SP 10250-51-52 (Part 4) - Lounge Interior Comes Together

It's been almost 10 years since I posted the last time on this project to convert the articulated dining section of my SP 10250, which runs behind the articulated kitchen in the triple-unit 1939 set of Coffee-shop/Kitchen/Diner which was assigned to the San Joaquin Daylight in 1949, after the Noon Daylight was removed from the schedule.

Off-season of 1949 on the San Joaquin Daylight, when the Diner turned into a Diner-Lounge.

History of the Diner-Lounge Cars

In the 2nd Part of this series, I showed how I removed the stock diner interior and mounted the styrene Lounge floor with the single center screw, which will allow me to change out from full Diner to Diner-Lounge quickly.

During lower traffic levels of the off-seasons, winter time, and non-holiday weeks, 2/3s of the dining tables and chairs were removed and replaced by lounge chairs and couches, to convert the rear portion of the triple-unit into a lounge, thus replacing the need for the full Tavern car in the consist.  Normally the Tavern ran behind the Triple-unit after 1948 when traffic levels were high.  Also the regular Coffee Shop/Taverns 10310/10311 were swapped out over two years and converted to full Taverns, like the 1938 and 1941 cars.

Arranging the Chairs & Sofas

Early planning with green sofas from other Walthers cars

Originally, I layed out mostly single chairs, but looking deeper at the SPH&TS Passenger Cars, Vol .4 shows that the 10250 when converted to Diner-Lounge configuration had 6 four-seat tables and 35 Lounge seats, which was split as 18 and 17 seats per side.

I had a couple of these bench-seat sofa chairs which came from the drawing room of the Walthers HW Parlor and other cars which had large seats like this in their men's 'lounge' sections outside the bathrooms.

There were a pair of 2-seat sofas, a pair of 3-seat, and a larger 2-seat - which was probably more like 3 seat.  I have used the green lounge-chairs which came from the Walthers HW Parlor, which I've removed the interior seats from.  The brown-red Sofas are kitbashed from my Santa Fe 1524's original interior's seats.

The challenge here was getting the spacing of the seats right in the space available, but also splicing together the sofas to compliment and get everything to fit correctly.  The single seats were worked out to be 0.315", but in practice I had to tighten the spacing up to more like 0.275" or so to fit between the sofas.

Pencil marks to divide out the spaces for the seats.

I used my machinist 1-2-3 blocks to keep the sofas being positioned too wide, which would make the interior not fit when it comes time to assemble the car.

I'm roughing out the location of the seats and sofas, before gluing.

In this photo, I'm working out the positions.  The full sofas built from 2 full chair car seats (left and right, glued together) look like 4-seats, but in the floor plan drawing says that they are 3-seat sofas.  I've spliced the large 2-seat sofa together out of a pair of Santa Fe HW chair car seats.  

I'm not sure how 'attached' the partitions at the end of the dining table section were to the car vs. mobile and easily swapped out when the car was fitted with the lounge chairs.  The drawing doesn't say how high they are, they could be full-height up to the roof of the car, but as the book doesn't have a photo of the interior in this configuration, I'm guessing at some of this.

One of the things I noticed looking at the lounge plans is that the seats start aligned at the partitions, and then go in and out of phase as you work towards the end of the car.  The 18-seat side is the 'right side' or 'far side' in these photos.  The 17-seat side is in the foreground, or 'left side' of the car.  The 10250 totaled 59-seats between the dining and lounge sections.

The interesting part of this interior is the stacked staggering of the left seats to leave a small opening at the rear left corner of the car, resulting in one fewer seats in this car.  The 10253, the other diner-lounge conversion car, had only 34 seats in the lounge for a combined 58-seat.  I assume that it had the similar extra sofas resulting in the loss of one seat in the lounge.

