In St Paul Minnestota there is a famous dining car diner in the downtown area called Mickey’s Diner. Does anyone have any ideas or experience in building a model of this structure. I am in HO but experience in any scale will be useful. A kit to bash would be nice. Thanks
Maybe a picture would be helpful
Good Grief!
I’ve seen that diner only I didn’t go in. Amazing.
Sorry, I don’t have any other observation to give you. I was there at an NMRA Show several years ago and saw the diner then.
I’d pick out one of the kits that are similar and match the key elements that people would remember about the place. Match the colors, signs and scratch build the entrance.
This diner with a clerestory roof from a heavyweight passenger car mounted on top may work. In the proper colors and signage it would be close.
If you are looking for something to kitbash, I would say stop looking at railroad passenger car kits, and start looking at trolley car kits. Because I suspect that this is exactly how this institution started out life.
I don’t know how big of a project you want to make of it, but I agree that the roof is pretty similar to a heavyweight passenger car. You’ll probably have to shorten one, though.
As far as the body goes, it looks more like a smooth sided passenger car instead of a riveted or corrugated side car. Most diner kits are also corrugated metal or wood. You might be able to find an older Rivarossi (AHM or IHC) smooth side passenger car fairly inexpensively that could be a good starting point. The biggest problem will be the rounded ends. Shortening it should be easy because you can hide the seam behind the vestibule.
I thought that a Rivarossi observation car might work because they have a rounded end, but you’d need two of them and, after looking at them, there are doors at each end and the window pattern isn’t very close. A regular coach might work better. If you go that route, you could use the quarter round strip material from Evergreen Scale Models to get the rounded corner posts.
It’s definitely an interesting project!
Jim
Electric interurban cars would be an even better source. Look at the size of those windows! That’s the most important detail element of the diner’s appearance. You might find a cheap brass (perhaps Ken Kidder or Suydam) model (why worry about any inadeqacies of its motor and power train) on eBay or such.
Mark
Seems to me that this model is pretty close: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/195-110
See this month’s RMC…just what you’re looking for.
The diner was built from a kit produced by the O’Mahoney Company. There were several companies that built these kit diners:
http://dinerman.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/jerry-omahony-dining-cars/
Jim