BDE-03
The Black Diamond Express, Sayre PA, photographer unknown, colorized by Scot Lawrence.
Lehigh Valley Railroad.
The Black Diamond Express,
in 1/29 scale.
Car #1 - RPO
The first car in the consist is the RPO, Railway Post Office. The prototype Black Diamond Express (in the diesel era) nearly always had a RPO as the first car, followed by a baggage car.
Here is the car in its original form, an Aristocraft Union Pacific RPO:
The Aristocraft cars represent 72-foot long cars, which is actually shorter than average. However I am going to shorten some cars even more! and the RPO is one car that will end up shorter. I am going to shorten it to 64' long, which means 3.31 inches needs to be removed from the car. Most will taken right out of the middle, and a lesser amount will be removed from the baggage door, to convert the baggage doors from two doors with 4-windows each, to one door with 5 windows. The two baggage doors will be combined into one. (the same modification will be made to the baggage car.)
Here is a "digital kitbash", cutting and pasting the car in photoshop, to see what the real car can look like:
December 27, 2017
Construction begins on the first two cars! The RPO and Baggage car are disassembled. Im going to work on these two cars together, since they have similar processes needed, namely shortening of the baggage doors, and shortening of the overall length of the cars.
October 27, 2018
Disassembly of the two cars is complete, and the baggage doors go into the 91% alcohol dip, to strip the paint:
