nice detail to include on my model.

After a bending a 1/64^th thick rod, now that’s done.

Also, my model should have better looking exhaust & intake vents on the roof above the bar & crew dormitory section.

Not a problem, I purchased a few roof vents and now that part is complete.

Then, everything came to a halt when I saw this photo of the trucks underneath The Little Nugget w/dual center mounted brake cylinders and oval holes in the side frame.

Darn it… my O-scale trucks from K-Line didn’t look anything like The Little Nuggets trucks.

Down the rabbit hole I went trying to find the correct style trucks.

Searching the internet I discovered the Pullman Library at the Illinois Railway Museum. This library offers a nice online document for people researching different kinds of prewar & postwar passenger car trucks. Click on: http://pullmanlibrary.org/ then look in the middle of the page for a document called model passenger truck visual index. It’s a good research tool for modelers. Unfortunately for me, the library’s passenger truck index did not include the passenger car trucks I needed with oval holes in the side frame.

Therefore, with a large magnifying glass in hand I studied all 402 pages of black and white photos inside my books The Official Pullman Standard Library vol. 13 and vol. 14. These reference books showed two different styles of Pullman trucks appearing in 1937 on Union Pacific’s new Streamline passenger trains. They looked a lot like Pullman 43R style with roller bearings, elliptical springs and dual brake cylinders mounded at the top center of the side frames. This style of truck has the nickname “Napoleon Hat” because of the bell shaped journals. The best I could tell, the pre-war code for these Pullman style trucks might be U-43R. If it is, then it breaks down as U Union Pacific assigned cars, 4 four wheels, 3 triple bolster, R equipped with roller bearings.

I was getting closer to an answer of what type of truck was used but needed help unravelling why two different styles of trucks were installed under the same passenger train consist. To answer that question I reached out for expert knowledge from Greg Gneier, at Travel Town in Los Angeles, Ca. As luck would have it, Travel Town is restoring three pre-war Union Pacific streamline passenger cars The Little Nugget, Hunters Point and Telegraph Hill/Rose Bowl. Two of these cars The Little Nugget and Telegraph Hill/Rose Bowl were built by the Pullman Car and Manufacturing Corporation in 1937. Over email Greg informed about the differences in prewar lightweight streamline trucks. He said, both pre-war style trucks came with roller bearings, dual brake cylinders mounted in the top center and were built at the same time. One of the main visual differences is the Pullman owned sleeping cars used General Steel Casting Corporation (GSC) trucks with round holes in the side frames. While the Union Pacific company owned cars like lounges and observation cars used a different version truck with oval holes by Locomotive Finished Material Company (LFM) of Atchison, Kansas made to Union Pacific’s exact specifications. Mystery solved!

An interesting side note from Greg was the museum’s 18 roomette Pullman sleeping car that ran on Union Pacific’s City of San Francisco train. When this passenger car arrived at Travel Town back in 1992 it had both styles of 1937 lightweight trucks underneath it. It has GSC trucks under the vestibule end w/round holes in the side frame.

And LFM trucks at the other end w/oval holes in the side frame.

This sleeping cars original name was Telegraph Hill. Union Pacific changed the cars name to Rose Bowl when it was reassigned to the City of Los Angeles train set. You can read about Union Pacific’s Telegraph Hill/Rose Bowl here: https://www.laparks.org/travel...cSleepingCarRoseBowl

Now that I had an answer on which truck to use, I spent several more hours online looking for these exact LFM-Atchison trucks w/roller bearings, w/dual brake cylinders and w/oval holes in the side frames in O-scale. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anybody that makes an LFM truck in O-scale probably because they were only used on UP company cars in the 1937 CoLA and CoSF train consists. The closest 43-R style trucks (with round holes) I could find was Keil-Line part# 4897. That’s okay I guess, if any of my visitors is sharp enough to point out that I have the incorrect 1937 Napoleon Hat style trucks installed underneath this UP company owned streamline lounge car they will probably notice the third rail on my layout.