Colorado Central Maintenance Of Way Car #026552 | 5 Comments - Click Here :

Columnist Lincoln Pin joins the blog with a fine article about his CC MOW build.
Welcome aboard Link!

    Lincoln Pin - In 1883, the narrow gauge Greeley, Salt Lake & Pacific Railroad pushed into the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado to tap the mineral riches of the region. The line never owned its own equipment but leased narrow gauge equipment from the Denver, South Park & Pacific and from the Colorado Central Railroads. Numerous excellent photographs of the line were exposed by the noted Colorado photographer Joseph "Rocky Mountain Joe" Sturtevant capturing excellent portraits of leased South Park and Colorado Central narrow gauge locomotives and rolling stock. These photographs are in the collections of the Denver Public Library and the Boulder Library. Colorado Central Maintenance of Way car #026552 is featured in many of these wonderful Sturtevant photographs functioning as a head end car on both mixed freight and passenger trains. The best published collection of these photographs can be found in Forrest Crossen's book "The Switzerland Trail of America".

    These great photographs of G,SL&P operations are a gold mine for those interested in c. 1890 Colorado Central freight equipment. I have always loved the photograph of C.C. #026552 in Boulder Canyon as a head end car. When The Leadville Shops offered a kit of #026552 in On3 I built one, as well as several of the Colorado Central c. 1880 (Union Pacific) boxcars once offered by the Leadville Shops. These 24 ft. narrow gauge cars are perfect for my On3 empire.

    Little is known of the fate of C.C. #026552, or the other 24ft boxcars that once rode the Colorado Central narrow gauge lines. However, some certainly were converted to MOW service. I am also working on some kit bashing of this kit into other South Park and C&S MOW cars.

    My model uses Coronado Scale Models brass trucks with PSC metal wheel sets and Kadee couplers. While tempted to use link and pin couplers, the Kadee’s allow better operation. Of note, I sealed the wood of the model with Testers “Dull Coat” to give the laser cut wood surface a smooth look. I used enamel paints (Floquil) on this model as I have found that water based paint applied directly to the wood raises the wood grain in an unrealistic manner. After painting, I colored each side board with Prisma-Color Pencils and then over sprayed with a dilute wash of freight car red.

    I photographed the model using my Nikon D600 camera and used the Helicon focus correction program to eliminate depth of field blurring.

Respectively Submitted,

Lincoln Pin