I'm putting the interior for the Green ADL car. I was able to scrounge what I needed out of a lounge, a diner, and seats I had on hand. The kitchen is sort of pieced together from part of a diner kitchen, and I just cut the walls and countertop out of sheet styrene. It's crude but once painted and installed it will do. The idea here is to convey the idea and "rough in" the details, as what you'll see through the car windows will hide a multitude of sins! I need to come up with some tabletops for the eating area.
Espeefan's Passenger Car Modeling
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We'll see how well everything works together. I expect bugs due to the number of brass cars, several of which have not been operated there before.
Just food for thought :
After a bit more study, The Allied Full Cushion trucks were pretty much out of use by 1953. Again, replaced bt the Symington-Gould type XL trucks. However, no one offers the Syminton-Gould trucks in HO. So whats a guy to do.
I found this :
Photos of Symington-Gould Type XL trucks on boxcars are documented in the 1949–51 Car Builders Cyclopedia and in PFE (Pacific Fruit Express) historical archives, such as those held by the California State Railroad Museum.
I can't even find a photo of the S-G, XL trucks on line to look at.
Modeling Context: Modelers often use the Cape Line T-13 truck as a commercial stand-in for the Symington-Gould Type XL, as the prototype is rare and commercially unavailable in HO scale.
Copies of the Car Builders Cyclopedia are expensive ( $100 +/- ) and those Cape Line T-13 trucks are are no longer in production and hard to find.
I've offered up all this as I stated before, I have several of the Athearn UP Express coxcars and I have about 14 of the Southern Pacific Overnight boxcars. I was hoping to up-date mine a bit also.
Take care....John
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T
Thanks!
OK I said I wouldn't show the green ADL in work, but things happened that are worth discussing. 
The other one had a ready made interior. I just had to do a few things. Cut a serving window, paint the kitchen interior, add people, windows & shades. This one is a brass car, so no interior, just an empty body. I had seats. Easy. I had to whip up a kitchen. Also not very hard, a combination of bits of Walthers interior and sheet styrene. I cut out a small dining area from a lounge interior. Now the fun begins: Making it all fit inside so it looks reasonable. We aren't striving for dead nuts accuracy, just, as a friend used to say, "capturing the essence". I also had to clear the cross braces, one at each end, and one in the middle. The kitchen had to be shortened twice and is now about 1/2 the original length, and the eating area had to be moved twice so the partitions were behind a window pillar. Sort of like playing Jenga! the serving counter also had to be in the right place so you wouldn't see the counter and kitchen interior through a window. I had to tack the pieces in place, then drop the car body on to check for proper positioning of everything. I also ended up with a big gap between the front row of passenger seats and the dining area partition because of the center cross brace, so I tried putting a seat with a passenger on top of each side of that brace. We'll see how that looks. I'm now waiting for the canopy glue to set up. Then we button her up and add the diaphragms I was trying to add table tops and had issues getting them to sit level, then I just decided the heck with it, eliminated the table posts and glued the table tops to the top of the passenger's laps. It'll look close enough when you peek in the windows.
These interior projects have been fun, frustrating, and educational. I have taken the gentleman who started me on these projects name in vain several times, but the truth is they really make the models come alive. A car with an interior and passengers just looks so much better. As always, the devil is in the details!
The other one had a ready made interior. I just had to do a few things. Cut a serving window, paint the kitchen interior, add people, windows & shades. This one is a brass car, so no interior, just an empty body. I had seats. Easy. I had to whip up a kitchen. Also not very hard, a combination of bits of Walthers interior and sheet styrene. I cut out a small dining area from a lounge interior. Now the fun begins: Making it all fit inside so it looks reasonable. We aren't striving for dead nuts accuracy, just, as a friend used to say, "capturing the essence". I also had to clear the cross braces, one at each end, and one in the middle. The kitchen had to be shortened twice and is now about 1/2 the original length, and the eating area had to be moved twice so the partitions were behind a window pillar. Sort of like playing Jenga! the serving counter also had to be in the right place so you wouldn't see the counter and kitchen interior through a window. I had to tack the pieces in place, then drop the car body on to check for proper positioning of everything. I also ended up with a big gap between the front row of passenger seats and the dining area partition because of the center cross brace, so I tried putting a seat with a passenger on top of each side of that brace. We'll see how that looks. I'm now waiting for the canopy glue to set up. Then we button her up and add the diaphragms I was trying to add table tops and had issues getting them to sit level, then I just decided the heck with it, eliminated the table posts and glued the table tops to the top of the passenger's laps. It'll look close enough when you peek in the windows. These interior projects have been fun, frustrating, and educational. I have taken the gentleman who started me on these projects name in vain several times, but the truth is they really make the models come alive. A car with an interior and passengers just looks so much better. As always, the devil is in the details!
