Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 1) - 60ft Harriman Coach

This is Part 1 of my review of the new Golden Gate Depot (GGD) 'Harriman' passenger cars, expected to be released in January 2018.  This review is posted in 4 parts -

Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 2) - 60ft Harriman Business Car

Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 3) - 60ft Harriman All-Day-Lunch

Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 4) - 70ft Harriman Baggage, RPO-Baggage, & Conclusions

Last year, in August 2016, with much chatter on the various groups about the pre-production publicity photos on Golden Gate Depot's website announcing five newly tooled Harriman Passenger Car models in HO and O-scales.  In the 'Golden Gate Depot's New "Harriman" Cars - Thoughts on the prototype cars' blog I covered the prototype information on the various models that Golden Gate Depot were announcing via their photos of other models.

For this review I'll be using the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society Passenger Car books, Volumes 1 (Coaches & Chair Cars) and 3 (Headend Cars - Baggage and Railway Post Office), and photos of other models from various manufactures as references relating to prototype measurements and details.
** I do not consider myself to be one of the "High Experts in SP Passenger Cars", because other than what I've read in the books listed above and other publicly available information used to gauge these models by I don't have any extra resources than any serious modeler of the SP and passenger equipment of 2012-2017+ should have.

August 2016 Sunset Models Announces Golden Gate Depot's Harriman Cars.

A couple of weeks ago I received an offer from Golden Gate Depot to do a review for this blog of the five (5) carbody styles using a set of six pilot models.  Golden Gate Depot is offering these cars for sale both in a 6-car set (reviewed here) and single cars.  The MSRP $539.95 for 6 car set and
MSRP $89.95 per car individually.  All of the cars reviewed are painted in the Southern Pacific (SPG) Dark Olive Green with Delux Gold lettering, which is correct for cars painted after June 1946.  Some GGD car types are offered with up to six different numbers applied.

Also a check in the Southern Pacific Painting and Lettering Guide by Jeff Cauthen and John Signor, printed by the SPH&TS shows after 1936, until the end of Dark Olive Green (theoretically last painted in 1954), the trucks and under-bodies of the car were painted black.  This is not hard to change, but it would have been nice if the cars were correct for the Southern Pacific (no Lines) version after June 1946.

Golden Gate Depot's new "Harriman" passenger cars in HO scale

I'll cover each car specifically, with corrections to my previous post, as needed relating to the model and the prototype cars.

The set I was sent to review consists of six cars:
"70ft RPO" (Combined RPO-Baggage)
"70ft Baggage"
Two "60ft Coaches"
"60ft All-Day-Lunch" (Converted from a Coach)
"60ft Business"

I'll start with the two 60ft Coaches, and then move on to the other cars in following posts.  I thought about putting them all together, but the blog post would be WAY too long to easily read and I want to discuss each model in proper amount of detail.

These cars form the backbone of 'budget fare' day travel in the 1920s though to about 1960.  These cars will be useful for modeling anything from Boy Scout Specials, to National Guard movements, to modeling San Fransisco Commute trains.

GGD SP 1972 & 1964 Coaches

The two coaches which come in the 6-car set I received are SP 1972 and SP 1964.  It would appear that Golden Gate Depot is offering up to six different numbers on some types of car, I'm assuming the coaches is the type that will receive the most options for car number.

History of the 60ft Coaches on the SP

As with most of my blog posts, I'll be covering the history of these cars again briefly.  For the regular readers, I've covered the coaches on my Index for 'Modeling SP Heavyweight Passenger Classes' page.  Golden Gate Depot chose to model the 90-odd cars of 60-C-5 class.  The cars are also roughly correct for the cars up to 60-C-10, however most of the later class cars were fitted with square 'Utility" type vents on the roof instead of the round 'Globe' type vents of the 60-C-5s.

The T&NO, NWP, and Arizona Eastern (AE) also received a hand full of cars of class 60-C-5, I've included them in the count above, since they did cross back and forth between SP and the subsidiary reporting marks.  Some of the T&NO cars were set up as divided compartment coaches, which I'll talk about later along with the interiors.

