Peter's Model Railroading | The Equipment | Jewett Trolley
Model Information

William Flatt, out of Ontario, Canada, made etched-brass kits in S-scale of trolleys, trams, and other electric locomotives. He retired from making and selling kits in 2020. His kits were mostly just for the bodies and possibly the simulated power poles. The modeler has to provide the powered chassis, build the body, and finish it. I was able to acquire this body kit from a fellow S-scale modeler who didn't think he'd ever get around to building the model. This was a quick impulse-buy as these kits are quite rare, so you have to grab them when they appear on the market. No information about the car was provided with the kit (what you see in the photo is what I got), so I do not know, yet, which car this is supposed to be based on. One side has 17 windows and two doors. The other side has 18 windows and one door. There are three doors provided. The top, right panel in the photo shows the two ends, both of which have two windows and one door in the center. The panel on the top, left holds all of the "miscellaneous" parts, such as the simulated power poles, two short walkways, some sort of grated platform (I presume?), two small and two larger curved pieces, and three wall sections. All three of the wall sections have a door in the middle, but one has only one window while the others have two windows.

Fellow S-scale modeler, Trevor Marshall, has built a number of William Flatt's kits for this NS&T layout. So, I contacted Trevor to see if he had any contact information for William Flatt, so that I can start the process of identifying this kit. Not only did Trevor do that, but within a couple of days I had all of the information I needed about this kit from William himself. This kit represents a Lake Shore Electric Railway interurban car in the road number range of 167 through 181. The etched-brass parts of the kit were produced by Rivers Traction and Trolley, a predominantly O-scale company, on a special commission by William Flatt. This happened in 2010. William sent an image of the the instruction sheet (shown here) which includes the diagrams, instructions, and some prototype information. It is a low-resolution image file, but I should be able to figure it out. These cars were built in 1917 and 1918. The car measures 61'6" long, 8'9" wide, and stands 12'10" tall. This is a large vehicle for the 1920s. It has a wheel diameter of 37-1/2", so I will be looking at 36" wheels. Trucks will be an issue to tackle. Lake Shore Electric Railway, which ran along the northern Ohio shore of Lake Erie, used standard-gauge track (4'8-1/2"). From the one film linked to in my References page, it appears that these cars could run fast. In the also-linked-to LSE presentation, the presenter mentions between 60 and 80mph, which is incredible for the 1920s. These cars ran between Detroit and Cleveland, so they would never have made it to Pennsylvania, or the branchline I model. However, I intend to build this model anyway, because I want to model the somewhat similar Pittsburgh Railways interurban line (which used wide-gauge, i.e. 5'2-1/2") in the future, and so this car's build experience will help me to build similar ones for my layout.

(external link: Trevor Marshall's Layout)

(external link: Car #172 in the 1920s)