Here she is, all done!
A quick note on figures. They can be fiendishly expensive or very cheap, like everything else in our hobby. Below are three boxes of seated passengers. The two larger ones are from Amazon, 60 people for about 16 bucks, by a company called Evemodel. They come on a blister pack on the card at the left. Not a bad deal. I put them in the plastic boxes I had on hand. At the other end of the spectrum is Preiser. Their stuff is high quality, and they do figures that the cheaper companies don't. 48 people, $87 delivered. Ouch! They used to be cheaper. The current high pricing is probably a combination of price increases and the tariff lunacy currently being pursued. As I may have mentioned before I only use these in high visibility areas of my cars. Domes. Solariums, large window coaches or diners. This box of 48 will last a couple of years, as I parcel them out sparingly.
A quick note on figures. They can be fiendishly expensive or very cheap, like everything else in our hobby. Below are three boxes of seated passengers. The two larger ones are from Amazon, 60 people for about 16 bucks, by a company called Evemodel. They come on a blister pack on the card at the left. Not a bad deal. I put them in the plastic boxes I had on hand. At the other end of the spectrum is Preiser. Their stuff is high quality, and they do figures that the cheaper companies don't. 48 people, $87 delivered. Ouch! They used to be cheaper. The current high pricing is probably a combination of price increases and the tariff lunacy currently being pursued. As I may have mentioned before I only use these in high visibility areas of my cars. Domes. Solariums, large window coaches or diners. This box of 48 will last a couple of years, as I parcel them out sparingly.
Hello all, or those of you still following. I bought a storage box for these cars, as when I take them to the club I prefer everything in one box. Some of our members bring dozens of cars in big tubs still in their factory boxes. Life's too short! I use the boxes made by Axion. They are expensive, but protect the cars well, and make packing and unpacking a breeze. I'm running trains while they're still unpacking, and I'm headed out the door for home while they're still packing up. But, I digress! I was transferring cars to the new box and found one I missed. I did the seats and people thing, and when I test fit the body to the chassis I found some Korean cold solder joints on the mounting braces, the hard way of course! Is there any other way? 
Like five out of eight! Needless to say there is a bunch more money in the swear jar. These things can be a real bitch to fix, as i don't have a jig to locate them, and the car is finish painted of course! I ended up wire wheeling paint off the areas to be soldered, and using the failed joints as a guide, clamping them in place with my hand, and using the resistance soldering tweezers to apply heat.
I was able to avoid burning the paint off by wetting paper towels and holding them to the outside of the joint area to act as a heat sink. It worked mostly. There is some very slight color variation only visible under high intensity light. I had to use bear hands so I could feel the heat building and know when to stop. That was fun. Talk about suffering for your art! I managed to line things up close enough. I may have to slot some holes on the chassis, and I have a little cleanup work to do with excess solder, but it'll be fine. Note that this is an older iteration of these coaches, before 1946, when the "Lines" was omitted from the letter boards, and before the green transom windows were plated over during modernization.
I'll be pivoting off of these now, finishing off the F units, them we'll look at something new!
