BDE-02
The Black Diamond Express, Sayre PA, photographer unknown, colorized by Scot Lawrence.
Lehigh Valley Railroad.
The Black Diamond Express,
in 1/29 scale.
USA Trains Alco PA's,
and the first look at the (incomplete) model of the whole train.
I did some HO scale modeling during my teenage years in the 80's, then dropped out the hobby completely through my 20's, until my Dad and I both got into Large Scale ("G scale") around 2001. Which leads to this project!
USA Trains introduced their beautiful 1/29 scale Alco PA model in December of 2003, and I got my AA set of LV PA's in 2004. ( 1/29 scale is not technically "G scale", although it is one scale of several in the "large scale" family of scales, which is often generically called "G scale". it's complicated! ;) Here are some photos right after I got them in February of 2004.
1/29 scale, HO scale, and N scale.
I brought my locomotives into work! ;)
A more recent photo in sunlight..the Red really "pops" in the sun!
Its been twelve years already, and I still dont have a matching trainset to go with my locomotives! blasphemous! ;) USA Trains did come out with a LV trainset, as they did for every road name they had for their PA model, but the cars don't match the LV at all..It's a streamlined passenger car set that has virtually no bearing on the real LV passenger cars of the Diesel era. I am only going to use one USA trains passenger car in my consist, the rest will be kitbashed and modified Aristocraft 1/29 scale heavyweights.
For my 1/29 scale model of the Black Diamond express, I am going to model:
Consist:
Two Alco PA passenger diesels, and seven cars:
1. RPO - 64'
2. Baggage - 68'
3. 800-900 series coach - 67'
4. USA Trains coach
5. Diner - 80'
6. 1500 series coach
7. Solarium Observation "Black Diamond" - 83'
Some cars will be more heavily re-worked than others. I am going to kitbash them to make the cars as close as reasonably possible to the prototype LV cars, however I wont be concerned with every last rivet and window being absolutely correct. My goal is to make the train "look the part", to make it look like the actual Black Diamond express.
All of the cars, except one, will be kitbashed from Aristocraft 1/29 scale heavyweights. The Aristocraft cars are all the same length, representing 72 foot cars. However the LV cars were of various lengths. Of my seven cars, three will be shortened, three will stay the same length, and one will be lengthened. All of the Aristo heavweights, six of them, will have their paint stripped and they will be repainted in LV red, I will design new decals myself and have them printed. only the one USA trains coach will be completely unmodified. More detail on the individual cars will be in the following pages. but first, this page is a summary of the seven cars.
The drawings im using as a guide are from the book "Lehigh Valley Railroad Passenger Cars (Photo and Diagram Book No. 1)" by M. Mickey and D. Warfel , published by Railroad Avenue Enterprises, 1980.
I spent twelve years, 2004 to 2016, slowly gathering the passenger cars! one by one, some new and some used, from ebay. (yes, my modeling is done on a glacial scale! ;) but that's ok..there is no need to be in any hurry.)
but finally! in 2016, I had all seven passenger cars, and they all appeared together for the first time on December 4, 2016, running on the fabulous Holiday railroad at Garden Factory in Gates NY.
This was the one and only time all the cars ran together in their original form.
The two PA's are essentially finished. Their yellow handrails have been painted black. (On the prototype LV PA's, they were black when new in 1948, they were painted yellow later.) I still need better scratch-built windshield wipers for them, and a single horn.
Car #1, the RPO. Will be modified from this Aristocraft RPO. This car will be shortened significantly.
(much more detail will be in each car's individual "build-log" page.)
Car #2, baggage. This car will also be shortened a lot. This car took forever to find! not many of these were made.
I had a saved search in ebay for years.
This car was out of order on this train this day! This will actually be Car #7, the Observation car bringing up the rear. Its the only car in the consist that will be lengthened!, and it will be the most heavily kitbashed. All new sides, windows, and rear solarium windows will need to be built from scratch. (again, much more detail will be in each cars individual page, including prototype photos. This page is simply a summary of the start of the train.)
And this is the only car that will be totally unmodified! ;) Car #4. This is the only USA Trains car in the consist (the rest are Aristocraft) This car represents one of the "Sayre rebuilds". This car will be unmodified except for body-mount Kadee couplers.
Car #5, the Diner. This car will be unmodified except for new paint. Technically it could be lengthened a bit, but i'm not going to bother in this case. The length is close enough.
Car #6, coach 1501. This car will also be unmodified except for paint. Its already an excellent match to a prototype LV car. I got this car used on ebay, and someone had started to custom paint it! in Chessie colors perhaps? looks like they never finished the project though.
The final car on today's train wont be the final car on the finished train! This Aristo observation will end up being Car #3, the 800/900 series coach. It will be shortened, and have new windows scratch-built.
And that's the whole train! Two locomotives and seven cars. In 2017, the paint stripper and saws come out! :)
