Niles Canyon Railway has several S.P. and W.P. "Harriman" style heavyweight passenger cars with openable windows. The windows lift from the bottom and are held open by pinch-style catches on the sides. Windowframe width varies from about 2' to 4'. Some of the wooden windowframes are worn out. Clearly even the best-quality wood windowframes require periodic maintenance and don't last forever.

Has anyone tried aluminum or engineering plastic for this sort of openable windowframe?

Thanks! - Doug Debs

P.S.: NCRY has one car (S.P. 2101 "Harriman suburban" commute coach) where the windows were replaced with prefab custom-made openable aluminum-frame windows in aluminum-frame casings. The aluminum is anodized a mahogany-bronze color. Though not historically accurate, they work well and should last indefinitely. Other disadvantages of this approach are extra cost ($11k/car a few years ago), and modification of the carbody needed to accept the prefab units.

I have had aluminum frames made and they were as good as the specs - which weren't so good as the width in the carbody openings varied way more than I liked. Speced out for the smaller ones, shimmed to fit. I think there's a probability that a manufacturer of vinyl thermopane windows could make a retrofit in a frame as a one shot installation, just like in your house, but with perhaps a much slenderer frame and sash. I don't know of anybody who's tried to source that. Cheapest might be single glazed storm sash custom made and available from Home Depot et al, but certainly not the best, and you still have to get the carbody opening mouldings altered to accomodate them. NOPSI makes aluminum windows for their old Perley Thomas cars, maybe somebody there can help better. I have had very little luck in trying to mill and join plastic decking lumber in any similar application, but your mileage may vary......

dave

Maybe plexiglass or acrylic could work. I'd bet plexiglass would work best. Problem being would be how to make the window framer look like wood if plexiglass was used...

What about school bus windows?

Eastman Chemical Co. has a great new product called acetylated wood. It is actual wood that is treated to make it very, very durable and long lasting. I think windows and window frames are ideal applications. Read more about here:
http://www.eastman.com/company/acetylatedwood/Pages/Overview.aspx

There are things you can do about the "periodic". In my early days of painting, I used what in hindsight I'd call quite bad paint, but I did good prep and the job lasted. I've also seen plenty of coaches where the primer was falling off the wood, which I attribute to bad prep or bad primer or wet wood.

Nowadays I would use a 2-pack epoxy primer made for wood and designed to penetrate. The primer soaks in, then cures in place, bonding deeply. The primer I use suggests reducing it 25% more than usual, and it penetrates so well I must rebrush every few minutes until it stops drinking up. Let it dry fully, then a second coat, then topcoat of your choice ASAP before the sunlight damages the epoxy primer. Polyurethanes are highly resistant to UV.


Makes me nervous, if they're not designed for transit. Lots of body flex and dynamic forces you don't have on a building.

There is also the "historic museum vs tourist railway" debate... is it a utility car that happens to have some interesting history, or is it actually part of your collection? Don't get me wrong, NCRy can go far, strictly as a scenic railroad. But you can also go far with grants, donors and public support as a historic museum.

At first I was thinking, the aluminum saves you time, but it sounds like it does not with all the refitting work. Seems easier to just do a production run on sash. That is a normal thing railcar owners do... and is the beauty of wood sash. It is renewable.

Thanks to everyone who responded thus far! We're very interested in what modern materials and modern paints can do to "replace in kind" appearance-wise, but with lower long-term maintenance. Please keep those suggestions coming!

Niles Canyon Railway is first and foremost a museum railroad. The "scenic" part of the name was dropped early, IIRC, to emphasize this.

NCRy strongly prefers a correct historic appearance on the large majority of its historic passenger cars. All of NCRy's 60' "Harriman" style S.P. passenger cars were built in 1911-1916, and last significantly modified in the 1930s. "Bus windows", even very well done "bus windows" such as were used on 1921-design Harriman 80' commute car S.P. 2101, are not preferred on the older cars.

S.P. 2101 is one of the 1921-1923 80' long "Harriman suburban" cars used in San Francisco - San Jose commute service until 1985 (!). There are a lot of these cars preserved in museum railroad and tourist RR service. But S.P. stopped all non-essential maintenance in 1967. These cars have a lot of non-structural rust damage around the windows, and complete removal of the sheet metal there is necessary to stop the rust and leaks. So the top-quality-bus-window approach was a good way to get this high-capacity car back in service. These windows look good on this car, and are safe for the passengers to use.

- Doug Debs