In this view, we can see that the 'rear end' of the 1st left 2-seat sofa matches up with the rear of the 4th single seat on the right side.  The rear of the 6th right seat also matches with the rear of the 4th single seat on the left side.  The seat positions start staggering with the "large" 2-seat sofa on the right side, shifting about 1/2 a single seat.

Reverse view of the interior.

The right side has a group of 6 single chairs, then the 'large' 2-seat', another 4 singles, then single 2-seat sofa, and 3 more single chairs.  The left side is 2 singles, then a 2-seat sofa, then 6 singles, a 3-seat sofa (full pair of chair seats joined), then a single, and a second 3-sofa at the rear end of the room.

Reassembled

Here's what the lounge looks like installed in the car with the shell on. (Left side)

I'm not too bothered that the sofas and the lounge chairs don't really match up in height and I'll probably not even color-match them as a 'set' with the upholstery, as these sofas and lounge chairs came from the passenger car store rooms at LA General Shops or Sacrameto General Shops.  

Right side with the dining tables forward.

They probably were partial sets, but not fully a 'set', which results when a car's assigned second hand furniture when reconfigured.

Next Steps

I will probably paint the tables white and add some extra plastic to thicken the table to replicate the white table cloth that was used in the 'dining' configuration of these cars.

Pretty much finished up, I still need to paint the various parts of the interior, tables, chairs, lounge seats, floor, etc.

I'm guessing that they kept the 'dining' section ot the rear of the kitchen, which matches the letterboard car-type lettering.  As the San Joaquin Daylight by 1949 didn't have any Parlor passengers and certainly no 1st Class Pullman passengers, the passengers wanting to pay for full diner meals.  The entire forward 'Coffee Shop' car can seat 80 people per sitting, while the 'diner' section of 24-seats brings the total seating to 104.  The Daylight chair cars sat 44-48 passengers per car or articulated unit.  This means that one seating would take care of two cars or one full articulated set of chair cars.  The San Joaquin Daylight in off-season ran with 4 cars in the Oakland portion and 2 cars in the Sacramento section, so three seatings would get everyone fed.

Lighting Troubles?

Lights-on!   Left side with the car lit.

The trouble with MTH's stock cars is that the lighting is too bright, glowing right through the shell.  So I'll have to increase the resistance on the lighting circuit and or, repaint the interior of the car black, then reapply the interior colors, which is too bad that MTH didn't pay for the extra shot of paint or having the plastic shot in black to get the body opaque enough to prevent this. 

In Closing - Trackside View

Once I put the reporting marks back on the car, at least I have the large blank section of the interior filled up, the car could be run in the San Joaquin Daylight consist as the Diner-Lounge.  The original MTH car numbers were 10259-10261, the second of the 1941-built Triple-units which normally was on the Coast/Morning Daylight, unless one of the 1941 cars were in the shops.  Thus why I'm changing the number of this set to the first of the 1939 cars, which were assigned to the San Joaquin Daylight in 1949 regularly.

Left side of SP 10250, with Diner-Lounge interior.

The exterior view of the Diner with the kitchen unit and articulated joints assembled on the track.

Right side of SP 10250, with Diner-Lounge interior.

I may start working on the other parts of the 1949 San Joaquin Daylight kitbashes again soon.  I don't think there's much more to do on the SP 3300, 77-CB-1 combine.  The Kitchen unit (SP 10251) shouldn't be too hard to wrap up.  There's several other cars that I want to do, but I've held off on starting until I finished some of these other projects first.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

SP 10250-51-52 (Part 1) - Triple Diner-Lounge 1949 - Planning and Modifications to the Kitchen Unit - SP 10251.

SP 10250-51-52 (Part 2) - Triple Diner-Lounge 1949 - A short planning post on how to convert Diner to Diner-Lounge, which this post (Part 4) basically replaces now.

SP 10250-51-52 (Part 3) - Cleaning Pads - how to convert the Kitchen Unit to being a track-cleaner, by replacing the water tank under the car.