SP 1964 GGD 60ft Coach #4

SP 1964 "GGD 60ft Coach #3"

According to the SPH&TS SP Passenger Cars Vol.1 book, SP 1964 was a 60-C-5 with 72 seats which as far as I can tell had a remarkably boring life on the SP.  The transom windows above the side windows were probably had plated over between 1940 and 1949, as the GGD model portrays it.  The plates used to cover the transom windows follow the additional thickness very similar to how PSC made their 'shopped' versions.

Overall view of GGD's SP 1964,  60-C-5 Coach.

The model also has the intricate roof conduits for the upgraded electric lighting that was installed in the 1920s or 1930s replacing the gas system.  The car has the post-June 1946 "SOUTHERN PACIFIC" lettering, which would be correct for cars into the 1954-1958 era.  Many of these cars ended their revenue careers on the SP still wearing the green paint.

Before I get too far into the details, let's look at the second coach.

SP 1972 GGD "60ft Coach #3

SP 1972 "GGD 60ft Coach #4"

The SP Passenger Cars Vol.3 book information on SP 1972 is more interesting than the SP 1964.  Following all the various changes to the SP's fleet of 60ft coaches, the SP 1972 was converted to a 68-seat configuration in 1937 for the Del Monte by removing the "NW" lengthwise seat in the corner opposite the men's toilet and installing baggage racks.  This change consisted of receiving second hand 'bucket seats' probably from the 72-C-5 coaches being upgraded to Chair cars.

Golden Gate Depot's SP 1972, 60-C-5 Coach

There is no modeled difference in the GGD SP 1972 interior from the GGD SP 1964, which are basic bench style seats.

Overall Painting and Lettering

Overall the paint is applied evenly and is a good match to the Star Brand Dark Olive Green which I use on my custom painted passenger car models.  The GGD Dark Olive Green to my eye is slightly bluer and maybe a bit more gray to it.  This is not a problem as the color would vary slightly from the weathering and sun fading effects.

GGD SP 1972 viewed from the side.

The lettering is good and the style looks correct for SP's lettering.  The color is opaque, slightly heavy in a few places on the RPO, but I'll talk about that later.  In some comparison photos the lettering on the GGD cars is 'brighter' and more opaque than the Thin Film decals which are used on my other cars.

Mechanicals & Underframe Details

The trucks are nicely rendered models of the SP's standard 8ft 4-wheel passenger truck.  Pickups are two stamped metal bars inside the sideframes of the trucks, much like the MTH Daylight cars that I've discussed on the linked page.  These cars roll very well, I would almost dare to say better than the stock MTH Daylight cars did.

Draftgear and Trucks on GGD 60ft Coach

The trucks are screw mounted to the underframe with shouldered screws and a tension coil spring, similar to the style of bolster used on PSC and Soho brass passenger cars.  The trucks are molded in plastic with a plastic clip to retain the pickup contact bars.  Electric contact is made to the body with rounded extensions from the metal bars in the sideframes up into the underframe, similar again to the MTH Daylight car style contacts.

The wheel gauge is about normal for wheel sets these days.  They do fit in the NMRA RP-25 contour gauge, but on the tight side.  If I bias the gauge against one flange the other flange will not drop into the gauge. - This is common on ALL current production that I know of because of a unspecified dimension on what is to be done to the gauge of the wheels when wheel flanges do not completely fill the RP-25 contour.

Wheelsets on the tight side, but passable for "NMRA" RP-25 gauge. (Note this does not work for LMRC wheel gauging)

The couplers are mounted on a extending draft-gear for tight radius curve operations.  The couplers are about 0.01"-0.015" low because the draft-gear has about 1/2 coupler height of vertical free-play.  This might be a concern if used where large draft forces are encountered.  All of the cars I use are modified with rigid body mounted draft-gear boxes for operation on large radius curves.

Coupler on this car is sagging by about 0.010-0.015".  Coupling it to the gauge lets the pin ride on the gage and appear fine.

While I've seen models with various types of swinging draft-gear, this is more like the BLI Daylight car draft-gear.  One of the odd things about this draft-gear is a wedge guides the swing and extension of the couplers out and to the side.

Extending Draft-Gear deflected to maximum for tight curve operations. (Photo of Baggage car used here).

While this draft-gear design will be helpful on tight radius curves, I have concerns about how it will operate in heavy trains with approximately NMRA weighted cars behind it.  The draft gear extends and is forced off center by the 'guide wedge' under load, but not unreasonable load.

Draft-gear extended, but held as close to in-line as possible.

