Walthers HO Pennsylvania RR B60b baggage car will be useful to many

Walthers’ HO scale Pennsylvania RR baggage car is an accurate model of a prototype that was widely used both on the PRR itself and in interchange service with its many connections. That makes the car useful both to those who model the PRR and to many other passenger train modelers.

Prototype. The PRR purchased more than 500 steel baggage-express cars of its class B60b between 1925 and 1930. The class designation indicated a baggage car measuring 60 feet in body length, and it was the second design of this type. The B60b’s predecessor, the B60, was similar but had a clere-story roof.

The B60bs came from four builders: American Car & Foundry, J.G. Brill Co., Pressed Steel Car Co., and St. Louis Car Co. Originally they had paneled wooden doors with paired rectangular windows. During the late 1930s or early 1940s, most if not all were given steel doors with single porthole windows. They proved to be sturdy and durable cars, lasting into the 1960s in passenger-train service.

Model. The Walthers HO B60b is an excellent representation of the PRR car. It’s accurate to within fractions of a scale inch compared to prototype drawings in the Pennsylvania Railroad Heavyweight Passenger Equipment Plan and Photo Book, published by N.J. Internationalin 1984. The body and roof detail is finely molded, and 24 wire handrails and grab irons are included for the purchaser to install.

Unlike some other Walthers passenger-train cars, this one has a one-piece body with a roof that’s snapped in place. The roof is easy to remove by slipping a thin model knife blade between the roof and end and twisting gently.

The particular version shown here represents one of 200 B60bs equipped for express messenger service, carrying an onboard Railway Express Agency messenger or train baggage man. The required lockers, desk, safe, and lavatory are modeled inside the car, even though they are practically invisible when the roof is in place.

The diaphragms are one-piece plastic moldings with integral springs. They are springier andmore flexible than Walthers diaphragms that use metal springs inside the carbody, but they are set a little too far inside the pulling faces of the couplers to contact the diaphragms of even another B60b.

Trucks and underbody. The model has PRR 2D-P5 trucks, the type that appears most commonly in photos of B60bs. The trucks have cast-metal side frames screwed to a plastic center bolster. All the scale 36″-diameter wheelsets except one were correctly gauged, and I was able to correct that one by gently twisting the metal wheels in the insulating plastic axle.

Once the spacing was correct I applied cyanoacrylate adhesive sparingly to the joints between the wheels and axle. The underbody includes the center sill, crossbearers, and bodybolsters, and all the major components of the heating, electrical, and air brake systems. The model lacks any free-standing piping or brake rigging and has no uncoupling levers, air hoses, or train steamline connections.

Paint and lettering. The B60b shown here is smoothly painted in a dark PRR Tuscan Red and has gold leaf lettering, including a five-pointed star centered just above the belt rail to mark the car as messenger-equipped. This combination dates the model to within a few years, as the stars were added beginning in September of 1948, and Dulux imitation gold lettering replaced the gold leaf in mid-1952.

Walthers is offering five other PRR versions with lettering that ranges from pre-World War II to the 1960s. All versions come without car numbers but include matching number decals so purchasers may have multiple cars with individual numbers.

I painted the grabs and handrails flat black to conform to PRR practice, and I painted the sill steps black. I painted the shiny metal wheels too, using an oily black on the wheel faces and a rust color on the insides and axles. Painting shiny wheels does a lot to improve a car’s realism to my eye.

All of us model the Pennsy. Some freight-car modelers like to say that we all model the PRR because its enormous freight car fleet was so ubiquitous. The B60b was almost as widely traveled on passenger and mail-and-express trains, often running to terminals as far from the PRR as Jacksonville, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. It’s good to have such a fine model of a car that could be seen almost anywhere.