# Accucraft Brass and AMS Jackson Sharpe cars



## Ted Yarbrough (Jan 2, 2008)

Friends,
Do the brass San Juan cars go well (size & color) with the AMS green D&RGW coaches/combines? Any photos out there? Thanks!


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Ted

I run the brass and plastic Accucraft D&RGW passenger cars together. They go well together. From a distance the only noticeable difference is the open platforms on the plastic cars and closed ones on the brass, except for the baggage car.

There is a color difference with the yellow cars. 

Here is a picture of a train with brass and plastic cars mixed. The two cars in front of the yellow cars are plastic all the other cars are brass.










I was trying to recreate the consist in the picture of an excursion train approaching Cumbres pass.










Chuck


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## Ted Yarbrough (Jan 2, 2008)

Chuck,
Thanks for the photo and info. You did a very good job recreating that excursion train!


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Ted:

I've dug out some Accucraft cars. If the light is suitable later this afternoon when I return home, I'll take some pictures of the Brass and Plastic coaches.

Right now I'm off to a Veterans day Steam/Battery fest.

The train I'm running today will be an excursion train pulled by a USAT Hudson (battery) with 10 USAT streamliners, B&O, PRR, and Rio Grande, in tow.

Chuck


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Learned something today. The closed end brass coach is an inch and a quarter longer that the open ended plastic coach.

The brass San Juan coach:

end beam to end beam 26 3/4"

car body 23 1/4"

Plastic J&S open ended coach:

End Beam to End beam 25 1/2"

Car body 22 3/4.











Chuck


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## Ted Yarbrough (Jan 2, 2008)

Chuck,
This is exactly what I was looking for. I think they would look great together.


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## Ted Yarbrough (Jan 2, 2008)

Chuck,
Are they the same height and width?


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Ted:

They do look good together. There isn't a combine in the brass line. I put my plastic combine in with the brass cars and UNTIL today I never noticed a difference in length. I've put them all away, so it might be a while for the height and width. If you look at D&RGW pictures, there are slight differences in the height of cars. I have never worried about width.

The Postal car of the San Juan set is significantly higher that any other of the cars. That was dictated by the Post Office. Like the add on with a smoke stack on Goose #2. The mail car had to be heated.

Looking at the picture I posted it looks as if the brass car is a little higher than the plastic car. I generally follow the 10' rule. If I can't see it when it is on the track, I don't worry about it.

Not like pulling 1:24 cars with a 1:20.3 engine, major headache.

Chuck

The closed end cars came later than the opened ended cars. There well could have been changes in the basic design. Until today I assumed that they closed in the open ends, that assumption may have been wrong. Other changes might have been made. I'll check some books when I get a chance.

Earlier today I said I was taking an excursion train out to run at a Veterans Day Fest. Here is a picture of the train.


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## Ted Yarbrough (Jan 2, 2008)

Chuck,
Thanks. Good info provided. I love this site. Always easy to get answers!


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Ted:

Some more measurements. Height was measured from top of rail head to top of roof.

Closed end coach
height 6 15/16"
width 4 7/8"

Open end coach
height 6 14/16"
width 4 7/8"

Looking up D&RGW coaches in "Rio Grande Narrow Gauge Varnish --Colorado Rail Annual no. 25" open end coach no. 312 started out 38' 5" long. After being closed in it became 39' 8" long.

So Accucraft was correct in making the closed in coaches longer than the open ended ones.

Chuck


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## daveyb (Feb 28, 2009)

i believe they are all the right size, the baggage car i think is shorter but i believe the smaller open balcony cars were used in the san juan now and again

the ams combine may be just too long depending what number you have but someone may be able to clarify
this


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Gosh Dave, I have a problem. My combine 212 is OK. But what am I going to do with 202 and 210. They are too long! Maybe tomorrow morning I'll take them out and put them on the drive way and backup, NOT.

They are nice cars and look nice with other D&RGW cars. I use them in mixed trains and they might be the only passenger car. 

