“These aren’t your grandfather’s model trains”: Inside the making of the BART model train
If you’ve always wanted to own your very own BART car – and couldn’t get your hands on one of our decommissioned legacy cars – your time is coming.
BART has joined forces with Rapido Trains, Inc. to design the definitive model BART car of your dreams.
“These aren’t your grandfather’s model trains,” says Josh Anderchek, a project manager with Rapido.
Anderchek knows a thing or two about mass transit. The lifelong model railroader worked as a bus and trolley driver in Toronto prior to joining Rapido. He said the BART cars – available in A, B, and C varieties – are the first mass transit vehicles ever to be produced by Rapido.
“It’s an unusual product for us,” Anderchek said. “We’ve never geared ourselves towards rapid transit anything.”
That provided fire for Anderchek and his team, who created preliminary designs for the models in just one month’s time. The team had a hard deadline: BART’s 50th anniversary celebration in September of 2022.
A rendering of the full train from Rapido.
In addition to being accurate 1:87 (HO) scale train cars, the model vehicles have track-powered interior lighting, a close-coupling system that allows cars to sit realistic distances from each other, multicolor interior detailing, complete underbody detail such as conduits and equipment boxes, a decal sheet with car numbers and 50th anniversary window decals, and more. We should also note: The cars will run on conventional track, despite full-scale BART’s wide gauge.
“These are not toys for kids,” said Jay Sathe, a model railroader and designer at BART who made the initial contact with Rapido. “They are extremely high detail and customizable.”
In another first, Rapido also designed an A car (the lead car with the slope-nosed cab) with a special display case for transit fans who lack a track setup.
The model trains have been much requested by BART fans for years, explained Karen Basting, BART’s Director of Customer Services (the department that operates railgoods.com and BART’s physical store). The trouble was finding a manufacturer who was up to the task.
A rendering of the full train from Rapido.
“BART is just different,” she said. “It’s hard to put a finger on it, but it doesn’t fit with everything else. It’s got a different gauge; it’s a commuter rail system not a train rail system; the tracks are not interchangeable like other heavy rail. It’s a unique animal.”
Sathe said Rapido was the perfect fit for designing and manufacturing the models.
“I suggested Rapido make our models because the company excels at incredibly high detail models and loves unusual trains,” he said. “They’ve even made other 1970s Rohr designs in the past!” (Rohr built the original BART cars, which were designed by Sundberg-Ferrar.)
Rapido created the model BART cars using original blueprints and drawings from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as photographs and measurements captured earlier this year at BART’s Hayward Maintenance Complex.
“If we didn’t have the blueprints, we’d probably still be designing the cars,” Anderchek said. “Normally, you just can’t find them.”
The BART cars are much smaller than railroad coaches – the typical fare of model railroad companies – so it “pushed the limits of what we could do,” Anderchek said.
“We had to shrink everything down,” he said. “But if you scale down too much, it becomes fragile, so it’s a balancing act.”
Designers are applying the finishing touches to the model BART car designs right now. From there, Rapido will test, test, test until the product looks and works exactly how it should.
As BART prepares to decommission the entirety of its legacy fleet, it’s a fitting time to release these model trains, Sathe said.
“The legacy fleet will be retired soon and entirely replaced with the Fleet of the Future,” he said. “These model cars are a great way to keep the spirit of the original design alive.”
The cars are currently available for conditional pre-order at railgoods.com and are anticipated to ship in early 2024.