Just a few weeks ago a set of USA Trains Extruded Aluminum New York Central passenger cars arrived from one of my favorite dealers.
They are beautiful models of the Pullman Standard cars that the New York Central purchased starting in the late 1930s. The set I own is made to represent the cars for the 1940's 20th Century Limited train that was the NYC's most famous train. For us NYC fans, it is the most beautiful train in the world. In the forties and later these cars made their way into most NYC named passenger trains and eventually became part of nearly every NYC passenger before the New York Central Railroad vanished forever.
USA Trains developed these cars for the upcoming ALCO PA passenger engines that are to be released later this year. They are also appropriate for the USA Trains Hudson released earlier this year.
They are available in a number of road names and come in five, eight and ten car sets. They are lettered in the B&O, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Atlantic Coast Line, Canadian Pacific, Southern, ATSF, Pennsylvania, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and of course the New York Central. This review will focus on the NYC set.
The Pullman company operated most of the sleeping cars, diners and observation cars for most of the class one railroads. When the NYC began to upgrade their passenger trains they went first to Pullman Standard for most of those new cars. The cars in the USA Trains set represent cars built in 1938, 1941 and 1948. These cars were the epitome of most railroads' passenger fleet during the era when passenger business was still the main feature of most railroads. In 1945 alone, the NYC ordered 420 new lightweight passenger cars, bringing their total of these cars to 720. USA Trains has done an outstanding job of modeling these cars in the best detail found today in G gauge.
I currently have nine ARISTO heavyweights in the two-toned NYC gray, five ARISTO heavyweights in Pullman green and eight ARISTO stainless Budd NYC cars.
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I love them all and the USA Trains Pullman Standard set of eight rounds out the passenger service on my NYC Big Four indoor railroad set in September 1954. My biggest problem is where to store them all and still be able to operate freight trains on the railroad.
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I almost didn't buy this set because I had too many passenger cars already. It would have been a mistake to have missed these beautiful cars.
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The set consists of: two coaches numbered 2608 and 2609 representing a set of 45 coaches the NYC ordered in August thru 0ctober, 1941; two dome cars named Horizon View and Sky View, (fictitious cars, since the NYC never had dome cars); a 42 passenger Diner numbered 680 and part of a six car buy in May 1938; two 10 roomette, 6 bedroom sleeping cars named Hudson River and Chicago River, part of a 56 car order in December, 1945; and a buffet lounge observation car named Manhattan Island built in May, 1938.
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The USA Trains' cars are big. They are 5 3/4 inches tall from the railhead, 4 1/8 inches wide and 34 1/4 inches long. They weigh about 10 pounds each. The detailing on these cars is unique for G gauge and parallels that found today in many of today's HO and O gauge cars. The trucks and wheel sets are beautiful, but 
Click for larger picturethe wheels are shiny silver and could have been blackened or rusted (another job to be done with the airbrush). The vestibule end includes a working fold down step.
Click for larger picture The grab irons, air hoses, coupler lift bars, doors, diaphragms, and roof ventilators and interior details are authentic and well detailed.
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The underbody detail is excellent.
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The coupler and steam hoses are well done although the steam hoses are somewhat fragile.
Click for larger picture All of the cars are lighted and each has an on-off switch
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The observation lighting has the same on-off switch with an added feature allowing the rear lights only to be illuminated. The rear center light on the observation burns red when the train is going forward and switches to white when the train runs in reverse. Each car comes with several passengers.
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These are made up from two, seven people sets that are painted to give the impression of more than just 14 individuals. In the two-car sets, these people are the same in each car, so I will soon want to repaint/replace them.
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The passengers appear to be close to 1/29. I cannot get my scale card close enough to them to be sure, without opening the cars. They are definitely smaller than most of the other people figures I currently have. The paint on the figures is a little too shiny. A coat of Dullcoat would help them. These two, seven sitting people sets are available separately. The lettering is accurate with the letter boards and numbering/naming clear and crisp.
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The letter boards have New York Central on each car. Those cars operated by Pullman have the name Pullman lettered on the side car ends.
Click for larger picture The early versions of these cars were lettered as Pullman with the New York Central in small letters on the side car ends.
The set is missing a baggage or combination car, so I am using one of the ARISTO streamliners (all of which I have lowered, changed the couplers to Kadee and added diaphragms).
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This brings up another problem for me because the couplers on the USA Trains' cars are much lower than all of the ARISTO passenger cars converted to Kadee couplers. I will have to solve this problem so that the cars can be run together as they were on the real-life NYC.These cars are very heavy and with body-mounted couplers, require a minimum of ten-foot radius curves to operate. They tend to derail on anything less. The couplers are USA Trains knuckle couplers and they don't mate well with other Large Scale couplers.
There are some minor flaws to this otherwise excellent model. The diner has no table settings or tablecloths, which can be easily fixed by some detailing. One of the sleepers had couplers that were 1/4 inch lower than the other cars. There is a 1/4 to 3/8 inch gap between the diaphragms (probably so that the cars don't derail in turns). The grab irons are all blackened and they were silver on the real cars. The thin white stripes on each car were aluminum on the Pullman Standard cars.
Click for larger picture The interior floors are silver on the models and would have been carpeted (dark) on the prototypes. None of these minor flaws detract from the otherwise extremely well done cars and would be noticed only by true New York Central fans.
The NYC set is an accurate and well-detailed model and is a great addition to the growing fleet of G gauge cars available to those of us who love the sight and feel of these big trains. 
Click for larger pictureUSA Trains has added to their growing reputation as a major provider of standard gauge railroad models.
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