To me the exact length for the number isn't a big problem, as long as it fits in with other similar cars. 

Chuck


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## Ted Yarbrough (Jan 2, 2008)

I agree, Chuck. Some cars were different lengths and a couple at different heights. Colors even fade over time between paint shopping.But they do need to look consistent.


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## Pete Thornton (Jan 2, 2008)

> But what am I going to do with 202 and 210. They are too long! Maybe tomorrow morning I'll take them out and put them on the drive way and backup, NOT.


Chuck,
I've chopped a few AMS coaches in my time, and that includes shorteing and lengthening them. For my EBT Baggage/Express car, I had to shorten it by about 1 inch. See the thread: http://forums.mylargescale.com/15-m...craft-j-s-coach-ebt-baggage-express-29-a.html

My latest was a lengthened coach, where I took some of the windows from sides that had been replaced (by baggage/express areas,) and glued them in. I had to extend the frame and the roof - but it's pretty easy. See http://forums.mylargescale.com/15-model-making/27308-east-broad-top-coach-12-a.html


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## chuck n (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks Pete, but I think that I will leave them as they are.

Chuck


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## East Broad Top (Dec 29, 2007)

One thing to keep in mind, also, is that even if two cars were originally built to the same plans, there's a very high likelihood that 20 - 30 years later, they'd look at least a little bit different as the result of accidents, planned rebuildings, or other changes. Roofs and end platforms were frequently altered during rebuilds. (There are some EBT coaches that have at least 4 or 5 different appearances over the years as changes were made.) In looking at the folio sheets I have for D&RGW passenger equipment, they're all very similar, but there's definitely a fair amount of differences as well to where even a train of four identical passenger cars would likely not be 100% accurate. 

The question comes down to one of accuracy--how much extra work are you willing to do to be 100% accurate? The manufacturers aren't going to be 100% accurate (except maybe for one specific example) right out of the gate. So, you buy a string of cars and have a choice. Is "close enough" good enough? Are the differences between prototypes worth the time and bother of modifying and repainting each passenger car on your roster? 

I'll be the first to admit I'm a stickler for details and getting things right. I'll also be the first to admit there are times when I'm a lazy SOB who will gladly accept a degree of compromise because it's just too darned much work otherwise. The end result with the "extra work" wouldn't be different enough to justify doing it. For instance, EBT coach #3 was a 35' long, 13-window coach. I built a model of it from an AMS coach simply by cutting a 13th window on the end where the stove is, and making minor changes to the windows above the belt rail to match the prototype's board-and-batten construction. 










When you compare this photo to a photo of the prototype, it's very, very close. What you can't tell is that the coach is 3' too long and riding on trucks that are 1' too long. But for me to get to that level of accuracy, it would have required me to virtually scratchbuild the car--something I wasn't remotely in the mood to do. This was a fairly "quick and easy" conversion, and looks great coupled to my Combine #18. One of the cool things I like about the EBT's passenger car roster is that there is very little true "uniformity" between the cars. At most, there are two or three sets of true "twins" on the whole roster, but everything has a cohesive overall "family" look to it. Using a stock AMS coach as the starting point for my model of coach #3 fit into that "family" approach to modeling without having to be 100% accurate. As I continue to flesh out my passenger car roster (now up to 7 cars), no single car is 100% accurate to its prototype. But I don't really care. Individual 100% accuracy isn't my goal. Getting everything as close as is reasonable, sure. But what I'm after is building a passenger train that captures the "family" appearance of the EBT's passenger car fleet--where few cars were really alike, but they all blended together quite handsomely in a train. That subtle variation between cars is what makes things interesting for me. The EBT had a very cohesive look to things despite what amounted to somewhat significant differences between individual pieces of the puzzle.

Later,

K


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## chama (Jan 2, 2008)

and running a mixed consist is prototypical. The D&RGW did not convert all their coaches to the closed vestibule arrangement (which was for the San Juan) and would sometimes add in open platform coaches when additional seating was needed.


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