Like five out of eight! Needless to say there is a bunch more money in the swear jar. These things can be a real bitch to fix, as i don't have a jig to locate them, and the car is finish painted of course! I ended up wire wheeling paint off the areas to be soldered, and using the failed joints as a guide, clamping them in place with my hand, and using the resistance soldering tweezers to apply heat.I was able to avoid burning the paint off by wetting paper towels and holding them to the outside of the joint area to act as a heat sink. It worked mostly. There is some very slight color variation only visible under high intensity light. I had to use bear hands so I could feel the heat building and know when to stop. That was fun. Talk about suffering for your art! I managed to line things up close enough. I may have to slot some holes on the chassis, and I have a little cleanup work to do with excess solder, but it'll be fine. Note that this is an older iteration of these coaches, before 1946, when the "Lines" was omitted from the letter boards, and before the green transom windows were plated over during modernization.
I'll be pivoting off of these now, finishing off the F units, them we'll look at something new!
Happy Friday to All! I bought myself a present last week, and it showed up pretty quickly. Here it is:
Earlier in the thread i showed parts and videos of my Overland train. You may (or may not) remember that there was no RPO or other head end cars in that train other than the baggage dorm. That's because of the trains in this book. They ran the same route as the Overland but were all head end traffic. You could buy a coach seat on these trains if you were traveling on a budget. There was a mid-train and end train coach in some iterations of it. It ran from Ogden Utah to Oakland. Head end operations were fascinating to me. The handling of mail and express traffic were a large part of railroad business, and post war were the only reason some trains stayed profitable.
As it happens, I have most of what it takes to put this train together. I had to rummage around about a dozen boxes, but I came up with most of it. I didn't have to buy much of anything though I did order a couple of Athearn express boxcars, one UP and one Rock Island. It is shown here boxed up and will be taken to the club to see how well it all works and plays together. That should be interesting and will likely go a little further to filling up the swear jar!
The box is one of those large storage boxes Spring Creek did for a little while. They quit making them, which is a shame for us passenger train modelers! The book includes consist information for the train every year it ran, including power. Great information! There will be a video once I get it tuned.
As a postscript I found one more of those GGD coaches on the tail end of my Overnight train, so that one is getting new windows, shades, and passengers as this is written. I also found a bunch of Roundhouse coaches from my early days of modeling. These cars aren't too bad. This one is typical:
Painting and decaling is mine. Other changes include Central Valley trucks (I have a stash that is free of zinc pest) and body mounted couplers, as well as the old Walthers diaphragms. This is from back in the day when I was a relative Newb, mostly broke and doing everything on a shoestring. You'll note that there is no interior, so now you can judge for yourselves if all that work with seats, people, shades and so forth is worthwhile. These cars didn't even come with window material. I did install marker lamps as this one was being used as an end of train car. Like all of the Roundhouse models it is a comprimise of sorts. It comes very close to a Harriman 60-CC-1 coach, which would be at home on the UP, SP, or even the IC. The window layout is off by two, but it is a perfectly acceptable stand-in IMHO. I like these 60 footers. They'll do 18 and 22 inch radii if you leave the talgo trucks and couplers as furnished, or out of the box if you can get your hands on the more modern versions with swiveling coupler boxes. For passenger equipment they are very forgiving, and don't overhang excessively on tight curves. That's all for now! I'll be pivoting back to the F-units later today.
Earlier in the thread i showed parts and videos of my Overland train. You may (or may not) remember that there was no RPO or other head end cars in that train other than the baggage dorm. That's because of the trains in this book. They ran the same route as the Overland but were all head end traffic. You could buy a coach seat on these trains if you were traveling on a budget. There was a mid-train and end train coach in some iterations of it. It ran from Ogden Utah to Oakland. Head end operations were fascinating to me. The handling of mail and express traffic were a large part of railroad business, and post war were the only reason some trains stayed profitable.
As it happens, I have most of what it takes to put this train together. I had to rummage around about a dozen boxes, but I came up with most of it. I didn't have to buy much of anything though I did order a couple of Athearn express boxcars, one UP and one Rock Island. It is shown here boxed up and will be taken to the club to see how well it all works and plays together. That should be interesting and will likely go a little further to filling up the swear jar!
The box is one of those large storage boxes Spring Creek did for a little while. They quit making them, which is a shame for us passenger train modelers! The book includes consist information for the train every year it ran, including power. Great information! There will be a video once I get it tuned.
