On June 27, 2026, I headed over to the Bay Area Prototype Meet in Kensington, CA, a couple miles south of where the meet has historically been held at St. David's School due to the regular venue building receiving new windows and forcing the BAPM to be moved to a new venue.
Time for a Walk Around the Show
Here's some pictures that I took at the event, Enjoy!
The long-time regular at BAPM Harry Wong moves in with his lighting and camera rig around taking photos for Railroad Model Craftsman, where he now works.
Rapido's New C-40-3
The last several years Rapido has had a table with a couple of their reps to talk to and discuss projects with. Last year, they had 3d printed pre-tooling model for their SP C-40-3 caboose. This year they have pre-production models from the actual injection molding tooling and detail parts applied and then painted and lettered. These are probably my second most anticipated model project for 2026, which I have reserved a couple years ago, which is in the pipeline right now. My primary models of interest that are expected soon, are the Golden Gate Depot/3rd & Townsend Models Harriman V2.0 cars, expected in July 2026.
This would be the as-delivered scheme, initials only, pre-1946.
I was told by the Rapido representatives at the show, that these pre-production models will have some slight changes for production. While I've not gone over these with a fine-tooth comb looking for problems, they look good to me on the first pass as they are. As with all pre-production samples, this is to be expected. Rapido is expecting these cabooses to be out near the end of the year 2026.
These models look very nice and I'm looking forward to receiving mine and writing the review on them for service on the Jawbone Branch.
The Rapido rep that talked with me said that the cars with the 'frog-eye' markers will work, and the earlier corner-lantern cars will have non-working markers included, which can be mounted on either end of the car as the modeler desires. This seems like a reasonable solution.
This is one of the SP cabooses which was fitted with two stoves inside.
Some SP cabooses only had one stove, but some wood cars were refitted to have two stoves, like my SP 2 caboose, a C-30-2. As I recall, the SP C-40-3s were built with two from the beginning. Some kept the second stove in the short-end, but some had it capped off and/or removed.
A little weathering and this car would be ready for service on most any SP mainline layout after 1938.
It was rather busy at the Meet, but I should have grabbed some photos of the Gothic Lettered version (post 1955-56 era) for my blog.
Here's a 'borrowed photo' from Cyrus Gillespie's collection from the meet showing the Gothic Lettering later versions of Rapido's C-40-3s.
I didn't see a sample for the version I have on order, which is the 1946-1955 version with the spelled out 'Roman' version of "SOUTHERN PACIFIC". I'm not too worried about them getting those done right. Part of me is interested in the SP version like the 1115 at the show, as I've seen views of those cars over Donner and the SP system in the Pentrex film, 'Southern Pacific in 1941'. However, I have several other cabooses, and we can't have everything which 'looks cool'.
Working Construction Equipment Models?!
The arm has a working attachment connector to switch out what tool it needs at the moment.
Probably the most impressive models being shown at the meet are these functioning models of heavy equipment by Nexus Hobby.
Business Card for Nexus Hobby, the builder of these amazing little machines.
Draglines, clamshell buckets, and an excavator with multiple attachments. Plus a dump truck that can drive around the site as well. The dragline and clameshell units could also traverse and move on their own tracks around the 'solid ground' of the 'sandbox' that the owner brought with him. I shot some video of the pieces of equipment showing off what they could do.
Here's some of the videos that I shot of the working heavy equipment.
Excavator moving around with it's full light package and fully working arm with different attachments.
OwlMtModels & Jason Hill's Passenger Cars
OMM Table, Lumber Loads & my Passenger cars displayed - photo by "Sierra Rwy 1929"
I brought the OwlMtModels collection of Lumber Loads and a couple Beet Racks, plus some MW cars.
BAPM 2026, NC&StL 15337 Jason Hill model. - photo by Sierra Railway 1929
I also brought along the NC&StL 15337 Accurail kitbash with all the chalk-marks and routing cars. Nice to see some of the other folks out there thought it was worth taking a photo of it.
My main display of OwlMtModels lumber loads and passenger cars (and partial train consists) taking up a bit more than one table.
Also a large group of my current passenger train project cars, including most of my current West Coast consist and parts of my Santa Fe Grand Canyon, with the shadowlined cars and the MoPac 6-6-4 'Eagle River'. I was surprised there were a couple other people modeling the Grand Canyon (North) also at the meet too! I also had a couple miscellaneous Pullman Tourist Cars, including my 16-section kitbashed car and the Walthers 14-section 'Challenger' Tourist car.
