Possible New Frisco Lightweight Passenger Cars - N-Scale

My coaches arrived on Friday.

Now I can ( basically ) run a Texas Special Consist that represents the train between Springfield and Muskogee, where it ran without a diner. The Consist is:

A Wheels of time 70 foot HW baggage
A custom Lettered MTL heavyweight RPO baggage
3 Railsmith coaches ( one of them standing in for the coach buffet)
a Railsmith Texas Special sleeper for the St. Louis-Ft Worth car line
A Railsmith Texas Special sleeper for the St. Louis-Dallas car line
An intermountain B&O 10-5 Sleeper for the Washington-Dallas car line
A Railsmith PRR 10-6 Sleeper for the New York-San Antonio car line
A Railsmith Texas Special sleeper for the St. Louis-San Antonio car line

So other than not having a lounge or an observation to bring up the markers, I have at least a standin for every car I need.

 

Lowell has added two more cars to those available to order.

First is a RailSmith 10-6 sleeper which will be decorated by MicroTrains with shadowline striping as the PRR’s “Swatara Rapids” this is a prototypically correct car for (at least ) 1953-1956.
https://lowellsmith.net/product/texas-special-swatara-rapids/

Second is a MicroTrains baggage car also painted in shadowline striping as Frisco 436.
https://lowellsmith.net/product/frisco-baggage-436/

I need to ask Lowell a clarifying question on the baggage car. The blurb about it ends with:
“This car will be amazing, as it is decorated in the shadow line scheme with the full ‘turtleback’, or also called ‘monitor’ roof.”

obviously that statement is not correct. If the car has a monitor roof, I am not interested.

Paul

 

Are you going to get the Santa Fe-style observation as a stand in? Just curious.

 

I will once Lowell puts it up for sale. Having seen the sample in person, it is a very possible example, even if it isn’t absolutely correct. It definitely passes the 3 foot test.

Most of the other cars are stands as well. The RailSmith Texas Special coaches are closer than the RailSmith Texas Special sleepers are ( for Frisco and Katy cars ).

Paul

 

SoI was going to go order my baggage car and PRR sleeper... Lowell snuck another announcement in... 3 Frisco coaches

https://lowellsmith.net/product/frisco-coaches-fleet/

Clayton, Ferguson, and Kirkwood.

this just became a much more expensive day for me....

 

Paul, are the Lowell Smith passenger cars N scale? What type of cars are the other previous releases and when?

Joe

 

ummm... this is an N-scale thread, so yes, these are n-scale.

This thread has been all about the Lowell Smith cars, especially the RailSmith cars ( Lowell purchased the tooling of Walther’s n-scale passenger cars a few years ago ). All of the information I have about the RailSmith Frisco/Katy cars and related models from Lowell are contained in this thread. Models that have been delivered are Texas Special coaches and sleepers, though all with Katy car names ( so far ).

I have all of the cars that have been released, so I am happy to answer questions, but please go back to the first post and re-read the thread, so I don’t have to repeat myself.

Paul

 

Lowell has updated the language to indicate the car has a radial roof.

Paul

 

Paul, Thank you for clarifying my questions.

I didn't read the N scale tag at the top of this thread.

Joe

 

To be fair, I just click on the "Recent Posts," and don't always see how they're tagged, and I suspect many others do the same thing.

 

I look at the recent posts too, but if I am not familiar with the thread, I go back at least a page or two and re-read the posts OR I start my post with something along the lines of “I haven’t read everything here but...”. There are times when I am reviewing the thread before posting that keep me from posting... usually when I already said what I was going to add to the conversation.

It is very simply good netiquette to familiarize yourself with what has already been said and where you are posting before responding to a thread.

Paul

 

It's also good etiquette not to point out a friend's failings in front of other friends. I consider all of us on Frisco.org to be friends if not family.

Robert

 

My post was not pointing out any particular person’s failings, but rather a rule of netiquette we all violate from time to time. Bringing up the rules is never a faux pas IMO.

I am guilty of jumping into a conversation without checking my surroundings ( so to speak ) too.