As a postscript I found one more of those GGD coaches on the tail end of my Overnight train, so that one is getting new windows, shades, and passengers as this is written. I also found a bunch of Roundhouse coaches from my early days of modeling. These cars aren't too bad. This one is typical:
Painting and decaling is mine. Other changes include Central Valley trucks (I have a stash that is free of zinc pest) and body mounted couplers, as well as the old Walthers diaphragms. This is from back in the day when I was a relative Newb, mostly broke and doing everything on a shoestring. You'll note that there is no interior, so now you can judge for yourselves if all that work with seats, people, shades and so forth is worthwhile. These cars didn't even come with window material. I did install marker lamps as this one was being used as an end of train car. Like all of the Roundhouse models it is a comprimise of sorts. It comes very close to a Harriman 60-CC-1 coach, which would be at home on the UP, SP, or even the IC. The window layout is off by two, but it is a perfectly acceptable stand-in IMHO. I like these 60 footers. They'll do 18 and 22 inch radii if you leave the talgo trucks and couplers as furnished, or out of the box if you can get your hands on the more modern versions with swiveling coupler boxes. For passenger equipment they are very forgiving, and don't overhang excessively on tight curves. That's all for now! I'll be pivoting back to the F-units later today.
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Morning All! The Rock Island express box showed up. Well, it's not an express box yet. The trucks are wrong. I had to order a set of express trucks from Rapido for it. Standard freight trucks and cast-iron wheels couldn't take the sustained high speeds in express service, so they got heavier trucks and steel wheels. Those should show up in a week or so. I've already replaced the McCrappy couplers with Kadees and removed the trip pins. It's just a good old Blue Box car, but as I've said, I have no issues with the cheap stuff as long as it works for the application. They have upgraded the Blue Box cars with metal wheels and axles which is nice, but then, they upgraded the price too. The UP car should show up later this week. I have one Postal Storage car to repaint from SP to UP colors. Easy stuff.
The UP car should show up later this week. I have one Postal Storage car to repaint from SP to UP colors. Easy stuff. Morning everyone! The UP express box showed up. Nice looking model. Just basic blue box stuff. but quite well suited for its purpose. It was about $30 as opposed to $230 for the brass car. See below, Athearn model on top, brass on the bottom:
Once again, the trucks on the Athearn car are wrong, a bit aggravating as they do happen to make the correct truck. I bought some, so the total investment for the car will be about forty bucks. There are some minor detail differences which I'll check with prototype photographs and correct as necessary. I've already removed the McHenry couplers and added Kadee #5's. I also remove the trip pins on everything. I don't use magnetic coupling and they look terrible. I use #5 couplers on passenger and headend equipment exclusively. The length of the cars makes this prudent. You can get more vertical separation than you think on grades, so this is a frustration preventer!
Once again, the trucks on the Athearn car are wrong, a bit aggravating as they do happen to make the correct truck. I bought some, so the total investment for the car will be about forty bucks. There are some minor detail differences which I'll check with prototype photographs and correct as necessary. I've already removed the McHenry couplers and added Kadee #5's. I also remove the trip pins on everything. I don't use magnetic coupling and they look terrible. I use #5 couplers on passenger and headend equipment exclusively. The length of the cars makes this prudent. You can get more vertical separation than you think on grades, so this is a frustration preventer!
westtexjohn
Well-Known Member
My research turned up :
Truck Style: Symington-Gould High Speed trucks used on UP 9100-9189.
I have several of these Express Service boxcars in yellow/gray and the earlier blue/gray colors. I am surprised Intermountain never produced these. Other than the brass cars, I think Athearn is the only company that has these available. And as you said, it is a "blue box" thing but they look ( to me at least ) a bit better than the average blue box offering.
Thanks for posting.........John
Truck Style: Symington-Gould High Speed trucks used on UP 9100-9189.
I have several of these Express Service boxcars in yellow/gray and the earlier blue/gray colors. I am surprised Intermountain never produced these. Other than the brass cars, I think Athearn is the only company that has these available. And as you said, it is a "blue box" thing but they look ( to me at least ) a bit better than the average blue box offering.
Thanks for posting.........John
Thanks John and Deacon KC.
