Scratch build Sunday

This model of the Milwaukee Road #2119 Railway Post Office started as a badly damaged Walthers 60-foot RPO that had been previously built many years earlier by another modeler.  We dismantled the car completely and stripped, straightened, repainted the sides.  The remainder of the car was rebuilt and detail was added to the underframe and new trucks were added to the car to more closely represent the #2119 which had been rebuilt in 1959 for expanded RPO service on many of the Milwaukee Road's secondary passenger trains such as the Copper Country Limited and the Chippewa trains to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The interior is based on photographs I found of a working Milwaukee Road RPO from the 1960's.  I chose to duplicate what the RPO might have looked like during the busy Christmas season with many packages as well as letters and Christmas cards to be sorted on the train.  This car will operate on the 2-rail portion of my future O scale layout in my Chippewa train.