Crafting CPR’s ‘Sandford Fleming’ Theatre Car in N Scale

[Dwight in Toronto]

I was going to title this topic “Scratchbuilding CPR’s Sandford Fleming”, but I ended up using some parts and components from an Atlas coach, so I guess it’s more of a scratch-bash.

Anyway, I think it was summer 2023 when TRW’s Lenny posted a pic of CN’s business train in  Montreal, the last car of which was something I’d never seen before - a theatre car.  As luck would have it, two days later I was putting gas in my car, watching a CN intermodal roll by, and wouldn’t ya know … the very same string of business cars was tacked on the end, heading westbound across north Toronto, giving me a not-nearly-long-enough teaser of a look at that unique observation car.  I was later to learn that the named coach was Sandford Fleming:




As most would know, CPKC ran The Empress down to Mexico and back earlier this year, and I was surprised to see them using Sandford Fleming as the end-of-train coach on that run, but in the vintage tuscan livery:




WTF?  Did CP purchase the car from CN?  I was confused, and started looking into things.  Rudimentary research revealed that CP’s theatre coach is a different unit - a closer look at the number of tiered windows is a giveaway.

A Brief History:
The current CP car was built in 1949 as New York Central 10 roomette/6 double bedroom sleeper 10333 "Saugus River". It became CN sleeper 2091 "Skeena River" in 1965.  It got converted to a track inspection car in 1978, sported a crimson-&-cream paint job for a while, and was eventually given VIA’s blue & yellow scheme. The car was sold to Canadian Pacific in March 2013, and painted bright red.  Within the last two or three years, it received its current vintage tuscan livery.  So, the name "Sandford Fleming” now graces both CN’s (ex-Illinois Central) theatre car, and CP’s version. 
 
Side note - Sir Sandford Fleming “was Canada's foremost railway surveyor and construction engineer of the 19th century and a distinguished inventor and scientist."  One of his inventions was time zones!

Anyway, here are a few pics showing some of the paint jobs that have adorned this coach over the last 70+ years:











I hope they stripped the old layers of paint off that thing between schemes, otherwise the mass of pigment on there must weigh almost as much as the coach itself at this point! 

Henceforth, we will only be concerned with the car as depicted in that last photo. 

[Dwight in Toronto]

I had been contemplating a scratch build of this project for some time, and two things gave me the impetus to make a start:
i)  inspiration from Tim Horton’s ongoing documentation of his N scale Sperry car fabrication, and
ii) stumbling on scale dimensioned drawings of the 10 roomette/6 dbl bedroom sleeper from which the theatre car was eventually derived:




Having a reference drawing was a huge shot-in-the-arm … suddenly, I was able to ascertain things like total car length, width, bogie spacing, height of car walls and roofline etc.  It also enables one to infer things like window dimensions, relative positioning on car walls, and so on. 

This exciting breakthrough enabled me to create an N scaled dimensioned drawing of the side walls, which I then transferred to 0.03” styrene sheet.  I then proceeded with Tim’s method of drilling out the corners of the windows with a #65 bit in a pin vice, followed by careful cutouts of the window openings with a new hobby knife blade:




Once all the window openings were roughed out, they needed to be carefully dressed and squared up using a small jewellers file.

[Dwight in Toronto]

The whole time I was tooling away on the window openings in the car sides, I was wondering how I was going to scratch build the roof.  The thickest sheet of styrene I have is 0.13”.  Although this was adequate to accomodate the curved profile of the roof, I could not see myself being able to file and sand my way to a convincingly smooth and flawless outcome.  My only thought was that perhaps I could find a donor car at a train show, and salvage or scratch-batch a suitable roof section.

That very weekend I attended a local train show (Pine Ridge Modellers event in Whitby, Ontario), and the first vendor’s table had a jumble box of a dozen or so passenger coaches.  An old Atlas CPR car caught my eye, as the roof possessed the correct profile, and also had the proper smooth-line finish (all of the others were clerestory types).  I had brought along one of my styrene car sides, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the old model was precisely 80’ long … exactly what I needed.  I didn’t think I’d come across a better find, so, “sold” for $15.00:




When I got it home, I pried the roof from the body.  This was an assembly design that I was familiar with, where the roof and window glazing are a single injection-molded piece of clear styrene with the roof section having been sprayed black.  I have a set of six Con-Cor passenger coaches of identical design - many here will know them, especially by the way the trucks are attached using a small slot-head bolt that screws into a 1/2” tall, hefty, threaded cylindrical steel fastener that sits in a circular casting within the interior car floor.  The bottom of the frame is embossed with “Atlas”, but it also says “made in Italy”, and there’s a nicely scripted “R” (Roco?):




