I bought a decorated Walthers SAL observation that has no skirts. My Undecorated one is skirted. Looking at Paul's great SAL car book it looks like the skirts lasted up to the merger and came off in the SCL era. If so, I have a decorated Walthers car available at a good price. Can some one let me know when they were de-skirted?

-- Bill McCoy (bugsy451@comcast.net), May 03, 2004

Answers

Looking through my books and photos, I see that SAL kept skirting intact on their equipment longer than most other roads. I can't be certain that the 1967 merger was the point in time when skirts came off SAL cars, but it probably accelerated the process. They seem to have come off ACL cars long before then. If Walthers did the SAL observation sans skirting, that is unfortunate. They did the matching Budd coaches with skirts. Recently, a gentleman who worked in the C&O passenger car shop in Richmond, VA told me that the hardware for the hinged skirting on Budd built cars was superior to Pullman cars.

-- Rick Morrison (eopipes@surfree.com), May 04, 2004.