Questions on the Burlington Northern .

[Triplex]

A bit late, but...

Weren't Amtrak HEP cars rebuilt from 1950s US Army hospital cars?

[Green_Elite_Cab]

A bit late, but...

Weren't Amtrak HEP cars rebuilt from 1950s US Army hospital cars?

Those care were originally Army Kitchen cars as well, built by AC&F. However, with the Army not using the railcars so much and Amtrak needing more stuff, the army gave them to amtrak as baggage cars. a handful became HEP cars. The tricky part as far as modeling is concerned has been finding good roof shots or diagrams. Obviously, they are not a very popular car.

Train Station Products came out with an HO 50' baggage car, but i still would have to modify it the rest of the way into the HEP car.

Amtrak also converted beat up old coaches into HEP cars. Amtrak had their insides gutted out and had a pair of Gen-sets installed inside, and you could tell these from regular Amtrak cars since their vestibules were covered up on the ends between cars, and the windows had chicken wire over them.

These latter cars are also ones i've tried to identify. you'd think the window configuration would be good for that, but no. There aren't a lot of good pictures of these cars (seen them more in videos than in photos), but here is a shot where you can see the chicken wire, painted Amtrak Blue.