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

[Dwight in Toronto]

Having airbrushed the car sides in CP’s classic tuscan red, it was time to try to recreate the thin metal aluminum gaskets that are characteristic of the inner frames that seal the window panes on the prototype.   

I initiated a short discussion of this on Tim Horton’s Sperry Car build thread, but will recap it here for completeness.  Long story short, after a bit of trial and error with other materials, I ended up using very narrow strips (0.01” x 0.03”) cut from adhesive-backed lead tape.  The following photo was an early trial test, and shows how the lead strips were laid into the first two window openings and then worked around, butting them up to conform with the window edges.  The third window was left partially complete to demonstrate the approach:




I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the lead strips were to work with - nicely flexible, malleable, and agreeably cooperative … when you poke or prod it into a corner or up against a straight edge, it stays right where you want it.  I thought that the proof-of-concept had delivered promising results.  So, after having painted the car sides, I went ahead and used the technique to outline all the windows:




Once all the strips were in place, I flipped the car sides over and ran a miniscule dribble of very thin CA glue around the back edge of each window perimeter, relying on capillary action to adhere the lead to the styrene.

I’m happy and satisfied with the outcome.  I think it captures the subtle bit of metallic lustre that is evident on the prototype, and adds a nice bit of detail overall. 

[Dwight in Toronto]

It’s time to put the main decals on the car sides.

I had a good supply of Black Cat N scale decals for CPR vintage passenger cars, left over from a long ago project.  The named cars cover everything from “A” to (almost) “Z”, but unfortunately, no Sandford Fleming.  Which meant scouring over the names and trying to find strings of letters from which to free-hand the labels:




Interesting aside - if you look over the decal sheet, you’ll see that, apparently, there once was a CP coach named “Trump”.  Surely not that Trump, but I was curious.  I asked Chris VanderHeide, who found that “Trump was the name of a 1 drawing room, 12 section sleeping car. These "T series" sleepers all had names starting with the letter "T".  I couldn't tell you the significance of the specific name though, but most of these appear to be town or station names. It may be a station name somewhere on the network.”   So, one of those “Huh, who knew!” things.


Anyways, here’s how the decaling turned out, after having received a spray of dullcoat:




I really need to get on with investigating how I might attach new Kato trucks to this old Atlas frame.

[Dwight in Toronto]

All along, I’ve been hoping to equip the coach with working LED tail lights - and there’s no less than 10 lamps on the rear face of the prototype.  Although I won’t be using 10 LED’s (the intention is to get by with 2 or 3, making them do double-duty), I still need to get track power into the car interior.

A short while back, I ordered Kato power pickup passenger car trucks (as a “nice to have, just in case” when I was in the midst of my Turbo Train modernization project, also documented on TRW). 

There were several styles of trucks to choose from, but I went with replacement trucks for the SP Daylight coaches (since I have a 13 car set).  Turns out that the injection molding of the truck piece is of a finely engineered, clip-retained ‘snap-on/off’ design.  This, of course, necessitates an equally precisely shaped mounting post on the underside of the car floor:




As shown in the above pic, I shaped a short piece of 1/8” styrene rod (using my poor man’s cordless drill ‘lathe’), and slipped it into an equally short 3/16” piece of styrene tube, doing the best as I was able to replicate the profile of Kato’s under-carriage mounting post.  I then opened up the two rectangular floor slots on either side of the mounting post, again matching the pattern of Kato’s Daylight coach.  These slots are pass-throughs for the brass contacts that protrude upwards on either side of the truck.


Here, the Kato truck has been snicked onto the makeshift post, and you can just make out one of the brass contact posts sitting in its slot in the car floor:




Finally, a photo from the top side.  When I ordered the trucks from Kato, I also added dozens of other spare parts so as to justify the shipping cost.  Extras included a set of phosphor bronze loco pickup strips.  Hopefully I can get them affixed in such a way that they flex down into the slots in the floor, and ride atop the conductive posts on the truck.  At least, that’s the idea - we’ll see.




