David's O Scale Blog: April Project Month - Part2: SCL Passenger Cars

This project, while listed as Part 2, took up the bulk of my time, probably some 40+ hours when it was all said and done. It was supposed to be a simple repainting of the lettering boards, but then there were ACI plates and SCL heralds that had to be put directly on the car bodies, so it required full-on taking everything apart to do the proper prep work to put on the Microscale decals. Things worth doing are worth doing right. No shortcuts.

Then while apart, I figured if I was going to do them right, I might as well do the interiors. The colors are inspired off a handful of photos from the Morning Sun ACL Color Guide. These cars are "ex-ACL" after all. The interior photos of SCL cars that exist that I am aware of did not show these cars anyways. The "ex-ACL" is in quotes, since these cars are generic car bodies that MTH slathers on any old paint scheme and do not faithfully represent the prototype cars that really existed. With that being said, I probably put upwards of 10 hours in carefully trimming off the skirts with first a dremel, and then X-acto knives. It's a spotting feature, so had to be done.

These cars were made in 2015 and I must say that MTH quality has gone far up since the first set of cars I went inside some 10 or so years ago. The people were glued in extremely well, as were the window strips. The tooling enhancements are noticeable on the construction of the cars on the inside too. Each car had a different set of figures that MTH makes. Smart move.

I labeled every car and interior with painters tape. I took photos of each car before taking out the figures, to know exactly how to put them back in each car. One will even see that I managed to put keil-line dishes on 10 of the tables in the dining car. MTH interiors are not to scale. The dishes take up too much space on the table, but are good enough for the effect from looking outside.

I used .02" white styrene cut down to model the window shades pulled at different heights. I knew where the figures sat, so I made sure the shades were up to see the figures. I used rubber cement to hold them in place.This ensures the window-strip material doesn't craze. I can't speak for the longevity of how well they will hold the shades over the next decades.

The OBS got some special treatment. I noticed in pictures that the OBS rear windows had blinds. I printed out extremely thin vertical green strips (using MS Paint) on paper, cut them out, glued the halves together with white glue (to model both sides), and glued those in with rubber cement. I created a custom decal for the drumhead. I also took off the 3R coupler on the rear truck, and used the existing kadee-pad to add a Kadee clone made by Weaver to the end of the OBS.

I think the only thing left I could have really done, was upgrade the lighting to flicker-free LEDs, but that's enough work for now.

Here's the Photo Essay...first up, the complete train: