Our common inspiration has been the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina parlor car #10 “Azalea” built by Jackson and Sharp.   The ET&WNC railroad had the only narrow gauge vestibuled passenger train in the United States in 1920.We want to build a passenger car that a prosperous narrow gauge line might have purchased in the early part of the 20th century - and this calls for what is known as “freelancing”.

Why Freelance?

Many of us model narrow gauge lines that were deemed to exist into the 1920s or even later.  Since the real glory days of narrow gauge railroads were, with only a few exceptions, long over by the turn of the century, the notion of prosperous narrow gauge trunk lines a few decades later automatically leads to a freelanced approach.  Of necessity, any passenger services imagined in such a model environment must also be freelanced.

The passenger trains of the Rio Grand, the ET&WNC or the Newfoundland Railroad are the only significant passenger services operating as late as the 20s but nonetheless they can only serve as a partial guide as to what might have been.  Our imaginations must supply the rest.