Raising A Fallen Flag

In the sometimes ultra-geeky nomenclature of train people (not model train people but real live train people) railroad companies that no longer exist are called "fallen flags". That's actually a pretty cool term for defunct railroads, now that I think about it. Anyway the thing is - getting back to the Christmas train - I've placed the scene in a specific era (post WWI, 1919 to be exact) and in a specific place (small town Midwest, ostensibly west or north western Illinois). So there's no Amtrak and the passenger cars would have to probably be early 20th century Pullmans.

Just a basic search on the inter-tubes revealed a tantalizing option which I grabbed right from the tick. We will be using a "fallen flag" known as the Chicago Great Western railroad company. Here's the route. Are miniaturists and model train people crazy/obsessed? Why yes... yes we are.

Now that we have that all we have to figure out is what a passenger train from what was known as the "Corn Belt Route" would look like. What KIND - and more specifically what year's model - of passenger car would they have and what color would they be? For that (are you ready for this?) you need to go here and also get this.

Well you can get Pullman cars from the era. Trouble is in real life they were mostly repainted for whatever line they were used by. So a Pullman car that comes out of the box looking like this...

Has to first be painted over (yes they have bottles of paint called "Pullman Green" - no kidding) so you have a blank slate...

And since you've got the thing dismantled you may as well paint and populate the inside no? Of course they had maroon carpets... I mean you knew that right?

But then comes the ultimate. There's actually a guy in Kansas who will do custom decals of "fallen flags" for people as crazy as me. For $13 I got a whole sheet of authentic lettering and logos from the era. And it ends up looking like this (including all the painting and interior stuff added in)...

Bingo. A repainted Pullman circa 1919 as part of the Chicago Great Western railway. Complete with stuff inside to good detail even though people aren't going to but barely notice when it is operational. And so voila!

Anybody see a quarter I lost?