I have the set of four Roundhouse 50’ Overland cars. They are the baggage/combine, mail car, coach and business car. I’d like to add interiors to these. What car interiors will work? Is there alot of modification necessary or is it a drop in installation? Lighting would be nice, but not a necessity. I’m running dcc with NCE if that matters any.
Jay,
Be very careful if trying to pry the roof off of those cars. Athearn/Roundhouse glued everything together on those RTR cars. I know the last run of cabooses were glued together, and at least one friend destroyed the caboose in an attempt to add an interior. This is really a shame, as the car still could use some additional weight and there is no way to get into it.
If you can get the roof off, there are a number of companies that make individaul seats/etc you can use. I suspect these cars are a ‘generic’ design and there is nothing specific for them. Palace Car Company, Precision Scale, Pikestuff & Red Cap Line all offer individual passenger car seats. I suspect they may be a little too modern for these cars. Grandt Line has some nice plastic ‘flop-over’ seats that would work great for cars of that era: http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/300-5049
I would use styrene to make the wall partitions in the cars. That combine will need one between the bagg area and the coach seating. The business car will need partitions for the sleeping area. The mail car will need mail sorting racks, and even the coach may need walls to close off the rest room, if equipped.
Lighting will be a ‘roll your own’ conversion. Either metal wheels and pickups, or a battery powered LED setup could be used.
Jim Bernier
I took a cheapy thin flathead screwdriver and worked around the edges of the roof and the top of the car. The glue is actually on the tab of the roof, inside. But by wrking the rim you get more flexing room to get off the glue itself. You might also try taking the trucks and bottom off, and flexing the car and roof the way you do to open up a Walthers a car This isn;t the only tick to getting the roof off. You will need to finagle at the glue seam with a screwdriver. But twisting might help break the bnd further.
TRUST YOUR GUT. If you think your sbout to break the car, then stop. set it down, and think again. When I took the roof of my Obs(?) to put the end of train lamps in, the glue wasn’t spread evenly. You may get lcky, and the glue won’t be there en mass You may have enough glue to pave a driveway with. Best of luck Pikestuff makes a strip of chairs in red, green, and two other colors that escape me. They look pretty good in the Overlands. But you will need to cut some free to align with the windows
EDIT: On mail cars, you may need to buy individual pieces and assemble them in a mail car fashion. Plenty of sources online for where to put things, and I highly suggest raiding a Walthers catalog. Website is a second best. go to book first if you have one.
Rappido sells a shorty light strip. I think they mention ROundhouse, but it may be for the Harrimans, not the clerastory. FOr thwe price, you might be able to make your own. It works off of watch batteries with LEDS (they last forever) and has a magnetic on/off. This is great, if you remember to turn them off… As I understand it, Older cars were lit with lanturns tho