Many folks enjoyed seeing the rainbow consist of the West Coast, with the freshly painted 'Golden Plain' (in the middle of the photo), and my newly started Walthers conversion for a ex-CoSF SP 9200/9201 Pullman 10-5 that I'll be posting about soon.
I think this was a Pullman 11-double-bedroom sleeper originally, with another ex-City car to the top left too.
I didn't see who's models these were, but they had a large collection of early Amtrak passenger cars.
I grabbed this detail shot so I can see what to do on my kitbash soon.
The cars that caught my eye were the ones which were clearly ex-City of San Francisco (or other City train sets) that had the roof conduits still in place, as my SP 9200/.9201 will need that.
Pullman 10-6 "Blunt-End" Overland-Pool Car
Among the other passenger train modelers, I found this Pullman 10-6 Blunt-End sleeper in Overland colors.
SP 9041, Blunt-End 10-6 for SF Overland, I didn't catch who the modeler was to give credit, but very nice model.
I'll probably include this photo in some of my West Coast modeling blogs, as an example of the 10-6s that bumped the SP's 6-6-4s to secondary train assignments.
SP SSS & Gray era E-units and lightweight cars.
More Gray and SSS SP passenger consist modeling.
A couple of examples of the longest lived F7As on the SP roster. SP 6432 was the last F7A on the Pacific Lines, as I recall.
As I recall the 6432 lasted into the early '70s before being traded in for newer engines from EMD. In her last years, she was very dirty and weather beaten.
The T&NO 350-series units came back to the Pacific Lines in the 1950s, and 355 was among the last as I remember.
Ken Adams' M47 Tanks on Flatcars
There were a couple of military modelers at the show, one was Ken Adams with his M-47s and extensive research on them. The 'Popsicles' and SP models behind are Kieth Clayton's, thanks to Cyrus Gillespie's photos of the meet.
Davy Dauchan's Wall of Consists from Time Books
This display shows sequential days of trains that the engineer took over the SP. Pretty cool concept. Amazing that today we can pull together photos of the engines to actually get a pretty good modeling of the consists of the trains from nearly 40 years ago.
The front ends of multiple trains, plus the time that the recoder operated the trains.
I've never quite seen this type of consist modeling and display before. It's a rather interesting way to show the actions of the trains and how they fit into the whole system and also relate to the timing of how the railroad worked.
Cyrus Gillespie got this better view of the data from each day's trip and consist.
1970s KTM 72-IC-series "Subs"
The lighting was rather tricky to get good photos of these solid Gray or Gray and black roof 'Subs'.
It's always good to see what can be done with these classic 'budget' brass passenger car models.
Lucas Goodman's Various Cabooses
A nice collection of SP and Santa Fe cabooses by Lucas Goodman.
Pat Davis' Models of Amador Central Engines
Pat's collection of custom AC's S12s.
Pat Davis' Amador Foothills model - photographed by Cyrus Gillespie, I missed getting this angle in my photo set.
Pat worked with Bill from PDC.CA for a couple months to get all the artwork correct for these custom decals.
Other Models at the Meet
Many of the other models around the room didn't have name tags or I didn't catch who did the models, so no disrespect intended as I'm just going to post these photos as I walked around the meet.
Maybe a couple dioramas
Cryo-reefer cars, covered hoppers, boxcars.. steel cars... all sorts.
My five cars in the foreground that overflowed from the lumber trains and passenger cars on the table to the right. I missed who the WP modeler is that brought these WP MW cars and consist. The far car in my five-car group is my NC&StL 15337 (which is currently one of my favorite cars), then a Fox Valley 'Wagon-top', two OwlMtModels F-50s with Blackburn Racks, and my kitbashed SPMW 847 wheel car.
Look at all the SD9s and Alcos, plus a couple Kraus-Maffies! I also see a B-50-15/16 there and a yellow-stripe SP boxcar.
As always at these meets, there are diesels from all over showing up.
SP Centennials, Kodachrome, MW tie consist, and some regular gray & red SP units too.
Amtrak Superliners, tank cars, gondolas, doodle-bugs, couple Daylight cars, all sorts of cars on this table.
How about some foreign train modeling too?
Even a few structure models show up at the meets too!
