Restoring/ repainting passenger cars

[cnrglen]

I recently got a collection of 13 passenger cars off ebay.
4 athearn

7 Rivarossi

2 unknown vintage cars (anyone know the make of these? Wood floors, metal walls)


I decided to repaint and sell the athearn cars, and two of the Rivarossi's. The rest I'm repainting, doing a bit of detail work and displaying. Unfortunately I don't have a layout big enough to run them, but maybe someday.
There was one car that didn't need repainting, I think it has a factory paint job:

The rest were poorly painted, mostly with a brush. Included in my 'keep pile' are:
Heavyweight Pullman coach
Heavyweight Diner
Lightweight coach
lightweight sleeper roomette.
I stripped them all with easy-off oven cleaner. The fumes may be unpleasant but the paint falls right off.

I'm repainting the Pullman in Canadian pacific
Here's how it looked:

I shaved all the cast-on grabs, and added brass wire ones, then repainted it in Scalecoat CPR Tuscan red

I painted it at the same time as I painted my doodlebug project so it's just 'airing out' before I mask and paint the underside, then decal. I have an interior for it and it will become a trailer for the doodle bug when completed.

I did the same with the diner, replacing the grabs with wire. I added Tichy stirups to replace broken ones. The previous owner added an extra kitchen door to make it more like a CNR prototype so that's what it will be.

It's sitting in primer and will later be painted in CNR green
Finally my two lightweight cars

I trimmed the end skirts off and drilled holes for the grabs. I'll be adding the grabs after the paint since I'll be painting these in CN's post 54' paint scheme and will have to mask the sides. Since the skirts are removed I had to add the steps the are behind them. I salvaged the steps from an old Bachmann caboose.

[cnrglen]

I managed a bit of work on the cars today.

I painted these three in Scalecoat CNR green. The two lightweights I added the steps to the door ends. Those two will later be masked off and the black will be added to the lower 1/3 of the cars.

Last night while watching TV I masked off all the cars that I had painted CPR Tuscan and today I sprayed the undersides and roofs black. These will be ready for decals pretty soon. I'm still waiting for the paint to finish airing out.

[cnrglen]

I broke out the decals and solvaset this weekend.

With the decals added and the body sprayed with dulcote the Pullman is almost ready for the rails. It just needs a few more details and the trucks properly installed. It was surprising to see the change from the glossy paint to the duller finish.

Same with the three Athearn cars. These will get new window glass and some detail painting and they're almost ready to go.

[nachoman]

Hey, those are looking good!!

[Ralph]

VERY nice!

[cnrglen]

Thanks Guys. I pretty much finished up the Athearn cars this evening.
I added new windows

I don't like the cast windows that come with the cars so I used some clear styrene glued in with testors window cement.

The result is windows you can actually see through well enough that you could put an interior in.
The last thing was to body-mount the couplers. The previous owner cut the coupler mounts off the trucks so I had to re-mount them on the body.

[cnrglen]

The three Athearn cars are done. I did a bit of paint touch up and slipped the bodies back on their frames.



And my Rivarossi RPO baggage car.

This is the factory Rivarossi paint, looks more like boxcar red. I like the Scalecoat Tuscan red better.
Next to be finished is the Rivarossi Pullman coach and then the CN cars.

[doctorwayne]

Very nicely done, Glen.

I'd guess that your wooden-floored cars with metal sides might be from Walthers. At one time, they offered a very extensive line of their own heavyweight passenger cars, along with a lot of detail parts, trucks, and decals to go with them. These included full build-'em-yourself interiors, too. I'd always wanted them when I was starting out but they were beyond my limited budget, and by the time I could afford them, they had been discontinued, supplanted by even more nicely-done plastic cars.
I did have Athearn passenger cars, though, and later the Rivarossi cars, both heavyweights and lightweights. Over the years, many have been sold off, but most of my remaining passenger fleet is modified Rivarossi - much nicer to work on, I think, than those old Walthers cars. If I'm not mistaken, they're embossed sheet metal, with wood floors - the original ones had wooden roofs, which required the modeller to shape the downward curves at the ends. I think that the later ones came with the roof-ends already formed, and the final version may have had plastic roofs. I did pick up several of those to use on some as-yet-unbuilt wooden baggage cars.