Modeling MoPac "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4 (Part 5) - Thinking Out-of-the Box... Models

This project has certainly been an adventure, challenging yet fun and rewarding modeling experience over the last couple months.  Here we are in Part 5 already!  So with the painting finally (nearly) put to bed... I hope.  It's time to focus on the next steps.

Nearly completed "Eagle River".

Now what am I going to do for the decals?  Champ?  Those at best are 30-40 years old at this point, and very thick...  Searching the web, I was able to find the following custom decal producer.

N-Scale Decals on H0-Scale Models... What?

OotBM's MoPac 6-6-4 artwork for their N-scale decals.

Out-of-the-Box-Models' MoPac 6-6-4 Decals (N-scale, but they offer to print mine in HO-scale)

After I communicated for a week or so with OotBM about this project, I've ordered OotBM decals. I also specially requested to be printed in HO-scale for my project.  As part of this conversation, I've  asked them to update their website so that the rest of the HO-modeling community can also order these if they want to build their own MoPac 6-6-4s.

So, this project has been on hold for the last month as I've waited for the new decals to be printed and shipped to me from Out-of-the-Box Models, and printed by V1 Decals out of Blaine Washington, I believe.

Touching Up the Paint Work & Trim Painting

Now that the decals have arrived, I did spend a bit of time trying to get the decal to stick to the raised feature, but I think could be problematic.

Right side masking.

Thus, I did decided not to use the stripe portion of the decals, as I'm modeling the lower trim molding as a physically raised strip.  

Left side masking.

Also the color of the decal strips was much too close to the 'Eagle Gray' of the lower carside, where as my Tru-Color 'Eagle Yellow' color paint that I ordered is much brighter.  So more masking and painting it will be...

All masked up for the yellow...

I also applied a strip of tape to cover between the Tamyia yellow tape sections, over the windows.

Vestibule end of the car showing the stripe details.

The other change is that I think the black trim pinstripe is too fine on the stripe decal, so I'll be doing my own lower edge black stripe, same with the silver trim molding edges.

Blind-end of the car showing the details of the molding and stripe details.

For a while now I've been wondering if the prototype cars had a black stripe dividing the upper yellow stripe, based on the photos I had to look at.  However, now after painting the upper stripe, I've decided that the 'black stripe' was just the shadow being cast by the upper molding at the edge of the roof line casting a shadow on the yellow stripe itself.  So I'll not be doing anything more with that.  However, I may add a thin black trim line to cover the small amount of bleed from the edge of the yellow paint into the blue.

Left side with yellow trim paint and second coat of main colors applied.

Here's the overall view of the left side of the car before decaling.

Right side with yellow trim paint and second coat of main colors applied.

... and the right side of the car with the painting completed.  The MoPac Gray on the roof had a failure when I masked it instead of removing the roof... so I may have to remove the roof and reshoot that portion, and I may go slightly darker.

Decaling

I tried using the OotB decal artwork sample that they posted a few years ago compared to the windows, but this was not accurate.  The windows certainly do not match up with the decal lettering as shown in the diagram.

Out-of-the-Box artwork or lettering diagragm for their N-scale 6-6-4s.

Also I'm not modeling the "Gunnison River", but the "Eagle River", so any placement is going to have be recalculated for the center point of the name I'm using.  On the positive side, the decals are fairly good quality and easy to work with. 

I worked out the body length of 82'6" and offset my measurements by 3" to each side, thus centering the 41ft mark on my scale rule, as the center point of the car.  A mechanical pencil mark is placed on the roof and the skirt to note centerline of the car.

Centered decals applied to the letterboard and lower side sheet.

The upper lettering measured out about 16ft long, and the car name at about 7ft.  Thus I layed the ruler over the car side while I was positioning the decals to get them centered.  For "THE EAGLE" I ended up making offset marks on the roof to show the equalized ends of the space.  I think it ended up being more like 16.5ft long, so I had to balance the extra decal length beyond both offset marks about 3" in scale.

The right side of my MoPac "Eagle River".

So far so good.  Missing from the OotB decal set is the small "M.P." lettering that goes just inboard of both ends of the letterboard.  So I'll have to work out suitable lettering.  I'll probably use some from extra San Juan SP Steam Decal LD LMT and LT WT tender decals and cab-rear "SP" decals.

The left side of my MoPac "Eagle River".

But for now the car's looking pretty good.  I decided that silver Sharpie marker is pretty good to do the molding strips above and below the windows.  However, my marker's getting rather dry, so next time I'm in an office supply store, I need to pick up a couple of new ones.

I have to be REALLY careful not to slip and get a silver mark on the Eagle Blue or Eagle Gray portions of the sides.  So I may need to do a proper clear-coat to seal all the decals in before I finish the silver stripe work.

Continuing Research on MoPac's Grand Canyon Connection (Pullman car route 4506)

The Grand Canyon ran a through connecting Pullman sleeper from Richmond to New Orleans via Houston starting in 1947.  The car assignment shows up on the consist sheets as Pullman route 4506, while the Chicago-Richmond car is 4024.  Early on the 4506 route showed as "Richmond-Houston" on the Santa Fe consist sheets, but in various successive consist publications the Houston was scratched out and replaced with New Orleans in handwriting, eventually being written in as New Orleans officially.

The use of a MoPac car on 4506 was done away with in 1954 with the start of the new San Francisco Chief's dedicated all natural metal trainsets and a new thru sleeper to New Orleans.

Santa Fe System Map

Santa Fe System Map from wiki website.

Certainly the vast majority of the route miles were Santa Fe's.  So I'm not sure if the figure of 1 in 3 days the car was a MoPac car or not.  Also given that the MoPac only had 4 of these 6-6-4 type cars, that restricts how many they could have available at anytime.

The Grand Canyon connection to Houston off the Trans-con was made at Clovis, NM, right on the Texas boarder in the map above.

MoPac System Map

MoPac System Map from wiki website.

As we can see, the majority of this map shows how small the section of the route is that was covered by MoPac.

In Closing

As for the Grand Canyon consist research, I'll be diving into more detailed consist details in a separate blog post fairly soon.  

June 1947 Grand Canyon No.23N consist sheet.

The 1947 and 1954 consists are quite straight forward for the basic 'minimum consist'.  However, I'm still trying to get over the headache of dealing with all of Santa Fe's trains and their spotty 1949 Consist Sheets which would be a C-rate movie, due to the continuity errors baked into the plot!

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

MoPac's 6-6-4 "Eagle River" in The Eagle scheme
Modeling MoPac "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4 (Part 1) - Research and Fluting - Starting into my MoPac 6-6-4 project.

Modeling MoPac "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4 (Part 2) - Finish Molding & Masking - Getting the 'Eagle River' ready for paint! (shown with my 'shadowlined' Santa Fe "Surprise Valley" 6-6-4).

Modeling MoPac "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4 (Part 3) - Painting, Or Not? - Like with all good investigations, before the painting... It's best to color-sand the witness! Also I had to finish the lower trim molding before painting.

Modeling MoPac "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4 (Part 4) - The Blue and the Gray... (Again) - I didn't like my custom mixed colors and I found that Tru-Color makes the right MoPac colors that I was having the most trouble with mixing myself. So we try it again!

Ten Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - NightOwlModeler blog

It's been another year already since I posted the anniversary of my blog.  

One Year's worth of Blog Titles... What's the next year going to hold?

Thanks to all of you who have been reading and engaging in the hobby.  My goal with this blog has always been to help my fellow modelers gain skill and confidence to stretch their modeling boundaries into kitbashing and historical research.

Statistics of the Last Year (2025-2026)

This year the NOM blog has passed 300 modeling and research articles on this site.

July 2025-2026 Viewing Stats.