However, we are straying from the topic, so I will refrain from additional comment on the subject.

 

So, now that all that is out of the way, what do you all think about the new passenger cars from Lowell Smith? I am glad they are releasing them piecemeal and not all at once. I wonder who is going to do the engines for the Meteor and Texas Special. That is when this could get really expensive.

 

When I talked to Lowell in Chicago over the summer, he said Broadway Limited for the Texas Special.

I really have to think about those before I order them. Lowell said he wants to do the locomotives with fluting. Katy never removed the fluting, but Frisco removed it very shortly after the E8As arrived. This means only the Katy EA7s are appropriate for my mid to late 1950s timeframe ( for passenger train models). Now, if he manages to get racehorse EA7s with the porthole windows, I might be in trouble.

I already have the Broadway Limited E8s that came out a few years ago, along with Intermountain FP7s, F7Bs (both Frisco and Katy ), and Atlas GP7s, so I am pretty well covered on era appropriate power. ( Broadway Limited has also produced Katy PAs and Intermountain has produced Katy FP7s, but I don’t have examples of these )

 

I will most likely get the Texas Special engines when they are announced. Even if they are KATY, they should still have the Frisco logo on them. I would like to have a complete Texas Special consist, even if it is all KATY. I have the Intermountain Pennsy sleepers on order from my LHS. These are painted for the Texas Special.

As far as the Meteor goes, I wish they had used other names (if appropriate). Kirkwood, Clayton, and Ferguson were already produced by Riverrossi/Con-Cor. I know the Lowell Smith cars will be nicer, I just don't like duplicates.

 

I am disappointed that the Texas Special, so far, has been all Katy cars, but only because that limits the Frisco trains I can use the cars for. I see the cars as building blocks for consists of trains, not as the singular train the manufacturer produces it for. The simple fact with the Texas Special and meteor cars is that those trains were the initial assignments, but the cars later were mixed into the consists of other trains to meet changing demands. This is really what I want to model, not the initial consists. It is hard to put a Katy Texas Special coach in a Meteor consists, but Frisco Texas Special cars would be right at home. ( Pullman cars are another story, since the cars were leased to Pullman and Pullman assigned cars to specific lines, not the railroads ).

I have the Intermountain cars on order too, along with ( now ) Lowell’s PRR 10-6 in shadowline. All three of those cars are protypically correct, though for different eras ( the Intermountain Cascade series cars were assigned to the Texas Special from 1948-1950 ( and shadowlined for that time period), Lowell’s car (Swatara Rapids ) was assigned to the Texas Special in 1950, but the only hard dates I have for it being in shadowline paint are from 1953-1956. In 1956, it was repainted, and if it received the same paint job that Tioga Rapids did, it was red and silver, with no shadowline...).

I have already mentioned in this thread that PRR cars covered the NYC-San Antonio car route in standard PRR paint. Lowell released Tippecanoe Rapids with the last set of cars, it was assigned to Texas special service from 1957 until the end of the car line ( it replaced Swatara Rapids). Interestingly, the new run of Kato’s Broadway Limited ( slated for February release) will have both a Tioga and Tippecanoe Rapids in standard PRR colors.

there are lots of good options for prototypically correct PRR cars in Frisco trains...

I got rid of most of my con-cor cars along time ago. I think only the Texas special set, which was incorrectly labeled as Katy and Wabash, was close to correct, but I have never owned that set. Most of the Con-Cor cars I had were painted all silver with black lettering, which isn’t even close.

The one con-cor coach I still have has a red window band a roof, but the lettering is all black. I have seen no evidence that any Frisco cars were painted with this particular combination. There were cars with dark ( probably pullman green ) lettering, but they were painted with Pullman green window bands and dark ( black or Pullman green ) roofs and ends. It will need to go, because it will look out of place next to the RailSmith cars.

 

I am not as precise in my modeling of the Frisco. I buy and run just about everything. The layout I run on is set in New England in the transition era. If I was being anywhere near prototypical, I couldn't run any Frisco.