[PRCo] West Penn models

[Fred Schneider]

This could be of interest to any of you who bought or plan to buy one  
of St. Petersburg Car Company's models of a West Penn 700.

For several days I have been trying to figure out how to glue on the  
rotating classification lights on the roof of mine ... red front,  
green front, mixed?  Ed Lybarger claims the library has no West Penn  
rule book.  Art Ellis could not remember.   There was no other soul  
around PTM over the weekend old enough to remember West Penn except  
John Swindler, and I don't think he cared ... he was six when it  
quit.  This afternoon I looked through a one-inch stack of 8x10s of  
West Penn cars on the Mainline.  I think I figured it out.  The  
pattern is that red faces forward and backward on all scheduled  
cars.  As in railroad practice, the only time green appears to be  
used is to denote a second section is following.   AGAIN, The same  
colors face both forward and rearward.

I found only one picture in which green is displayed and that was on  
the first car of the two-car post-abandonment mainline fantrip on  
August 10, 1952, when it no longer mattered.   In every other  
picture, red faces both to the front and to the rear.   Even more  
intriguing, the extra car that left Connellsville at 11:30 PM on Aug.  
9, 1952 and ran only to Dunbar immediately ahead of the last  
scheduled car to Uniontown displayed red, not green.   I think this  
tells us that the Dunbar car was an extra and not a second section.

The use of green was probably very uncommon in the last year but I  
imagine it was common early on for park cars to Olympia and Oakford  
parks (and others) and events such as dynamite factory explosions.

Before someone asks what a Dunbar destination sign looks like, it is  
simply the letters DU drawn in chalk on the front of the car.