The Stats seem a bit skewed with 25k views in one day and other spikes of 10k views per day.  

Last 10 year viewing Stats, seems to be a 'hockey-stick' graph, suggesting outside influence in the last year.

From what I can tell, the AI web-crawling bots have completely ruined these stat-graphs usefulness.  There's no way that my blogs have been suddenly viewed 30+k times in one day.

2025-2026 Blog Page views - Certainly not accounting the crawler views.

Unfortunately, this list of article views is heavily skewed again by the AI-web crawlers looking at every page 2-4 times per day.  All of these 'top pages' are from over a year ago, so they don't really show which articles have been the most popular from just the last year.

2025-2026 Blog page views

These are the most popular links pages over the last year.

Some of my Favorite Posts in 2025.

So as the statistic data is garbage now, I'll just fill out this post with some of my favorite and fun posts that I've dug into researching and modeling in 2025-2026.

Research Timelines for SP Diners and Lounges

SP 1937-1960 Diner Timeline, and Painting chart

As we're seeing the Golden Gate Depot Harriman V2.0 project nearing reservation cut-off and now soon delivery, I wanted to do a deep dive on the research of visualizing exactly what the SP Diner fleet was made up of at various dates and what paint scheme the cars were in during those times as well.  This was the perfect reason to create a timeline graphic with colors and notes mashed together into one place.

SP 1937-1960 Lounge & Cafe-Lounge (aka semi-food service) car Timeline, and Painting chart.

Then I decided to be crazy enough to do the same graphical layout chart for the SP's Lounge cars and other food-service cars as well, mostly Cafe-Lounges, which changed back and forth to Diners, along with the Daylight and other Premier Train Tavern cars.

Kitbashing SP Food Service Cars

Current food-service kitbashing projects: Cafe-Lounge SP 10913, Diner T&NO 931, & SP 10014.

These timelines led me to revisit several of my Diner and Cafe-Lounge kitbashes, which I still am working on... but it has been nice to dust off these 10-15 year old projects again, and breath a bit of effort on them, seeing that the new GGD cars won't be replacing these kitbashes anytime soon.  When I feel like doing more Archer Rivet Decals, the SP 10014 will need basically all the rivets replaced and T&NO 931 and SP 10913 will have the windows adjusted to replicate the enlarged style the cars received in 1937's rebuilds.

Santa Fe's Grand Canyon?

My father's first brass engine purchases back in the early 1980s was a PFM 3751-class (semi) 'modernized' model.  I can't do the 3751 herself, as she was shopped a second time by my modeling era, receiving the single larger sand dome.

ATSF 3753 leads No.23 North, the Grand Canyon, to Richmond, California while the UP 6-6-4 sleeper 'American Scene' brings up the markers on a UP passenger train on the joint track west of the depot at Barstow.

I'm planning to finish it as Santa Fe 3753, which kept the two-sand dome arrangement into my modeling era and should work nicely as the road engine on the Grand Canyon's northern section to Richmond, at least the Barstow to Bakersfield section.  The Santa Fe's smaller engines worked in the Valley, mostly 1300-class Pacifics and 3700-class Mountains.

Sidetracked with Santa Fe "Shadowline" Cars

Santa Fe Diner 1458, and 6-6-4s 'Surprise Valley' in Shadowline and Two-Tone Gray 'Chama Valley.'

So while the photo above is not the normal operating consist order, the Grand Canyon will be a striking consist with the mix of heavyweight, lightweight, fluted, and shadowlined HW and smooth-sided LW cars, with HW chair cars, LW chair cars, HW headend cars, an RPO-Baggage, Diner, Sleepers, etc.

This last year I've mostly switched back to passenger car modeling, along with a shift to some Santa Fe Grand Canyon consist cars.

Santa Fe's 1458 HW Diner kitbash.

This is a rather involved kitbash of a Rivarossi HW Diner, the body work is fairly straight forward, but the underframe and the roof modifications are fairly involved, and still needs work.