The car weight is 4.5 ounces, which is way below what a car this length should weigh.  This is especially true when considering use the cars at the front of heavy passenger trains.  Prior experience with some of the MTH Daylight cars squeaked by at about 6.5 ounces. but on most of them I've had to add another 1.5 ounces to get reliable operations.

The GGD cars will probably be OK on smaller layouts with tight curves and short consists with small steam engines pulling them.  Although 4.5 ounces is very light for tight curves.  Several ounces would need to be added to the GGD cars for regular mixing with normal plastic and brass passenger cars for prototypical operations.

End Detail on a Golden Gate Depot 60ft Coach.

The end detail is nicely rendered with the rivets and free standing grab irons.  Trainline and Signal Hoses are modeled, as is a approximation of a steam line connection.  All of these hose and pipe details are noticeably far away from the draft gear and coupler due to the movable coupler system.

Two Golden Gate Depot 60ft Coaches coupled together with neutral coupler force.

The diaphragms are nicely molded, but are static and do not move.  Normal coupled distance with the cars at rest leaves about 3" of space between the couplers.

Bottom of GGD 60ft Coach

The underframes of the cars are cast in plastic and are one-piece.  While I don't mind the cast on air tanks, etc, too much.  I would have liked to see the brake cylinder and levers cast as separate parts.

Molded on underbody detail on Golden Gate Depot cars.

Extruding the levers and finer details up to the car floor is not something I've seen since Rivarossi's HW passenger cars.  It is certainly not seen on modern tooled passenger cars from MTH, BLI, or Walthers, which the HO modeling community has come to expect.

Lighting & Interior

The lighting on these cars is BRIGHT... thankfully the car sides don't bleed any light that I've seen yet.  This exposes the need for window shades and passengers.  I've not attempted to disassemble one of these cars, as I will be returning these sample cars to Golden Gate Depot shortly.  There are screws on the bottom, so I would think it wouldn't be too hard to get inside.

Golden Gate Depot SP 1972 with full track power DC 12V applied.

All of the cars have lighting strips with five LEDs inside the car running off of the power pickups in the trucks.  The lighting system has a keep-alive feature which keeps the lights lit for about 1-2 seconds with the lights fully fading out at about 3 seconds from full power at 12V DC.  This should be more than enough to bridge over any dirty or dead spots on a layout.  Operation on lower DC power settings are dimmer than at 12V.

MTH Daylight car and GGD Coach with full track power in normally room lighting.

The MTH Daylight Cars I've reviewed before are about 1/2 as bright as these GGD cars are when fully lit!

MTH Daylight car and GGD Coach with full DC track power with partly reduced lighting.

The lighting is much brighter than I prefer with the cars I custom light, this makes photography of the interiors of the car rather difficult when fully illuminated.

SP 1972 with track power reduced lights partly illuminated to show interior seating.

Another unfortunate issue with seeing the interior is the very thickly molded windows.  From some viewing angles it is hard to see through to see the interiors of the cars.  Also under certain lighting conditions the edges of the glass light up with strange prism effects, such as the photo above.

The Roof - The Most Visible Part of the Model

The roofs of models at normal viewing angles are always are seen more than the real cars when standing on the ground level of a scale person.  The GGD cars have very nicely rendered conduits for the prototype electric lighting and vent detail, however the roof itself is not correct.

Close up of Golden Gate Depot roof details.

All but the worst of the prototype drawings and photos clearly show the way the panels and joints should look.  Golden Gate Depot molded the roofs with what appear to be 1937-style joints with a cap piece or 'weld bead' style treatment.  This is an error which I don't understand how it could be allowed to slip through. 

The older Sunset O-gauge brass models seem to have rivets on the etched brass roofs, but the photos of the newer Sunset/3rd Rail's O-gauge cars seem to have the same problem with ribs instead of rivets.  These cars were derived from the same drawings as their larger sister models.

Close up of Southern Car & Foundry 69-BP-30-2 roof lap joints and rivets.

The cars should have overlapping high-low-high panels with rivets at the overlapping joints, such as the SC&F resin model has (shown above).

Fixing this error will be a major project involving sanding/cutting down the existing 'ribs', removing the existing good roof details, adding new lapped panels to the roof, adding rivet details (Archer Rivets), and then reapplying the detail vents and conduit.  The roof is also molded as a one-piece body with the sides and ends, so replacing the roof isn't an option.  While fixing this would make quite the blog article, I'm not sure I'd want to spend the time required to do it.