I will trim the styrene post flush with the floor once everything is set up properly, as that’s where the tiered seating piece needs to go.

[peteski]

Making progress . . .

While I'm a big proponent of wire-free electrical pickup scheme, in certain instances (like yours) I would just wire the trucks using some flexible wire. Trying to get just the right amount of tension on those pickup strips (so they have enough pressure for reliable contact) might be a bit of a pain.

To me more important is not to have wires in model locos where the trucks should be easily removable to service all the  mechanical bits in them. Passenger car trucks don't have all those gears, so they almost never have to be removed from the car. If for some reason the wheelsets have to be removed, that can be done with the truck still attached to the car.

I'm also  curious if the 1:1 car used those trucks shown in your photos.  Those "Napolen hat" trucks were not used on many passenger cars.  They are a bit of an oddball.

[nickelplate759]

Making progress . . .

While I'm a big proponent of wire-free electrical pickup scheme, in certain instances (like yours) I would just wire the trucks using some flexible wire. Trying to get just the right amount of tension on those pickup strips (so they have enough pressure for reliable contact) might be a bit of a pain.

To me more important is not to have wires in model locos where the trucks should be easily removable to service all the  mechanical bits in them. Passenger car trucks don't have all those gears, so they almost never have to be removed from the car. If for some reason the wheelsets have to be removed, that can be done with the truck still attached to the car.

I'm also  curious if the 1:1 car used those trucks shown in your photos.  Those "Napolen hat" trucks were not used on many passenger cars.  They are a bit of an oddball.

Kato makes a number of different passenger-car trucks that use the identical mounting method, so the trucks are easily swapped out.

[peteski]

Kato makes a number of different passenger-car trucks that use the identical mounting method, so the trucks are easily swapped out.

Exactly.  Kato has a large selection of passenger trucks, so there is a good chance that they have the exact truck which was used on this car.

[Lemosteam]

If you bend the tabs inward and flat to the truck top, you can put a dot of solder on them and run the wires under the frame and enter the car in a conspicuous place to feed the lighting.  this will also prevent any light coming out of the car downward.

[Dwight in Toronto]

First of all, it’s nice to actually have the benefit of a few comments and helpful pointers.  Throughout much of this build, it’s been the proverbial ‘crickets’, so, thanks for breaking the silence!

I’m relieved to hear that direct soldering to the brass tabs on the Kato trucks would be a better proposition than trying to use the brass pickup strips.  With the latter approach, I was having doubts that I’d be able to get the “balance” between flex, fit and downward contact pressure just right.  “A bit of a pain”, as Peteski said.  And I like Lemosteam’s suggestion of bending the tabs and running the wires under the car … would have saved me the time and trouble of creating those slots.  But, the slots are there now, so maybe I’ll just bring the wires up into the shell that way.

As far as using the correct, prototypical trucks goes, I don’t have the foggiest idea what those could be.  As I said earlier, I ordered powered passenger trucks thinking I would be cutting them down to single axle bogies for my Turbo Train build, and at the time, figured may as well get parts that could serve as spares for the Daylight model that I already have. 

I never even noticed the Napolean Hat thing until Pete mentioned it!  Up until now, my only annoyance with the Daylight bogies is the dark gray colour.  So, the next time I need something from Kato’s parts desk, I’ll get black trucks that don’t look so unusual.  Better modelling through peer pressure!

Quick status update - I fabricated a second mounting post at the other end of the car, snapped on both trucks, and entertained myself for a bit finger-flicking the car back & forth on my test oval.  It rolls beautifully!

Later today I hope to pick up an ESU 50708 Digital (DCC) LED “Warm-White” Lighting Strip And Taillight unit.  It’s a function-only coach lighting decoder, which I think could do a good job of selectively illuminating all the lamps that are on the rear wall of the car.  I’ve never used one before, so looking forward to playing around with it on LokProgrammer.

