How To: Brass Car Sides - ACF Dome Diner Car

My very first train memories came from when I was three or four years old living near Fredericksburg, VA. My dad would take me out every once in awhile to a bridge that looked over tracks where we'd be treated to the rumble of the original Auto-Train headed South to Florida from Lorton. I guess for many of us in the hobby, our trains reflect our experiences. So now that I'm 30+ years older, I've decided to bring the Auto-Train back by building a complete 70's era consist for my n-scale empire. Most of my domes are Kato builds, cobbled from models of some of the very same roads/sets the Auto-Train purchased their fleet from. Unique cars are not readily available, thus I'm forced to venture into making my own. This project is the story of one such car, the ATC 804 ACF Dome Diner car. Let's begin...

 

I'll begin with a Kato ACF standard dome car. Stipping the shell was accomplished by 2, sometimes 3, 20 minute sessions of soaking the shell in a 3mm-5mm deep bath of ELO (one side at a time in an old passenger car jewel case) following each session with a scrub from a toothbrush under hot water. I did a lot of testing and checking, and re-checking and more testing with my fist Kato shells to make sure this abuse would be okay - worked fine for me.

To begin the real work, I layed my brass side along the dome to see how bad the stock window hole alignment would be, and what kind of cutting would be involved. As you can see, we'll need to cut some holes. I used a pencil to mark the windows from the brass sides directly on the sides of the stripped shell. Using a file, I began to carve out the required window openings, being sure to leave as much of the original shell intact for structural stability, but leaving them wide enough for me to install windows near the end of the project.

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Next, I sanded the remaining details off the side of the shell. I noticed the unmodified sides formed a "lip" where the roof piece rests on top of the sides (see the left profile outline on the end shot.) As I wanted to maintain the smooth transition from roof to sides, I sanded the sides until very little was left of the roof "lip" (right profile line) NOTE: PLEASE BE CAREFUL not to sand thru your car side... once I was done sanding I noticed the sides were extremely thin. No worries this time as the brass sides will reinforce the structure, but you still want to be careful.

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The brass sides I was using had tiny dimples etched on the back side to mark grab-iron mounting locations should you choose to install them. Initially I wasn't going to bother because I hate dealing with grabs, but as with anything else I decided if I'm going thru the trouble, might as well do it right! So I used a #80 drill bit to bore thru the brass. Curiously missing were the grab dimples on the service door end, so I simply flipped a spare car side and used it's grab holes on the opposite end as a template to create grab-iron holes where they were missing. Unfortunately I didn't notice this until after I glued the side on, but drilling on a mounted side posed no problems (you can see the holes are missing on the before paint shot in the next section)

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To install the sides, I made sure all measurements aligned perfectly to the Kato shell, and thankfully they did. I installed the roof to use as a guide so there would be no alignment surprises afterwards. Gluing the shell and sides was fairly simple, I carefully layed them on, re-verified alignment, and let it set for two hours.

PS. Don't accidentally glue your roof on.

 

Here you can begin to see things shaping up... Original dome profile with brass reconstruction below:

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Next is paint. I was careful not to get my fingerprints all over everything so all surfaces were already clean. I layed a base of white, then masked off the broad "red" stripe with Scotch brand frosted tape. After the red was applied, I moved the bottom mask up to create a thin line for the purple stripe. Notice also that I made some adjustments to the top mask after observing my lines drooped slightly at the ends.

Once the purple was blasted, it's time for the reveal:

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After this stage, I taped some more and painted the car ends medium gray.

 

Things are progressing - so now it's time for details starting with grabs. Did I tell you that I hate working with grabs? I do. But - I devised a method that works for me. Anyone who does their own grabs knows the first bend is free, no measuring, just bend it. Everything that follows is the tricky part.

I took a strip of paper, layed it on the carbody, and used a pin to punch thru to mark the actual grab mounts to form a plyable template. I took my piano wire and punched thru the tiny pin-holes so I could see the holes better. Next, I marked the bottom hole with a thin line. This is where I'm going to align my plier's edge. Insert the bent end in the top hole, align the wire and marks with the plier's edge (I left a very slight gap between my mark and the pliers edge to compensate for the inner radius that would result from the bend) Torque the wire down and snip.

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With this method the grabs dropped right in the holes - just what I like!!

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I used paper shims to give me a uniform gap for my grabs. I installed the grabs first, then slid the shims in, locked the grabs in with finger pressure and applied glue to the inside of the car. Not pictured is how I painted the grabs - - I used a silver Sharpie pen, handy!

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Now windows- - for the ACF Dome Diners, most proto reference shots were showing venetian blinds rather than the curtain window treatments of the Budd domes, or the pull down shades of the standard ACF Domes. I decided I would attempt to draw the venetian blinds in CorelDraw and see how they looked when printed with an Alps. Results were good! So I did a two process print job, white lift cord straps, followed by black horizontal slats and window trim. I measured the brass side windows within 64ths of an inch so I could type the measurements into Corel for best results. Some minor tweaking was required to get the measurements just right, but it was fairly straight forward. There are only two window sizes on this car which made it easy. The windows were printed on clear transparency film:

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After printing, I made the decision to "backlight" the blinds so you could actually see the detail they had. I envisioned putting all this work into blinds that you wouldn't be able to see because of the dark interior, so I dipped a toothpick in light gray paint and CAREFULLY drew it across the back of the blinds. I'm pleased with the results.

 

When I cut the window holes out of the shell, remember I made them oversized so I could have wiggle room to mount window inserts. I cut each window out individually leaving a bit of flash around the edges. I then put a dab or two of Microscale "Micro Krystal Klear" on the inside of the shell, just enough to hold it while aligning the window. Once alignment was achieved, I let it set to lock in place, then secured it permanently with a more liberal application of Krysal Klear to the edges of the window film. I avoided the main window area, but had the confidence that if I got messy at least the glue would dry clear:

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I didn't document the decal application in this "how to" as I think most of us have dabbled in the water-slide process. But with the Alps, I did simulate the metal kick-plates on the service doors with the silver foil cartridge. You can see this in the last picture of this series showing the weathering process of the car ends. Weathering was kept simple, done by marking the ends with brown and black chalk, then smoothing out with a brush:

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To weather the roof, I used a pencil to run along the dual rivet lines (every other line of rivets on this particlar roof) Then brush downward to blend in.

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Lastly, getting ready to put the pieces together... The grabs go far enough into the shell to cause obstructions on some of the interior plastics of the chasis, so I just cut all obstructions off - the interior will later be painted a darker color and you won't be able to see the sections that were removed:

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Finally, with everything snapped into place and comparing to the prototype, I'm ready to give this one a rest for awhile. I'm pretty happy with my trial into the realm of brass sides. Hope you enjoyed the show!

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Prototype photo copyright of Philip Sims, resourced from Web Lurker's DOME.main with permission.

Happy Modelling!
-Mike

 

EXCELLENT!!!