JC Models -- NYC

There isn't much history available on the JC Models line of wood and metal HO passenger car kits from the 1950s and 60s. They seem to have started about 1950 with wood roof, ends, and floor and embossed cardboard sides. I'm not sure if the cardboard was due to Korean War shortages, or if they were just the materials JC started with. At some point by the mid-1950s, the line had moved (or reverted) to stamped aluminum sides and white metal ends, but kept the wood roof and floor.

When I rode PRR and NYC trains by the 1960s, I was interested in modeling the equipment JC made models of, but JC kits, while they were in some sort of production, were very hard to find. In addition, it wasn't until I got into my twenties that I had the tools and skills to do things like shape the roofs or credibly paint kits like these. I slowly located old-stock kits in hobby shops, found assembled models at swap meets that I could rescue and restore, and ordered some of the remaining new production when JC briefly revived in Ohio about 1980.

Here are some New York Central cars I did in the 1970s:

I still have a couple of other JC NYC cars, an RPO that I'm in the process of restoring from one I got at a swap meet, and a diner that they advertised as NYC but was actually a New Haven-Boston & Maine prototype. That's fine, I'm a big New Haven fan as well, and it'll look great behind DL109s!