More diesels!
In Closing
As always, the group that comes together for the BAPM meets are a wonderful group, always positive and enjoyable to meet and talk with. The shade trees at the new location in Kensington helped keep the heat down, and the narrow drive along the Richmond-Oakland ridgeline was certainly exciting, plus a great view of the bay and San Francisco.
Model Room around 1PM at the BAPM 2019 Meet at Saint David's School.
I'm happy that the coordinators were able to get the new location on short notice and I understand the Saint David's School needed some renovating with new windows, which required the shift in locations.
I enjoyed meeting up with many old friends and some newer friends. Plus a couple of people who were attending for their first time. Over the years, I found I much enjoy the RPM-type meets over any sort of 'contest' meet. The people are so much more open with techniques, suppliers, vendors, etc to help with your modeling project that they've found. Instead of the 'If I show you how I did mine, you might beat me next year!' attitude of many contests. The RPM folks take the opposite stance, 'I want you to bring an awesome model next year, one that I'll be asking you how you did this and that on!' So if you ever have the chance to attend the BAPM meets, I highly suggest that you attend.
While I understand most of us think of passenger trains of the SP as the nice ordered consists with striking appearances of a solid trainsets of Red and Orange Daylight cars behind a GS-4, a fog-cloaked two-tone gray Lark slipping in the early morning along the coast, or a brilliant Yellow and Gray consist flashing by on the Overland Route... But, what about the other SP trains in the early 1950s which started picking up extra cars, still painted in "Premier Train" schemes?
The History
One of the hidden surprises in digging in more accurately modeling my passenger consists is that the SP's fleet of 6-6-4s was one of the largest groups of streamlined or light-weight sleepers that they had as of mid-late 1950, which also lost their regular assignment and became 'extra'. Primarily, this was due to the two new versions of Pullman's standard 10-6 and 10-6 blunt-end sleepers which were displacing the 6-6-4 sleepers in middle of 1950.
Mid-1950 through 1953 era 6-6-4 options in the form of SP 9163, 9152, and 'Golden Plain'.
This change pulled the four 6-6-4s completely from the Lark service and released at least two or three of the 6-6-4s from the regular Golden State assignments. The remaining 6-6-4s were then focused onto the SF Overland/City of San Francisco pool based out of Oakland/Richmond and the Golden State Limited, based out of Los Angeles.
While I'll cover the West Coast's consist in a dedicated blog-post soon, so I'll sum it up here by just saying that the otherwise fairly dull SP Dark Olive Green and Pullman Green consists of Owl and West Coast, can have a varied dash of color added by mixing up which 6-6-4 was assigned on a given day. The West Coast starts off being more colorful head-end from the UP/GN/NP connecting baggage cars from Seattle and Portland to Los Angeles, but also on the rear-end from August 1950 until early 1954 used the two ex-CoSF 10-5s still painted in SP yellow and gray until 1954 when they both went to TTG, and a mix of 6-6-4s which we'll look at here.
SP 9163 - West Coast's 'Regular' TTG 6-6-4
One of the Lark assigned 6-6-4s was assigned regularly to the West Coast, while the other three went to the SF Overland pool. This car was the SP 9163, which kept the Two Tone Gray scheme, but lost the Lark train logo on the sides. I'm not sure of the other three cars assigned to the SF Overland, if the received a new Overland logo or if they also dropped back to the general service reporting marks only.
SP 9163, the TTG 'general service' 6-6-4, assigned to the West Coast in 1950.
About ten of years ago, I picked up a TTG Pullman car, repainted the letterboard and decalled it for Southern Pacific, but left off the Lark train logo, making my SP 9163. This car's conversion from 1942 as-built TTG "western" Pullman scheme was fairly simple to do. I removed the PULLMAN letterboard pad printing with my fiberglass brush and also painted on the short bit of SP Dark Lark Gray past the vestibule doors to match photos. This scheme didn't have the lower skirting painted black, but stayed lighter Lark Gray.
These cars also did not loose their skirting for a couple more years. I probably could have gone with full-width diaphragms, but as the SP 9163 was regularly removed from the 'streamlined' consists, I'm saving the money and modeling this car with the narrow stock diaphragms.
I still need to make a pass over this car again to put in the window shades and grab irons, etc. I may also fit the car with a OwlMtModels illuminated tailgate marker.
