C&S Baggage / Express Car number 4 in HOn3 and Sn3(?)

[Jim Courtney]

Roy Stevens has just released another C&S resin printed passenger car kit in HOn3, this time C&S baggage / express car number 4:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/305201566492?hash=item470f6e531c:g:dUUAAOSwquhlKLdk

There is a back story as to how this product evolved, but we can go into that later. First, perhaps we should discuss the prototype.

History:

The car which eventually became C&S number 4 was built by the DSP&P Denver Shops in 1879, as DSP&P number 42. Unlike the pair of 4 door baggage cars that preceded it (40 and 41), and the baggage car that followed it (45), baggage car 42 was much longer with a single, centered baggage door on each side. No one knows exactly what DSP&P looked like when new; it may have also had windows on each side of the center door. The only photo of number 42 in the early South Park era is this view in Ferrell's The South Park Line, page 229:




Following behind DSP&P 110, in the late 1880s, baggage car 42 has a single window to the right of the center door and a small man-door to the left. By this time the car may have been remodeled and used as a baggage / mail / express car. With the receivership,  car number 42 was renumbered UP/DL&G 1300, and lumped together with DL&G 1301 and 1302 as one of the baggage / mail / express cars. When the new C&S arose from the receiverships, the car was renumbered 113 initially. But one of the short baggage cars, C&S number 103,  was destroyed at South Park Junction in June 1902, after being wrecked in a head-on collision between the Fish Train and westbound train #71 (that seemed to have happened to the Fish Train a lot!!).

Being short a baggage /express car, the C&S in later 1902 rebuilt car 113 (former South Park number 42) from a baggage / mail / express car into a straight baggage car, a long car with single side doors. When it emerged from the shops, car 113 carried a new number, 105, so as to fit in with the other baggage cars (C&S 101, 102 and 104). Finally, with the 1906 renumbering of the passenger car fleet, the long baggage car 105 became C&S number 4. For a long discussion of the arcane details of the life and times of C&S 4, see Heidrich Hayes:  https://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/CandS/dsp-passenger/bmx_42a.htm

The conventional wisdom since Mac Poor's book has been that the C&S narrow gauge baggage cars lost their end platforms and roof overhangs sometime in the early to mid 19teens. I've come to doubt that and believe it happened much earlier, certainly by mid first decade, possibly early first decade. I was studying an enlargement of a DPL McClure image of Baileys:




It dawned on me that the car behind C&S 9 had to be long baggage car number 4, with the single side door. There are no end platforms and the roof overhang is gone. I suspect that both were removed in 1902, when the car was rebuilt as a baggage car. The wood pilot beam and headlight placement of locomotive number 9 suggests to me a date of 1909-1910, perhaps a year or so earlier. So this version of C&S 4 would be right at home on my 1909 passenger consist. The lettering on the baggage car is illegible (the metallic gold lettering didn't seem to register on the film emulsions of the period). Hypothetically, it would have been lettered "Baggage" to the left of the center door, and a stacked "Adams Express Company" to the right of the door. The number 4 would have been painted on twice, one numeral 4 over each bolster.

Baggage car 4 didn't change much over the next 15 years or so, looked pretty much the same on the Clear Creek local in the mid 1920s:




Sometime in the late 1920s, steel sheathing was applied to the lower half of the car sides:


Summer, 1929. Richard B. Jackson photo.


Summer, 1931. Otto Perry photo on DPL.

Note the lettering for the World War 1 era "American Ry. Express". Note also the roof conduit. As no C&S narrow gauge passenger car was ever electrified, it is assumed the conduit was for the train's signal bell cord, routed over the roof, rather through the car.

Finally, by the 1930s (our most popular era), baggage express car 4 looked like this in repose:




Note that the car now carries the "Railway Express Agency" lettering. Baggage car number 4 rode on composite 5"0" wheel base trucks with outside brake beams for its entire career.  Here is a Folio 24 sheet for baggage car 4, from my copy, corrected to 1922:




The Back Story:

Back in July, I emailed Roy Stevens and asked if I could commission Sn3 prints of C&S baggage car number 4, without the later steel sheathing. I wanted two prints, one for my 1909 roster and one for my 1924 roster. Roy was already interested in producing a C&S baggage car in HOn3, and was attracted to C&S number 4 due to the arched framing over the center baggage door. So, I sent to Roy Ken Martin's plans for baggage 4, as well as the folio sheets and all the above photos. By the end of the month, Roy had sent me CAD drawings of the proposed C&S 4 that looked really, really good. Just before the NNG convention in Denver, Roy mailed me an Sn3 test print. I went over it carefully with scale rules. All the dimensions are right on compared to Ken's plans. I had issue with the height of the clerestory windows and sent my thoughts and another photo to Roy, who was packing up to head to Denver.

After the convention, Roy completed my two Sn3 prints. They arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago. At the time I was well into the Leadville Designs Baggage 1 build up. This is what the pre-1927 Sn3 prints look like:





I plan to build up both printed bodies just as I did Roy's RPO/Coach print. One will be lettered for 1909, the other for 1924. Otherwise the cars looked about the same.

On Roy's production run of C&S baggage 4, he chose to add the late 1920s to 1930s steel sheathing to the lower portions of the car, as well as the roof conduit. The HOn3 lettering is late 1920s-early 1930s with "American Ry. Express". For those wanting cars for the late 1930s, the HOn3 Thinfilm C&S passenger set has the appropriate lettering.





I believe Roy plans to print the kit in Sn3 as well, but if you're interested in a kit in that scale, best contact Roy and make your wishes known. As for On3, given the length of the car, I don't know if the body will fit on the build plate of Roy's printer in that scale. But one can always ask.

I want to thank Roy for pursuing this project. Since there have been no C&S head end cars produced, in any scale, in the past 30 years, we now have both short and long baggage cars available to us!