Espee 1940 Coast Daylight project Southern Pacific with the amazing Wasatch Model Company trucks!

Fantastic project, Erik.

Looking forward to more.

Eliot

 

 

Looking forward to it. Beautiful train indeed!

Nice. So,,,,,your train set will be prior to the 1946 change from the "Southern Pacific Lines" lettering to the large "SOUTHERN PACIFIC".

Erik,

You continue to out do yourself at every turn.

Norm

Gonna be very nice !

I've always been a SP fan, so I'll be looking forward to seeing your progress on this!

Your set is excellent...no matter what year it is.  Matt

Erik,

 

Looking forward to seeing more pictures of that most beautiful train in the world.

 

I am building that train using American Lightweight kits and PSC trucks, but it is taking forever. I only have 5 cars built out of 14 so it will be a while before I can run it entirely. The Baggage car was presented in O Scale Trains a few years back.

 

I suppose you have the Pecos River Brass consist and retrofitted it with Wasatch trucks. All in all, a very expensive proposition...

 

Yves

 

 

Yves,

Yes these are 1940 Coast Daylight cars from Pecos River Brass I will happily pull with my OMI GS-1 single headlight. SWEET! I bought the trucks from Roger Lewis about 2 years ago at $140 a pop OWCH. I've been stuck on piggybacks lately.

Thanks for the reply; I know your cars and you sir have been an inspiration for me for a long time.

       
       


Thanks Lee!

       
       


I can't take much credit yet Norm. So far it's just out of box.

But the fun will start when I begin the interior installation and window treatments. I am starting a process to have window blinds photo etched based on the art from Sam Model Tech enlarged to O scale.

       
       


Yeah Santiago. Hey how is your Hiawatha project doing? Have you begun to work on it?it is right next to this train is stellar coolness.

       
       


Thanks Eliot!

       
       


Like the title says, 1940.. Or 1939 I can run them as a being delivered brand new set of cars behind a FEF-1 in Nebraska!

I set up 14 of them at Tim's Toy Trains "Rusty Spike" last September just to drool on. That was before the roller bearing trucks and coupler install. It was still COOL!

I want to respray a car into the Challenger Coach Olive scheme.
(C) Southern Pacific photo used for reference Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society.

The diaphragms are a treat. I think they are some of the finest ever produced. You simply cannot do a 1940 Coast Daylight without them despite the operating headaches and scaling down issues. These cars need a 110" radius to look right.


(C) Southern Pacific photo used for reference Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society.

Me too - I love the Daylight.  I was never wild about the Pecos River version, but your photos indicate that it is well detailed and well painted.  Maybe I thought the Pecos trucks were not well done - you apparently agree.  You have more invested in your trucks than I paid for my Piper Cub!

 

I make my own, from the GS-3 through the Speer extrusions.  I cannot compete, but may post some photos for the doorstop-to-fine model comparison.

 

More on those diaphragms?  Are they some kind of rubber?

My take on diaphragms - not nearly as nice, but it was a first attempt.  Painted ribbon, glued to a spring-loaded set of aluminum plates.  Since this photo, I discovered that I needed an additional 1/16" space for my max 74" radius, so the wrinkles are less pronounced.

 

Eric as a lifelong SP fan (HO) I will be looking forward to your progress.

Bob, I like the ribbon idea. Did you use a specific type, silk, synthetic, etc, or just something you had laying around? I have been wanting to do this to my Lionel cars but am still looking for a solution.

 

Pete

Well thanks Bob; those diaphragms are cast rubber. Albeit not as flexible as Fred Hill's from Trojan they are ok. John Smith told me while in the progress of development they could not figure out how to paint them! John was releived by a child of one of the engineers Hello Kitty style stickers. An extremely high quality sticker was developed to match the body. It is a very successful process and I am most pleased with it. Fred's diaphragms come molded in red or whatever color the train is however as of recent they can be painted but not as successfully as we would like as collectors. This is a tough deal. Many issues are present such as the scaling down problems and weight and radius issues we deal with. I can't even begin to imagine how you would even attempt to produce this effect on a "O-72" diameter.



Fred Hills's Trojans in action on a Challenger Imports PRR set.



Ace PM and Fine Art Models produced these fine cars with shortened reach diaphragms. They are very nice and a good alternative but still have that "gap" our passengers must leap across between cars.


The most recent HO attempt by Fred Hill at Coach Yard produced by Sam Tech formally Sam Model Tech of Korea. These are all my cars.
I think the PRB fluting is DEAD ON! Simply MARVELOUS.

Bob I think your ribbon idea is fantastic. Good thinking.

Thanks a lot, bud. I'll be installing DCC on my E6's on the coming months.

 

About the train, I'll give it a couple of years for GGD to produce the Hiawatha. If that doesn't happen, the Walther's kits would be an excellent option. Just a quite a bit of work it seems. GGD is my best bet, they making it would make me very happy. I sent a request to Scott, don't know how much interest there is at the time. We'll see. 

I just used whatever ribbon was laying around.  I also use ribbon for car window shades, but I choose colors more carefully.

 

The thing that is worrisome about rubber is its longevity.  I have inner tubes from the 1950s that are still good, but if I take them out of the tire they go bad in six months.  New rubber is nowhere near as good as that; inner tubes that we pay $150 for go bad in three years flat.  Maybe that is why cars no longer use inner tubes.

 

On the diaphragms, I had some PSC laying around - they disintegrated.  The K-Line diaphragms have started to go south.  And somebody about 70 years ago made these really neat foam rubber things that looked like the real thing - about twenty years ago mine all started to get real sticky.  Now almost unusable.

Bob I use a stabilization product from Zymöl "rubber and seal conditioner" and it works really well. They are soft as ever and work fine.

The stuff Porsche enthusiasts put on their rubber parts....

 

Yves

Yves, close it was a guy at the Automezzi Colorado that introduced it to me. He used it on his 1957 GT California if it's worthy on a $3,000,000 car it's got to be ok in my train parts.
(C) 2015 poster art Automezzi Colorado, Erik C Lindgren
https://instagram.com/p/5ddrL3Q10_/

This is a seriously big car.


Unfortunately Wasatch Model Co. Has not produced a correct truck for this car but some tweaking I am positive it will have little detriment on the consist.

Each wheel set is not as bad as one might think. They do "free roll". Adding 20 of these axels and a few askew most not; a 5-6 pound car body times 14 and you have one heavy consist. Wasatch Model Co. Trucks practically eliminate if not reduce that 20 axels of drag to maybe the equivalence of 2 or 4 at the most. Just awesome.

Wasatch Model Co. produced these fine Pullman trucks essentially making a train I could operate. Awesomeness.

Erik,

 

I completely agree with you about the absolute need to have ball bearing journals on this consist. In the article I wrote for O Scale Trains, I described how I modified the PSC trucks with some very inexpensive ball bearing to allow a drag free movement. You can actually blow on one car and make it move, on an horizontal surface. The Wasatch trucks are more detailed than the PSC trucks but I could not justify the price difference (1 to 3). 14 cars consist is definitely very heavy.....

 

Yves

Eric,

 

Email me when you have a moment please.

Email in profile.

 

Ron

Erik - are the PRB corrugations "innies" or "outies"?  Te photo comparison makes them look like "outies".  I think Sunset are "innies" and am sure the Speer are.  The Speer may be missing one corrugation.

I'm glad I finally got the time to install these.

I bought them several years ago.

Mr Captain Lewis you did REAL GOOD! As usual. ��

Almost perfect trucks.  Here is a very poor shot of the real thing and a Lobaugh casting:

 

 Neither PSC nor Pecos River came anywhere close.

THIS video makes me want to have worked for the ESPEE.   JMHO but there has not been a better "soft sell" recruitment video done... EVER.

 

See if you can catch the "Daylights" out of this one that is in the Prelinger Archives to download free:

 

https://archive.org/details/ThisIsMy1940 

The Lobough's were pretty ok. The PRB trucks on these cars are a bad combination mostly to weight in my findings and a huge tendency to short on these cars. I suspect the PRB trucks are a close 2nd to the Roger Lewis masterpieces especially for guys building non-brass kits. Those PRB trucks would be perfect.

The PRB truck

Some side by side views
PRB

Wasatch OCS
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PRB


Wasatch OCS

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Video comparison