Santa Fe 1524, a Snack Lounge-Dormitory.

Similar work is being done on a Walthers 3060-class Chair Car by converting it to Snack-Lounge-Dorm configuration of the 1520-series cars, every couple cars were different conversions.  I'm still researching what the interior arrangement of this car will look like, but the changes to the windows and underframe modifications are mostly done.  The last major work is moving the roof A/C hatch to the middle of the car and blank over the inner one near the car end.

I may look into a proper full-lounge car, but the Grand Canyon, No.23 North, consist usually just needed the diner westward, and then the California Limited, No.4 North,  would take the diner back to Barstow.  So for my modeling, the diner and snack-lounge can vary as ridership and scheduling needs the extra food and lounge space.  Given the prototype photo of the 1458 that I worked from was in San Diego in 1948, the diner I believe was coupled to a car that looks very much like one of the 1524/1525 type snack cars.  So I believe it's reasonable to be modeling both cars and running them together.

Minor Obsession with Pullman 6-6-4 LW Sleepers

My growing flock of SP, Santa Fe, & MoPac 6-6-4s make quite the rainbow of colors now.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I believe most of my Lightweight Pullman sleepers are now actually 6-6-4s.  As I'm digging more into various consists, it seems that I've either picked up several more in 2026 to work on or have picked up long term projects to finish.

From the Shadow...lines

Santa Fe's 'Surprise Valley', which was among the last 6-6-4s to loose shadowlining.

One of the Santa Fe's 26 'Valley'-series cars, which was assigned to the Grand Canyon (North) to Richmond California.  This car is one that a friend and I have talked about modeling for 15-20 years together, but his starting point 6-6-4 is too new with the removed skirts, and I was recently able to find another undecorated Walthers car to start with.

The Santa Fe's Idea of Two-Tone Gray with Silver

Santa Fe's 'Chama Valley' after it was painted into Santa Fe's Two-Tone Gray scheme and deskirted.

This is Walther's "earlier version" 6-6-4, which is still unfortunately rather later 1953+ era, with the deskirted body.  If it still had skirts, I could use it back into the 1950-era as the Santa Fe's 6-6-4s came out of the 1947 Shadowline scheme.

Don't Forget the MoPac!

Modeling MoPac's "Eagle River" Pullman 6-6-4, heavily customized Walthers model.

My Santa Fe Grand Canyon journey has spilled over into modeling the MoPac now too...  I've planned to model this car for 15-20 years now... but just never got started on it until now.  The Grand Canyon from 1947-1954 used a MoPac car on the Richmond-New Orleans route every 3rd or 4th day, with Santa Fe cars the other days to balance route miles.

As of July 4, I just need to wrap up the car with a clear-coat and then reinstall windows, window shades, etc.

1947-1953 Golden State Red & Silver-scheme

SP 'Golden Plain', one of the 1947 Golden State painted cars.

The striking red and silver Golden State scheme 6-6-4 has been a check-box project for me for over 20 years.  So this will be a fun car to finish up soon.  As of July 4, I just need to wrap up the car with a clear-coat and then reinstall windows, window shades, etc.

Projects for the 10th Year

I'm starting to look into several projects for the next year or so.

Passenger Consist Modeling

SP 4230, No.60 at Newhall, 4-29-51 - Brian Black Collection - used with permission.

I've been modeling cars for various cars from the West Coast (Nos.59/60) for over 20 years now.  Now I'm aiming for some fine tuning of those cars and polishing off the last few cars that have been 'too scary' to attempt to model or kitbash.

More West Coast Modeling

A sneak-peek at a mock-up of the rear end of the West Coast. SP 10913 Cafe-Lounge, SP 9162 (standing in for SP 9200) and SP 'Golden Plain' 6-6-4s.