SP 'Golden Plain' - West Coast's 1947 'Golden State'-Scheme 6-6-4
A number of years ago I also planned to make several Golden State 6-6-4s, but I started those cars with Walthers cars that didn't have full skirting, but the highly cut back version of the later eras.
SP "Golden Plain" 6-6-4 repainted into Golden State colors for my 1950 assignments.
My newer research has shown that they really didn't loose their skirting while painted in the Red/Silver Golden State 1947 scheme. This additional research has thus pushed me to acquire another Walthers 6-6-4 with full skirts to finish as a Golden State 6-6-4 with skirting in the 1947 Red & Silver scheme, to provide another option for my West Coast or Owl assignments.
This combination of 6-6-4s in the SP's system naturally provided the West Coast as the 'shuttle service' to move 'shop cars' back and forth from Sacramento General Shops to Los Angeles, whenever a Golden State car needed to be shopped or returned to pool based out of LA.
SP "Golden Plain" was one of the three cars fitted with the lit tail-sign boxes, which were covered over in 1950 when the new blunt-end 10-6s were assigned to the Golden State.
I've been working on building the Golden State 6-6-4 sleeper (Part 1), "Golden Plain". So far some bumps, but I'm having fun with this car. I've been wanting to get one of these Golden State 1947-scheme cars for about 20 years now. The "Golden Plain" is now into 'finishing' phase, detailing and grab irons being fitted. Also I need to figure out where my red TCY full-width diaphragms went to... as I need one to fit to the vestibule-end of the car. As the blind-end of the car was only fitted with narrow diaphragms due to the planned operation on the rear of the consists with the tail-signs.
Yellow Too? - Another Surprising West Coast Option for SP 6-6-4
While researching the SP 9200 side of the West Coast modeling project, I found a photo of it on Nov 4, 1951 when a photographer captured the West Coast in Sacramento's platform laying over. The SP 9200 wasn't with the expected TTG 9163 or a Golden State car, but in company of a very much yellow 6-6-4!! - Doing a bit of digging, this car has to be either SP 9152 or 9155, which were painted yellow in 4/50 and 8/47 respectively. This shows that they certainly were mixing the cars around as early as 1951. Also of interest is that the photo was taken on November 4, 1951, only the 4th day of operating with the 10-5 on the rear of No.60. However, the photo shows the 10-5 on the east end of the consist at Sacramento, on the curved end of the platform. Which suggests that it was actually running the other way than what the consist shows?
As my decals seem to be showing a little damage, I could change them from a '6' to a '5', making the SP 9162 into the 9152.
This revelation makes me want to retouch my yellow SP 6-6-4 to be one of these two cars, either SP 9152 or 9155, as that could mix another color car into my West Coast consists options. Athough with the 9200, this would make two yellow cars at the rear of the train.. The other SP 6-6-4s in the Overland pool that eventually were painted yellow didn't happen until 1953-55, so they really should still be TTG in the 1950-53 era I want to model.
Post June 1953 Golden State 6-6-4s
The SP 9160 was the first 6-6-4 repainted in June '53 to the Sunset Limited-style Golden State scheme.
For those wanting to model a bit later, in June and October 1953 the SP 9160 (ex-Golden Creek) and 9157 (ex-Golden Valley) respectively were the first 6-6-4s repainted into the new Russell ordered 'Sunset Limited- Style' or 'Simulated Stainless Steel" (SSS) Golden State scheme. The other three cars were not repainted into this scheme until 1955, so there was quite an overlap of both the "GS Red" and GS SSS painted cars.
In Closing
To wrap this exercise up... One of the points I'd like to drive home with this post is that some SP trains will allow for multiple 'correct' cars to be modeled and swapped around to change the look of the train.
Mix of SP's pool of 'extra' 6-6-4s in the early 1950s, showing off TTG, 1953 Golden State Silver/red (SSS GS), 'Overland' Yellow/Gray, and 1947 Golden State 'Red' (GSR) schemes..
The SP did have plenty of extra 6-6-4s from mid-1950 into 1953 to cover the three regular assignments on the Owl (one car only, alternated with HW 8-5 sleeper in the other consist) and West Coast (two cars, one per consist). The SP may have also had sufficient extra cars to allow several to be leased back into the Pullman Pool for general assignments.
Jason Hill
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SP 'Golden Plain' 6-6-4, 1947 Golden State Red scheme
