Bill; I think that originally all the round roof cars had all the vents, as they were shopped over the years,they had some removed. in one of the RCT&HS Bee-Line magazines a few years back,Vic Rosman did an article on building the Bethlehem car works kits,this is one of those things that you would have to go by photos of individual cars. ther is a photo of PBr coach 1541 in a booklet put out by the Reading in the late 1950's,showing the car having all roof vents. this car still exists today with no vents. it was air coditioned with the rest of PBr class #1525-1549 in 1934-1937, and they were modernized again in1948-1951. at some time the car lost its vents. also there is a photo in Craig Bosler's equipment book showing a going away shot of a double-headed ramble with coach 1468 which had all of its vents, still in the 1960's. Butch Curll

Bill; I looked in the rolling stock reference section of this site, PBm class coach #1344 was built 6-8-22. it was rebuilt to PBt class coach #2000 2-21-48, for use on the Wall Street train. Butch Curll

Butch,

OK - I am with you. So I could go 1325 to 1359, or 2000 to 2003.

But what about the roof vents? How many?

PBm... PBt.... This is all foreign to me!

Bill

LOL, Not so fast......

The 2000 series cars were modernized and "streamlined" Although they retained the basic shape of the original carbody, they had "skirting" added and went from the 20 some little square windows to about 11 panoramic sealed shut rectangular windows.

The question of roof vents is probably still open to if you are that concerned with getting it right, go with trying to find a photo of a car and count the roof vents. Again going strictly from memory (which is shot) I believe I have seen as few as six vents (3 each side) and as many, well as earlier posted photos and drawings show, a lot of them. It varies from date of construction through rebuild and update conditions.

The good thing with the passenger car fleet is with all the cars that the Reading had, they pretty much used the same basic design. So the variations come down to the details, which are easier to say "prove it didn't happen that way," than it is to prove it did.

You could probably look at any car number from the 1100's to the 1500's and not be wrong. but the 2000's have a totally different look even though they are all cars out of all those prior car classes. Take a look at the passenger car roster pages right here on the Reading Modeler, under the articles tab.

Rob

Bill; here is a photo of 2014.
www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsPicture.aspx?id=978679
the following cars were basically like this with some variations.they had 9 picture windows on each side.#2000-2002,2010-2016,2050,2060. #2050 was a club car with the same windows as the coaches. 2060 was a lunch counter-coach with 3 windows blanked out on one side. the following PBm coaches were used for these conversions.
1337,1343,1344,1347,1348,1350,1351,1353,1355,1356,1358,1359, not necessarily in numerical order. so bottom line is after Feb. 1948 coach #1344 did not exist as a standard looking coach. Butch Curll

Bill,
I was following along and as Butch mentioned earlier of the V. Roseman article which appeared in the Bee Line Vol. 9 No. 2 Summer of '87. There are many variations as everyone mentioned so far, and the article even points out the cars with six roof vents had a left or right pattern on the roof! I started some super accurate BCW kits in HO of course and did a twelve vent roof, a year later it still sits unnumbered. I try to watch Charlie Housers slides on e-bay as sometimes something odd pops up, and even my collection of Reading books most of the photos you can't read the car number. This is a tough one indeed.

Bill