The express trucks showed up for the Rock Island express box yesterday. I matched them with a photo I had of the prototype. They are close enough. Rapido makes them, but they are rather odd. They have power leads, which interfered with the car floor, so I had to Dremel them off. Then the bolsters were too low, so .040 (two red) Kadee washers worth of space to keep the wheels off the car floor. After that I still had to replace the couplers with offset ones to get the car to couple to anything else. Fiddly stuff.
For the UP car, the closest I could get were Allied full cushion trucks. They are very close to the photos I have and don't resemble the Symington Gould units at all. Who knows what might have been swapped out over the years? I'll have to paint them Harbor Mist Gray along with the car ladders, and they'll be ready to go. They should be here in a few days.
The express trucks showed up for the Rock Island express box yesterday. I matched them with a photo I had of the prototype. They are close enough. Rapido makes them, but they are rather odd. They have power leads, which interfered with the car floor, so I had to Dremel them off. Then the bolsters were too low, so .040 (two red) Kadee washers worth of space to keep the wheels off the car floor. After that I still had to replace the couplers with offset ones to get the car to couple to anything else. Fiddly stuff.
For the UP car, the closest I could get were Allied full cushion trucks. They are very close to the photos I have and don't resemble the Symington Gould units at all. Who knows what might have been swapped out over the years? I'll have to paint them Harbor Mist Gray along with the car ladders, and they'll be ready to go. They should be here in a few days.
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I'm taking it to the club to test Thursday and will video the test. Power will be a Daylight A-B-A PA set.
We'll see how well everything works together. I expect bugs due to the number of brass cars, several of which have not been operated there before.
TLOC
Well-Known Member
How did the test session go?I'm taking it to the club to test Thursday and will video the test. Power will be a Daylight A-B-A PA set.
Cancelled unfortunately! The skies are very angry here and I didn't want to be running across a parking lot getting soaked with a couple of grand worth of train in cardboard boxes. Not even foam lined ones! I'll try again when the weather gets a little less angry.
The express trucks for the UP express box arrived today. They required a trip to the paint booth to get a coat of Harbor Mist Gray. I expected a "plug and play" install because Athearn model and Athearn trucks, right? Wrong! .040" of Kadee washers required again!. Different bolster heights. I show the original equipment below. They did put roller bearing trucks on the car, just not the right ones. Aarghh! Now its at least very close to the photos in the mail train book. All that remains is end marker lights on one of the GGD coaches. It's not a train 'til the marker lights are hung!
westtexjohn
Well-Known Member
Where did you source the trucks that are on the UP Express #9179 ? They look pretty darn nice. I'm guessing Athearn.
Just food for thought :
After a bit more study, The Allied Full Cushion trucks were pretty much out of use by 1953. Again, replaced bt the Symington-Gould type XL trucks. However, no one offers the Syminton-Gould trucks in HO. So whats a guy to do.
I found this :
Photos of Symington-Gould Type XL trucks on boxcars are documented in the 1949–51 Car Builders Cyclopedia and in PFE (Pacific Fruit Express) historical archives, such as those held by the California State Railroad Museum.
I can't even find a photo of the S-G, XL trucks on line to look at.
Modeling Context: Modelers often use the Cape Line T-13 truck as a commercial stand-in for the Symington-Gould Type XL, as the prototype is rare and commercially unavailable in HO scale.
Copies of the Car Builders Cyclopedia are expensive ( $100 +/- ) and those Cape Line T-13 trucks are are no longer in production and hard to find.
I've offered up all this as I stated before, I have several of the Athearn UP Express coxcars and I have about 14 of the Southern Pacific Overnight boxcars. I was hoping to up-date mine a bit also.
Take care....John
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TLOC
Well-Known Member
Totally understand being about 80 miles west of the club. Our weather Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was nothing but dangerous. We needed the rain but not the rest of Mother Natures wrath.Cancelled unfortunately! The skies are very angry here and I didn't want to be running across a parking lot getting soaked with a couple of grand worth of train in cardboard boxes. Not even foam lined ones! I'll try again when the weather gets a little less angry.
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