I will fix the doors, just going to take my time and figure out the best method. Matching the paint on a replacement door without having to repaint the whole car is one thing I am looking at before I start. Comparing them to the correct doors on the Kato cars you do notice the three windows. Pity the doors on the Kato car aren't a separate part.
I just had the ALPS printer fired up doing decals for my Shay and 44 Tonner and had the idea of doing a decal overlay for the doors so I did a test shot to see how it would look. The silver is not a match but it shows how the cars would look with two window doors. While I was doing the above I discovered another detail of the Walthers cars to deter the Santa Fe modeller. The Walthers car has different width doors, 6' on the left and 7' on the right, Santa Fe cars all appear to have doors of the same width, about 6'6".
I have successfully filled in the center window on all four doors and it actually looks pretty good! I used a styrene cut to fit the windows then secured then with super glue. Since I'm doing Amtrak, I helped cover the filled in window with some Amtrak decals whose colors matched perfectly! It might not be 100% perfect to a prototype, but the possibilities are endless with Amtrak since they got cars from dozens of different roads. The down side is I made a mistake with some touch up painting and have to strip the car completely down and repaint and decal. I will post some pictures soon! Chris
This wouldn't be absolutely correct for Santa Fe cars as their windows were much larger than the existing three windows as the photo in my previous thread shows, the decal overlay of the two windows is the same size as those on the Kato cars. On thinking about it I may be able to overcome my worry about matching the silver finish of new doors to the rest of the car by giving the car a coat of Dullcoat, the smoothside cars were painted silver rather than stainless steel and had a duller finish.
Howdy Chris, Baggage cars looks real good! Keep up the good work, you are making AMTRAK look great. Will we be seeing more of you down here when you get out to Colorado Springs? Buzz Lenander
I printed up a mock up of what the windows would be like if I used the same dimensions in order to use the glass. Looks pretty close. Jason
Nice job on the Amtrak cars. To me the double windows on the Pennsy car would need to be about 20% larger to capture the distinctive look of the Santa Fe cars. ATSF 3522
Thanks guys! Buzz, I will be coming down more often once I get to Colorado... Amtrak will grace the NMRR layout once again!
I do like what all of you have done with the windows. Now to get past the mock-ups and make it happen. I wish I was one capable of helping you out.
this is the thread that originally inspired me to model this car in more of a 'Santa Fe' style... Not 'completely' accurate for the SF version (the door openings are not the coreect distance from the ends) but pretty darned close and definitely looks the part... I started, first, by cutting out the original doors, then widening the openings to the same width... Then, I started adding styrene strip to represent the rivet strips that show up on the prototype... continued....
... I added Gold Medal Model passenger car stirrups, after shaving the existing ones (these were actually pretty nice, but the photoetched ones are just a wee bit nicer) After a number of months stalled at this point, another kit build provided the idea to model the distictive Santa Fe-style baggage door windows. The American Model Builder kits feature clear acrylic sides that are pre-masked for the window openings; this was the route I decided to take with modelling the doors on this car...in fact, after building the ATSF 64' laserkit car, I saved the window masks in anticipation of re-using them for this build. I applied them to some clear styrene, then cut the doors from the sheet; the only critical dimension was the height-the length would be hidden behind the openings. I then sprayed the sides and underframe with Tamiya Flat Aluminum Acrylic paint (I left the roof in it's original Walthers paint, which was more of a polished silver-photos show this difference pretty well...) I also chose to model one of the doors in a slightly open position for a little variation. after lettering ( I used Microscale's sheet designed specifically for lightweight head end-general service passenger cars)...I posed the car with the 64' smoothside AMB car (this one painted silver-others were painted gray with black roofs and silver underframes and trucks) All in all, I'm satisfied with the results...mainly a car that looks more like a ATSF version than the purchased product. I'm glad I was able to use the Walther car since it wasn't inexpensive, although I would rather model this car more prototypically; this would be a great candidate for Roberto Martari's wonderful car sides! Thanks for looking, Bruce
