Turtle Creek Central ?

Turtle Creek Central ?

What happens when you have some brightly painted toy trains that look garish compared to the rest of your rolling stock? Correct, you repaint them so they look more like real trains. Such is the case with four 50' LifeLike Auto Carriers that were originally bright red and yellow. The paint shop was given orders to repaint them in that famous New York Central color, Jade Green, and to decal them for the NYC.
So What happened? First the Krylon jade green while looking good, was not a good match of the many shades of jade green on my rolling stock. Second the decals for this project did not fit the cars.
Now what? After setting the first car aside I went on to other things and accidentally stumbled across some decals for the "Turtle Creek Central" These decals had been included in a Model Railroader magazine several years ago. The TCC is known as the "Route of the Dashing Turtle" which is a play off the L.I.R.R. "The Route of Dashing Dan" The artwork was nice and they would fit the cars. With nothing to lose the first car received decals. I thought they looked good and soon a second car was done. After some careful planning and cutting I was able to decal the final two cars giving me a four car set. Now that I liked the way they looked Kadee couplers and metal wheels were added. Now I have four good looking cars in a more realistic paint scheme(even if the road name is somewhat comical) that run great. Such is the level of prototype modeling that I follow.
The Turtle Creek Central, a subsidiary of the New York Central, now operating in my basement. Thanks Model Railroader Magazine and Jim Kelly, MRR article author.