A number of years ago, I already have done several articles on modeling the Owl (No.57/58), but nothing on the other night passenger train of the San Joaquin Valley yet.  I've been doing more modeling on making a more accurate West Coast, Nos.59/60.  This should allow me to make a couple posts on the West Coast's consist and some of the signature aspects of the consist which makes the 1950-1953 Sacramento-LA West Coast consist.

The West Coast Consist as of Nov 4, 1951, which is in the mid-early era that I'm modeling.

So with some more aggressive kitbashing, I'm looking to make my cars more accurate for specific eras of the train.  Likewise, I'll be finishing up the Owl that I started posting about 10 years ago.

SP 9200, ex-CoSF 10-5 Sleeper

The SP 9200/9201 were regulars on the CoSF, and then in late 1950 they were assigned to the West Coast.

One of these more complicated kitbashes is this 10-5 for the West Coast.  The car had 1941 City of San Francisco 8th Trainset detailing including unique skirting, trim molding above and below the windows, roof conduit, etc.

More Grand Canyon Modeling

Santa Fe's Grand Canyon (23 North) as of Feb 1949.

I'm enjoying getting a brain cramp sorting through the Santa Fe consists for their passenger trains between Barstow and Oakland (Richmond).

Jawbone Branch Projects

Building the redesigned Owenyo with the new 46" radius wye.

I've not done much on the Jawbone over the last year... since I was redesigning the scaling and proportions of the trackwork at Owenyo.  I'm hoping to restart on this soon, but I've also moved all my Jawbone Branch blog posts over to it's own blog to keep it separate from my general modeling which is here on the NightOwlModeler blog.

Jawbone Steam Engines - Setup & DCC

 

My planned mainstays of the Jawbone's steam engine fleet: SP 3237, 3266, & 3203.

As I get into working on the Jawbone Branch again, I'll need to get several steam engines working to start running operations on the line.  So this will mean at least a couple articles on DCCing HO brass and setting up the engines with proper mechanicals, weighting, lighting, etc.

While I have plenty of interesting freight car models to get into building, I'm not sure I'll have time to start building them in the next year.  It's more important to build the layout than increase the pool of freight cars to run on it.

New Model Releases & Reviews

It seems I've been doing a number of reviews of SP models that are coming out.  Several of them we've been waiting for a couple years.  So I look forward to their arrivals, hopefully this year.

Rapido's C-40-3 Arriving Soon?

SP 1115 in WWII SP as-delivered scheme, pre-production model at BAPM 2026 meet.

Sometime later this year (hopefully) the new Rapido SP C-40-3 should be arriving for service on the Jawbone Branch.  So I'm hoping soon this new caboose will be ready to show off on my Jawbone Branch while I get the new track work in and functioning.

Golden Gate Depot Harriman Cars.  Month or less away?

Golden Gate Depot's 75-CS Lounge tooling check from Feb 2026, 

I checked in with 3rd & Townsend Models a couple weeks back to see if there was any chance that the new cars would be arriving before the BAPM RPM meet in Oakland on June 27th.  I was told they'd be at least a couple weeks after that.  So I'm hoping that very soon after I post this Yearly Blog Review that they will show up and I'll do a series of articles on them.  I'm looking at doing both an 'out-of-box' review and also some articles on kitbashing or adding details to customize the models for the cars I want to model and air conditioning the 72-C-1 for use on my Owl and West Coast consists.

In Closing

What's the next year going to hold?

I think that wraps up this blog focused post for this year.  There's still a number of fun and interesting projects that I have in the works to post blogs about, so keep an eye here as I post new articles.

Related Articles:

Year 9 of the Night Owl Modeler Blog Starts Now - 2025

I missed a couple years here posting the July 4, reviews of the blog...

Six Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - 2022

Five Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - 2021

Four Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) - 2020

Three Years of Blogging and Counting (Review) -2019

Two Years of Blogging - Reflections - 2018

A Year of Modeling in Review - 2017

First Steps - A new modeling blog posting - 2016