The actual photos were taken mid
Feb 08 in North Carolina
Car
sides, Dome roofs and many other parts have been
ordered to build three additional cars, the Buena
Vista, Virginia, and the Carolina.
The Body:
While waiting on the car sides from Laser Horizons
work begins on the Buena Vista Observation car.
The Walther's standard diner car is completely
stripped, and prepped for new sides. Leaving
only the metal strips, interior light contacts, and
the underbody we are ready to begin rebuilding.
To help support the frame of the
stripped car you will need to build a new floor, .20
sheet styrene will do the job. Using the
original holes in the underbody drill through the
new floor you can add the screws back to give the
car some stability.
After receiving the car sides, work
began to get them fitted to remaining frame of the
original car. While the Conrail car sides are real
close to those of the NS car some modifications had
to made. Using an exacto knife and a file the
four rear windows were trimmed to match up better
with those of the NS car. These four rear windows on
the Conrail sides came all the same size,
while the NS windows are different sizes.
Next hold your
car sides in place to mark where the frame will have
to cut, other wise parts of the frame will be
visible in the windows.
In some windows I've opted to leave the frame
showing slightly at the top of the windows. I
will paint this white later to suggest window
shades.
Once your sides are glued into
place you will next snap or hold your roof piece
into place while you measure the open end of theater
car.
Without any plans or drawings I had to carefully
study several photos of #23 car. What I
did find is that this end has been changed several
times over the years. I settled in on the latest
photos available. Using sheet styrene I cut out a
solid end section out and worked with it before
making just the open frame. Next you
will need to measure and cut out the entire center
section of the end piece to make ready for the
Plexiglas. Once this piece is glued into place you
can move to the roof and the other end of the car.
ROOF:
Start by gluing one end piece to your roof. Remember you only need
one of the rounded end pieces, as the open end is
finished differently.
To make the roof section with the end cap fit
correctly down into the car side several
modifications had to made. For starters the end caps
have a support beam that runs across the width of
the roof. Notches will need to be cut out to
allow the roof to sit on inside the car sides.
Also to use the original end with the door you will
need to file down the top of this doorway to allow
the end of the roof to fit into place. You may also
have to file down the interior frame a little as
well.
Before moving to the other end of
the roof, you will need to shorten the length of the
roof. Snap the roof in place to mark open
section for cutting. Using a miter saw I
removed about 1/4 from this end. Next
you will trace your half moon roof end onto a piece
of sheet styrene. Cut this piece out and
glue it into place closing off the end of the roof.
You are going to need some very small light sockets
at this point to setup the four flood lights and the
two marker lights that get mounted into the end of
the roof. .10 sheet styrene can be used
to make the dual flood light mounts, as well as the
small marker lights at ground level of the car
floor.
With the ends now securely in
place on both the roof and car you can turn your
attention back to the details of the roof.
Again without plans you are going to have to study
as many photos of the roof tops as you can.
To keep the light wires secured up in the roof 4
rectangle piece of sheet styrene were cut and slid
into place above the groves along the side of the
roof. These were cut to fit snuggly thus it
was not necessary to glue into place. The wire
ride along the top of these strips keeping them out
of the way.
-
Using Walther's Roof top AC components you can
make the satellite dish, and the large rectangle
vents over the diner end of the car.
- The small square screen
sections along the side of the roof were made
from left over F unit fan covers.
- The small vent was purchased
from Bethlehem Car Works.
- The grab irons were made from
thin brass rod. This was also used for the
grab irons on the car sides.
- Laser Horizons custom Conrail
car sides were used for the Buena Vista car.
Contact info for Laser Horizons is 330-966-3186
email them at laserhriz@aol.com
Underbody: Remove all of
the components mounted underneath, such as battery
and tool boxes, compressors etc. Some of these
were used again after some alterations. Most of the
underneath parts were ordered from Bethlehem Car
Works. Using sheet styrene I made one of the
tool boxes.
Interior:
Building the theater seating is a
little tricky, I ordered high back streamlined double
seats from the Palace Car Company. By cutting
a piece of sheet styrene to fit in the area the
seats go you can begin layout the seating.
The plans call for six rows of these double seats
with 2 seats per row, separated by an aisle up he
middle. Using the window tops as a guide
you need to build a raised floor for each. These
seats gradually go up as does the flooring between
the seats.
Curtains:
Using the photos that I took of the car I
outlined and removed several sets of curtains using
Paintshop Pro. PSP was also used to lighten
the curtains.
To size them for HO scale each set curtains was
copied into MS Word.
Once the sizing was correct several sets of each
different curtains were printed on white card stock
Rear Lights
The whole real light write up by Roy Becker
The multiple lights on the rear of the car have
proved more difficult than originally expected.
We mounted 4 white flood lights in the top of the
roof with a red flashing light on each side of the
top section. To get these working correctly
with DCC, Roy from ACL Installations installed
a small light effects decoder to control them.
Roy assigned #23 to the decoder so
that we could call the lights when we wanted to run
the train or turn them off when the train was not
inspecting the mainline. I will have the
exact specs shortly.
|