Anyway, it turned out that my car sides could not have fit any better when held against the clear plastic window sections, and that the 0.03” thickness snicked up beautifully under the roof edge:




After fiddling, fondling and flipping things to & fro, I eventually decided to try to separate the Atlas car sides from the base.  After slicing through the floor with a smooth-bladed knife, I switched to a micro-saw blade and slowly worked my way along both sidewalls:




In time, and with sweaty brow, the deed was finally done:




You will see in the above pic that I chose to leave the door section at the head end of the coach intact.  I had been planning on scratch building this detail, but then decided “why bother?”.  I’m not applying for, nor submitting anything for NMRA master modeler certification, so why not take advantage of the better-than-I-can-do factory detail?  I’ll try butting my car side up against the salvaged segment later in the build, and hope I can achieve a seamless joint with a bit of Tamiya putty:




With that, I turned my attention to the tail end of the car, and tackled that big picture window.
I ended up on a pretty good roll; got myself into a modelling “groove” of sorts, and unfortunately, forgot about taking photos for a while. 

Regardless, in the following pic, I’ve built up the unique, and somewhat oddly-constructed end-of-roof detail that is such a distinctive feature of this car.  I also created the picture window opening, and added framing details.  I used my 1” belt sander to remove all the interior roomette sections to create a flat floor, upon which the tiered theatre seating will be constructed. 

Finally, I fabricated the rear window glazing piece.  I wanted to use something that would be a little thicker, harder and scratch-resistant than the thin window material we usually use.  For this, I cut a piece out of an old CD jewel case, then slowly filed the edges until I achieved a “Kato-like” friction-fit within the window frame.  With all the painting and interior construction still to be done, I didn’t want to glue the big window in place:




I then had a shot at fabricating the tiered theatre floor section:




In the course of researching Sandford Fleming, I’ve accumulated as many photos as I could find on the internet.  As evidenced earlier, there are a lot of exterior views.  However, I have not been able to locate a single pic of the interior of the car.  Well, there was one photo of the washroom facility, but nothing whatsoever on how the theatre section is actually configured.

I sent email enquiries to CP’s customer relations people in Calgary who operate their luxury excursion train.  They referred me to a separate organization in Montreal (ExpoRail) where all of CP’s archives are managed.  Those folks informed me that a cursory search came up empty, and that an in-depth investigation would cost $40, with additional fees for photocopy reproductions and mailing.  There was an added proviso that additional research may also strike out.  I thanked them, but said “no thanks”. 

So guys … one of my biggest frustrations with this build is not knowing what the theatre seating arrangement looks like.  There are a few tantalizing glimpses, in several exterior photos, where one can just barely make out people sitting in chairs and looking out the windows. 

But I just can’t discern enough detail to know how many tiers there are.  I’m guessing 3 elevations, of a single 7” step-rise each.  But how deep might each platform be - enough for one row of seats, or two rows per platform?  Four seats per row with an aisle between?  Fixed seating, or moveable armchairs?  Are there any handrails?  What colour is the seating?  Carpeted floor and colour(s), or hardwood?  Are the interior walls/finishes mahogany, or something else? 

Normally, we don’t obsess in this way over N scale interiors.  However, in this case, the large side windows and the huge end window render the interior unusually visible, so it’s important. 

Unless I strike it big with break-through help from the great folks here on TRW, I’m afraid that I’m just going to have to wing it with respect to the interior decor.   So, fingers crossed … how ‘bout it guys - can anyone work some magic and shed some light on how these theatre cars are typically set up inside?

In the meantime, I’ll move on to addressing the roof details on this build, which has some interesting components.

[peteski]

Dwight, since we have the "Prototype" section in the forum, and maybe not everybody who is really knowledgeable about prototype RR frequents this section, why not start a thread there askign for help in researching the interior of this car?  We have bunch of Canadian railroad modelers here. Someone will likely have some info/photos/drawings of the car's interior. Not sure how much research have you done, but since the observation end is so visible through the large windows, maybe there are some photos online which will help out in figuring out the interior setup.

[Dwight in Toronto]

Peter - thanks for the suggestion - I’ll give that a shot.