Scale Length - Operations with Other Models?

At some point one of the larger questions about a model railroad car or engine is how accurate and how useful it is?  The other question is will it fit into the visual look and operation of the layout or railroad where it will be used or will it draw unwanted attention to itself or will it blend into the scheme of things and "just look right"?

Until the Golden Gate Depot models there has not been an accurate 'Harriman' coach done in plastic, nor in "budget brass".  Followers of this blog will have seen the various projects I've done with Model Power. MDC/Athearn/Roundhouse, and Soho Brass cars to make them more accurate, detail them, etc.  Let's see how the GGD measures up to some of these other cars.

Let's look first at the Golden Gate Depot 60ft Coach.

Left end of Golden Gate Depot 60ft Coach

Starting from the left end of the car with my scale ruler with the 0ft mark at the inner side of the vestibule door, which is where the SP defined the end of the "60ft" for the coach's classification.

Right end of the Golden Gate Depot 60ft Coach

And see where the other vestibule lines up. --- 58'6", when I measured this again, I came up with about 58'7".  It should be 59'10" to the usable inside of the end walls according to the SP 1933 Passenger Car Diagram book.  Coupled length over the pulling faces of the couplers is 67' 8.75".  The body length of the GGD model is 66ft over the bases of the diaphragms, and works out to roughly the right length.  The inconsistencies on the sill length seem centered around the length from the endsill (inner edge of the vestibule door) to the bathroom windows, which should be 20.25", but on the model is only 16.75".  If this were corrected the model would still only come to 59'2", and be 8" short.

Golden Gate Depot SP 1972 (top) with Soho SP 2178 (bottom)

I squared the Golden Gate Depot Model up over a Soho 60ft coach.  The models are almost identical in lengths, with only some slight differences around the doors.

Length of Car -

Wheelbase on GGD model is 52'3" - Prototype is 52'1.5" - Very Close 1.5"

Truck Centers of GGD model is 43'10" - Prototype is 44'1.5" - Pretty Close 3.5"

Sill to Truck CL of GGD model is 7'0" - Prototype is 7'10.25" - This is where the length of the body error shows up on the wheel base, again about 5" at each end of the car.

Height of the car -

Railhead to bottom of side sill: 0.488" = 3'6.5" GGD - Prototype is 3'5.375" - Very Close 1.125"

Railhead to top of roof shell sheet:1.944 = 14'1.5" GGD - Prototype is 14'0" - Very Close 1.5"

Conclusions - GGD 60ft Coach

SP 1964, a 60-C-5 coach from Golden Gate Depot in a typical 'Commute' consist from the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Overall the car measures out pretty close to the prototype, except on the endsill length being short by about 8".  The GGD 60ft Coaches will look pretty good in a train with other models.

Mechanically, the GGD 60ft Coaches are light in weight and have possible issues with the coupler draft gear system under loading conditions.  The reviewing timeframe for these cars unfortunately does not allow me to check these possible issues in practical testing during 'normal operations' in a 10-15 car consist.

Fixing the Mechanical issues would be basically par for the course compared to any of the other passenger car models I'm working on: Change draftgear to rigid mounted type to the frame, add weight in the centersill, and change out the solid diaphragms for Hi-Tech Diaphragms would be the basics I would personally start with.

The visual issues are primarily the roof seams, the thick windows and the slightly clunky underframe details being molded on.  These issues are ones that each modeler will have to decide for themselves if they want to live with it or try to fix.  Repainting the trucks and underbodies is not a big deal, and on the SPL version of these cars, it becomes a question of, 'Are you modeling before or after 1936?'

In Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 2), I'll be looking at the SP 109 60ft 'Business Car'.

Jason Hill

Links to Related Articles:

Thoughts on New Golden Gate Depot "Harriman" Cars (August 2016 - Announcement)

Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 2) - 60ft Harriman Business Car

Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 3) - 60ft Harriman All-Day-Lunch

Review - Golden Gate Depot (Part 4) - 70ft Harriman Baggage, RPO-Baggage, & Conclusions

Modeling Index of SP Heavyweight Passenger Classes - General index of SP passenger car models.