Wayne

[cnrglen]

Thanks Wayne. I kind of figured that they were older Walthers cars. They have the wooden roofs as well. I'll probably pass them along to other modelers as I don't have a foreseeable use for them.
The Athearn cars are going to a new home as well, like you I'm concentrating on Rivarossi cars for their reasonable cost. With the exception of my doodlebug project though I can't see myself attempting major kitbash projects on them like you have.
I have some other vintage passenger cars and kits in my collection, I'll post pictures in a bit.

[cnrglen]

I took some pictures of the other kits in my collection.
This one was built and is all sheet metal, it's 65 scale feet long



I have two boxes of these:

They look like streamliner kits of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific passenger cars. Made by MHP?
Wood floors and roofs, stamps metal sides and ends. It looks like you are expected to cut/ emboss the sides to suit the passenger car you are building (A real craftsman kit!) I'm probably not going to do anything with these. I don't model either SP or UP and it looks like allot of work.
I also have some eastern car works Core kits to go with two Concord Junction Stainless body sides:

The Body sides are for Pullman standard Boston and Maine Sleepers but they have notes that they were also used on CN so I may build them in the future.

[BR60103]

Glen:
The old Walthers roofs used to require making about 6 different curves at the ends. The hardest part was taking that little ridge on the side of the clerestory down to the end. Lots of ways you might do it. I think Walthers sold practice kits with short sections of roof to work on. And I seem to remember cast metal curved bits.
I think my score now is 2 2/2 Walthers coaches (2 of them half done).

[cnrglen]

I'm not going to attempt those types of cars at this time, or at least until I'm more comfortable with my skills.

I finished the CPR Pullman coach last evening


I added some diaphragms, and some other detail pieces.

I also cut the original plastic gates off and used these etched metal ones. I was going to add the steam, air and signal hoses but I need the truck mounted couplers for my curves and they would interfere with their operation.

Finally on the layout, waiting for the doodlebug to be finished. That's next on the agenda.

[cnrglen]

I've been slowly working with the Canadian National cars over the past week.

The bottom is my Dining Car, painted in the pre-54' scheme. It's pretty much finished, just waiting for some Rivarossi trucks and an interior when I track those down. It came with some plastic trucks of unknown origin but I need the Rivarossi ones so I can have the truck mounted couplers.
The middle is the roomette sleeper and the top is the day coach. These have the 54-61' paint scheme. The yellow stripes make it one of the more difficult paint schemes to attempt. I used a silver paint pen on the window frames, outlining them with a 005 black ink pen.
I also got these in the mail recently:

I have enough to convert all my Rivarossi cars as well as the doodlebug project.

[cnrglen]

Quite a bit of progress over the past couple days.
First I started to fit the windows/roofs back into the two lightweights. But then I realized the previous owner had sprayed all the glass in these two with testors dulcote to fog them over.

I tried a few methods to remove the fogging, isopropyl alcohol, easy-off oven cleaner didn't work so I tried wet sanding with fine sanding film. It seemed to work at first but I couldn't get the fine scratches out, even with plastic polish and my dremel tool's buffing wheel. So I decided just to cut the windows off the roof and install clear styrene windows , just as I had done with my doodlebug project.


After that I started in on the Kadee couple conversion kits. It took and evening to convert 4 pairs of trucks. Three lightweights and a heavyweight. I like how Kadee engineered an adjustment in to them for coupler length.

I didn't have any of the Rivarossi truck pins for two of the lightweights so I had to convert them to truck screws. I closed up the bolster openings with so styrene tubing.

and made some 'collars' for the truck screws

once the glue to dry I'll install them

On the other hand I did finish the heavyweight dining car. I managed to find both an interior and new trucks for it.


It's ready to run the rails now.
Last week I got 90 HO seated figures from China in the mail. In time I'll be painting them and adding them to the interiors.

[JaBear]

Gidday Glen, I have been following your Doodlebug and this thread with interest. Her-in-doors thought I needed a passenger service so bought me some 2nd hand Athearn and Rivarossi passenger cars, so have ended up with another “one day project”. I’ve already got far too many but it would be extremely foolish and ungrateful to look a gift horse in the mouth!! I will have to book mark this for future reference. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers, the Bear.