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Pullman in 1938 built a series of 12 4-4-2 cars for service on the new streamlined Chief.

Eastern Car works Kit 1330 is the basis for this car. Drawings from the 2/93 Mainline Modeler will prove invaluable for interior layout and underbody detail.

These cars were delivered with 43 triple bolster trucks, but they were exchanged for 43R (roller bearing) trucks later in life. The kit comes with the improper 41-HR trucks.

Eastern kits consist of plastic sides, ends, roof, underbody with cast on details, window strip, and trucks which you must assemble. These pieces tend to have a lot of flashing or poor joint areas, so you will need to spend some time cleaning everything up. I use a file for large pieces to maintain a flat surface.

The only cast grabs are a lower step at one end of the car and a hand rail on the ends. I chose to remove both.

The end detail is sparse. Eastern uses the same end for all its cars, and they have a pair of cast on lights (?) which are not prototypical for ATSF. I cut them off. The end does not fit the roofline snugly, so you may wish to use some putty to fill in the gaps. You will also want to build up the diaphragm area .030-.040" using styrene strips. I also put a plate under the molded end, into which I cut the coupler pocket.

The roof itself is also incorrect (again, they use the same roof for all their Pullman cars). There is a rectangular hatch at the vestibule end that is incorrect and should be removed. Start with a hobby knife, then switch to a file, and finish with steel wool. Be precise, as this is a very visible area.

Skirts on these models are rather flat; they do not curve under the car as on the prototype. These cars lost their skits to the convenience of maintenance folks circa 1960. For my modeling date of 1953, the skirts are probably okay. Eastern has made removing them easy by scribing lines on the reverse side of each side to serve as a cutting guide.

Underbody details are cast on and lack any detail. The whole underbody is wrong for Santa Fe. If you are using the car with skirts and not looking under it, then nothing will show. If you are removing the skirts, you must decide whether to use Eastern's incorrect underbody or start from scratch.

I chose to paint my car after assembly. I knew I had some putty to spread around, and chose to paint later. Eastern suggests that you glue the ends to the roof first. After they have set, attach the sides. When I attached the side, I inserted the floor and wrapped rubber bands around the entire car. This plastic when touched by glue does not set hard for quite a while. Allow at least 24 hours before trying to clean up any excess glue.

I am now at the point of doing grabs.

The fluting on the sides is a fair representation of Pullman fluting. However it often needs cleaning up. Unfortunately, like other manufacturers, when Eastern came to a place for a name board, they simply stopped the fluting. On the prototype, the name board is mounted on top of the fluting. One way to make up for this is to insert a piece of styrene stock to raise the boards up to the proper height. This proves one tooling problem: the corrugation on the top of one side is .094" wide it is .116" on the other side. You must use different width boards to have the car look right. Eastern also made the spaces far too large when compared with the original, but I know of no easy way to fix that.

I used .020" styrene to fashion an interior for this car. Unless you wish to install lights, none of the interior will actually be visible, so an interior is little more than a view-block as no windows should show through the entire car.

(This is a work in progress)

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