Wheel replacement Old West coaches

[Rod in PA]

Warflight,

I put together a short video of my old time passenger train showing the before and after adding passengers and interior lighting.  Notice, you can't even see the capacitors.  I mounted the PCB to the under side of the roof and there's still plenty of room for the passengers.  DCC power is picked up through the trucks using a simple wiper made of bronze wire.  https://youtu.be/v4rmXW_UDQg

Rod in PA

[Warflight]

I put together a short video of my old time passenger train showing the before and after adding passengers and interior lighting.  Notice, you can't even see the capacitors.  I mounted the PCB to the under side of the roof and there's still plenty of room for the passengers.  DCC power is picked up through the trucks using a simple wiper made of bronze wire.  https://youtu.be/v4rmXW_UDQg

Well, damn... now I want new cars... looking at those beauties, I don't know if lights will even do justice to mine. The tops of mine are a separate piece, with plastic under, so lighting would only light the windows, and not the tops, and the windows on my cars are small by comparison.

These are just the combines (but the passenger cars have the same construction, and windows... just a few more of them is all)

[J3a-614]

Warflight, I think Rod's cars are former Model Die Casting-Roundhouse cars that are loosely based on Sierra Railroad's cars 5 and 6 (a combine and a coach) that were assigned to the Angels Branch.  Those particular cars were shorter than most at the time in deference to the curves on that line; in fact, that branch was originally the domain of Shay geared engines, and yes, the Shays did pull those cars.

Don't lose hope.  Those cars originally were empty (no interiors, no passengers) like your own; what you see inside is what Rod did.  You can do the same, though your cars, with bodies that are based on older prototypes, may have smaller windows.  

Don't be too intimidated--that's the way all passenger cars used to be, and some weren't even that easy to work with.  Flat kits and models that seemed to consist of sticks used to be the norm!

[J3a-614]

By the way, Sierra's 5 and 6 are still around.  You may have even seen them in movie and television work.  No. 5, for instance, was the one-car train that accompanied locomotive No. 3 in the TV series "Petticoat Junction."

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/sierra5.jpg

http://www.railtown1897.org/images/SRYC-5Combine5a-Website.jpg

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/srr6.jpg

http://www.railtown1897.org/images/SRYC-6coach6-Website.jpg

[Warflight]

You may already know this, but, the engine from Petticoat Junction was also used in Back to the Future III! (or at least that's what they said on set)

[J3a-614]

Oh my, it's hard to list all the movies and TV programs Sierra 3 and other Sierra equipment have been in. . ."High Noon" with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly; "Unforgiven" with Clint Eastwood; "Rage at Dawn," "Kansas Pacific," episodes of "Little House on the Prairie," disguised as a German locomotive in the movie version of "The Twilight Zone," and of course the "Back to the Future" movie, and who knows how many others.

One "Sierra" movie I recommend if you haven't seen it is "Bound for Glory," about Woody Guthrie, although being set in the 1930s, Sierra 3 isn't in it (though it does show up in the background of one shot).  Some great double-headed steam footage with other Sierra steamers, though!

The trailer, which happens to have another steam star from the movie, McCloud River No. 25:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNled6wh18c

[Terry Toenges]

When we went out to California one year on vacation, one of my goals was see Number 3 in person so to speak. When we got there, they had her all in pieces while they were refurbishing her. It was such a disappointment for me. I got to see all the pieces but it wasn't the same. I did get to see the Sierra cars.
Those cars look great Rod.

[J3a-614]

Terry, you'll be glad to know she's been back together for a while--here she is at Jamestown last July:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEFxoZOMfII

And in movie work from earlier this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsPYZrKss4Q

And from her return to service in 2010:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMkry_61u0U

[Terry Toenges]

Wow! She sure looks good. Thanks for the videos.

[Warflight]

That is one amazing little engine!