Also, because of lighting space constraints, I think that I’m going to have to try my hand at fabricating at least one “light pipe” assembly using some clear styrene.  This is another thing I’ve never done before, so if anyone has any comments, advice, hints or tips in advance, I’m all ears!

As a refresher, I hereby repeat an earlier photo showing the proto lighting, and the challenge of having very little space to replicate it on the N scale model:

[peteski]

If there are any photos of this car showing the trucks, you should be able to identify them.  Spookshow (Mark) has a reference webpage showing most of the available N scale trucks (passenger trucks are towards the bottom of the page).  You'll likely find either the exact, or a close match. Then just order them from Kato.

http://spookshow.net/trucks/trucks.php

[nickelplate759]

From the photos posted earlier, the trucks look like 41-BNO-11, which are available from Rapido but not Kato.
http://spookshow.net/trucks/gsc41bno11.html

It doesn't have electrical contacts.


The closet-looking Kato truck is probably this one:
http://spookshow.net/trucks/gsc41cdo.html

[davefoxx]

First of all, it’s nice to actually have the benefit of a few comments and helpful pointers.  Throughout much of this build, it’s been the proverbial ‘crickets’, so, thanks for breaking the silence!

You might know this, but TRW is known world-wide for not being an attaboy forum.  Little to no feedback is actually a compliment.  That said, your theater car is fantastic.  Thanks for sharing all of the detail of your progress.  Very interesting.

DFF

[Dwight in Toronto]

You might know this, but TRW is known world-wide for not being an attaboy forum.  Little to no feedback is actually a compliment.  That said, your theater car is fantastic.  Thanks for sharing all of the detail of your progress.  Very interesting.

DFF

Lol … Dave, thanks for the recognition, AND for the reminder … tough room; rough crowd! 
Fair enough!

Not much progress today - winter snow causing the normal ‘go nowhere fast’ Toronto traffic to be even worse, so spent half the day going to & from the hobby shop. 

But I did pick up two of these ESU 50708 digital coach lighting strips:




This is an interesting little device.  Haven’t done anything with it yet, but it’s got a lot of neat features packed into a $30 Cdn package - 11 ceiling LED’s arranged in four individually controllable/dimmable lighting blocks, two red tail lamp LED’s, a couple of auxiliary outputs, pads for flicker-free capacitors, and a LokProgrammable function decoder.  Length can be easily cut down for N scale applications.  Here’s hoping I can make it fit and work for the car-end lighting effects on the theatre car (fingers crossed).

[Dwight in Toronto]

 
I was placing some Tamiya masking tape so as to do a quick airbrush touchup.

Tape stuck to the model and, unknowingly, finger.  Went to move finger away, model swayed in the air. 

Panic reflex action was to grab at it super quick to prevent a trip to the floor.

Ended up crunching it instead, creating a pretty bad fracture.

Don’t know what kind of repair I might be able to do.  Totally discouraging.  It’s times like these that I seriously consider abandoning the whole fu@&ing hobby.  Kinda don’t even feel like trying a fix.  I just dunno.

[davefoxx]

Oh, that sucks.  Sorry to see that.  It’s happened to most of us at some point, so we feel your pain.  Maybe instead of abandoning the hobby, you can look at this as an opportunity to go to another train show. 

DFF

[John]

I was placing some Tamiya masking tape so as to do a quick airbrush touchup.

Tape stuck to the model and, unknowingly, finger.  Went to move finger away, model swayed in the air. 

Panic reflex action was to grab at it super quick to prevent a trip to the floor.

Ended up crunching it instead, creating a pretty bad fracture.

Don’t know what kind of repair I might be able to do.  Totally discouraging.  It’s times like these that I seriously consider abandoning the whole fu@&ing hobby.  Kinda don’t even feel like trying a fix.  I just dunno.

Try some super glue and body putty.   Should work