Cut & Splice back together, Athearn Blue-box SP 'Daylight' Coaches, Corrugated Sides & Roofs

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Hi, I have aquired a No. of Coaches and intend to lengthen them by cutting and rejoining with spliced-in sections of a couple of sacrificial Coaches.

I have a selection of Razor-saws, Mitre-boxes and Craft-knives, Styrene sheet & Adhesives, but I would like to read-up any info I can find, before doing the deed. I feel like I’ve amassed all the gear, but not got much idea.

However, I have searched the Community & Digi-Archives + Google and cannot seem to find much info, albeit it will probably be there.

Any help would be much appreciated. Paul

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Making two out of three would allow you to do it with only one joint. Cut a little longer than needed and use sand paper on a flat surface to get to the exact length. Check the alignment of the corrugations carefully. They may not line up if you try to join pieces from opposite sides of the original car bodies. Use pieces of flat styrene inside the body to reinforce the joints.

MEK is a good adhesive for styrene.

Mark

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When sanding the cuts, move the work in one direction at a time, not back and forth. Back and forth tends to impart a slight rocking motion, which often yields a slight curve. Turn the part regularly, too, to ensure that equal amounts of material are removed.

Another thing to watch is varying thicknesses of body shells, depending on the location where the cuts are made.
Where one shell portion is thinner than the one to which you wish to mate it, you’ll need to add material to the inside surface of the thinner one. Otherwise, the flat styrene splice plates will create a continuous surface on the inside of the car, and a stepped surface on the outside. Having sheet styrene in a good range of thicknesses will be useful here, as it’s possible that none of the mating surfaces will be the same thickness.

This doodlebug was created by cutting a Rivarossi combine into three segments, then re-arranging and modifiying them. Fortunately, the body casting’s thickness was pretty constant…

I wasn’t so lucky (or skilled) on this earlier conversion of a Rivarossi diner into a combine. The body thickness was pretty constant, but I should have done a little more work to improve the joint…

I don’t really mind the shorter Athearn cars, and I actually shortened this Athearn observation car about 40 years ago, th

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I haven’t lengthened a passenger but I have shortened several. If possible use a miter saw for as perfect of cut as possible. For taking care of the ruff cut ends I use a new sheet of sandpaper on my workbench and move the car in a circular motion.

Here are some pictures of an 80’ IHC baggage car that I wanted to take down to 60’. It came out very good.

First cut.

This is with two 10’ sections removed.

Primed and ready for paint.

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Hi Guys, Thank you for your replies and advice and photos. I have read & noted everything and hope to be able show you some modelling surgery soon.

Regards, Paul

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Paul,

If I might, a question and some more information.

Are you planning to model one of the SP Daylight trains with this project?

If so, are you aware that the prototype Daylight cars were not typical 85’ streamliners?

They were in fact only 79’ over the buffers or diaphragms. The car bodies were only 77’ long.

The Athearn cars are 72’ long, only 5’ too short.

There is a big misconception about passenger car lengths. Many modelers assume that all passenger cars were 80’ or 85’ long. Not so.

The AT&SF also had streamlined equipment that was shorter than 80’, as were a few other specific cars on some other roads.

And most heavyweight head end equipment, and many coaches, were less than 80’.

In heavyweight equipment it was mainly Pullman built sleepers, diners and lounges that were built on several “stock” 80’ underframes. But other heavyweight equipment came in a variety of lengths.

So my question/point is, do you really need or want to do this much work to these cars?

I run a lot of Athearn passenger cars, Streamlined and heavy weight. I have kit bashed my share. But I have never felt the need to lengthen them.

Especially considering all the other models on the market to choose from if you want more accurate models of longer cars.

I like the selectively compressed nature of the Athearn cars, and the ConCor smooth side cars. I do go to great effort to close couple them with working diaphragms.

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Sheldon

According to my SP research (2011) when I kitbashed my SP ¾ Dome Lounge cars six were longer than the normal Daylight cars. My first kitbash car was from a Bachmann Full Dome, it went very good and looked great so I made a second car.

While every manufacturer sells a standard dome in the SP road name but the SP never had any standard dome cars, they only had the seven ¾ dome lounge cars built up in the Sacramento Shops.

Don’t forget the SP articulated cars

I should have run the first car before I attempted the second one, the 85’ car was just too long for my small layout. 1) it looked out of place with 10 Athearn 72’ cars, 2) the overhang on curves was very obvious on my 18” radius turnouts and curves in my yard. They looked OK on my mainline 32” minimum curves.

Next I went with an 72’ Athearn diner and spliced a chopped Bachmann full dome roof on it and it looks great, so good I sold both Bachmann cars and kitbashed a second Athearn diner.

The SP built their seven ¾ Dome Lounge cars in house at

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Mel,

Passenger car length is measured several different ways.

Acording to these drawings:

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/p/276782/3161628.aspx#3161628

the Daylight cars were 79’-2" over the buffers, or in other words to the contact face of the full width diaphragm. The car body was only 77’.

Most, but not all, other streamlined cars are aproximately 85’ over the buffers, or to the pulling faces. Making the car bodies over 82’. Example, the 1938 20th Century Limited cars were 84’-6" over the buffers, which would make the car body about 82’-2", five feet longer than the Daylight cars.

Sorry, I don’t remember the nonsense to make that link hot.

Sheldon

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Sheldon

Thanks for the link, I didn’t revisit that post and missed Ed’s info.

Thanks a bunch.

I probably could have gone with the additional 5’ without disrupting the comparison look of the 72 footers.

Mel

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, California

I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

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Hi Guys,

Apol’s for my not replying sooner, but I’ve been decorating the Bathroom and then my cousin Jacquie announced she was visiting us for the weekend 6/7/8th Sept!

Here in the UK, USA models are (obviously) not quite so readily available. Please don’t laugh, but I am planning to convert these Coaches to NICTD (Chicago South Shore) Commuter Cars. 2 x series 110 Driving Cars (single cab) and 2 x Trailers (more basic) I cannot justify butchering expensive ‘newer’ models (Walthers Budd 85’ Coaches would be a very nice starting-point)

Also, I cannot afford to buy and import ‘Model Island Works’ resin kits. The current exchange rate is dire and then there is Duty and Royal Mail ‘Handling Charge’! Having written that, I will make an enquiry, re supply of Decals. All due respect to MIW - they have boldly produced kits where no Ready-to-Run manufacturers have gone before. After all, the prototypes have only been operating since around 1982 and they would make a good model for free-lanced commuter railroads?

I bought the Coaches for £6.00 ($7.5 USD) each, at a Model Railway Exhibition. They are in VGC and have not been glued together. I have drawn the Athearn Models as they are, using my SolidWorks 3D CAD and then I will copy & save to a new drawing design, “NICTD” based on all the photos & info I have gleaned from the web (thanks to all those who post these) and just make them ‘look right’ - as near as I can. It would be great to have a Nippon-Sharryo layout drawing - anyone?

To achieve the sloping sides along the lower valance, I have ‘mini-milled’ some trial spacer blocks and intend to score along the inside face of the Cars (with a home-made tool) and bend and glue them to the shaped blocks.

I realise that all this must seem a lot of work & effort for a 4-Car Commuter train, but I like the prototypes so much and watching U-tube vids of them trundling down 11th Street in Michigan Ci