This is a follow up post to my “Detailed interior - you gotta be kidding me!” post. My thanks to all the feedback I got and how it helped me to get a decent result.
After being a little dismayed by the dismal plastic interiors of the Bachmann Spectrum coaches I decided to have a go anyway after getting help in this forum.
I have a T1 PRR duplex pulling 4 passenger coaches plus a dining car and observation car.
Here are some photos of the results.
First the beastie that pulls the cars.
Next are the passenger coaches.
The dining car.
The observation car.
A bit more of my layout with the train and cars.
All of the cars have full length LED strips with a 1k ohm resistor (as suggested by Ed in my original post). The LED’s were coated with an orange sharpie and then stuck with double sided tape with the LED’s facing the reflector in the roof - not directly down.
I think the effect looks good. Let me know if you agree or disagree 
The backdrop is the beautiful Allegheny Mountains in PA
Before anyone says - that aint the Allegheny Mountains - I know - but its the closest I could get for a good price.
Very Nice, Chris!
I agree that the effect looks good. I think on a model it is OK to have the interior lights just a bit brighter than what you might see in reality so you can actually see those little people and it really looks neat on the layout.
Sometimes when I’m watching one of my illuminated passenger trains — when I have the room lights dimmed — I like to see the lights from the car windows spilling out to the ground or lighting the sides of passing freight trains… neat effect!
I see that plate and rivet detail stands out a bit much on those first-run Bachmann cars. Looks more like the hull of the Titanic! Not much you can do about that. I guess they have made improvements to the later runs.
As for the mountains, it reminds me of the hunting scenes in the movie Deer Hunter where Michael and the guys were supposed to be in western Pennsylvania, and you could see white-capped mountains in the background. IF Hollywood can do it — so can you!
Nice Work, Chris!
Enjoy, Ed
Chris,
I agree they look great. The passengers are especially well done and I know just how much trouble it is to stuff them in.
For me, they are a bit too bright for anything except daytime use. This is largely a matter of personal taste, unless you plan to work on developing your layout so it supports night viewing and operations. I do a lot of this and you may have seen my “Night Scene” thread here in this forum. Once everything else is dim, then the extra bright lighting would stand out. Still, it’s in a range where it’s not implausible, either, unlike so much RTR that looks like they’re running a tanning booth train service in there.
They suit you, so no reason to change this. If you do want to tone them down some, this is easy to do by adding more resistance. This is because resistors can be added in line with the current 1k ones wherever is easiest to get to in the circuit. I’ve used well over 100k for some of mine, so you can tell I like it dim…[8D]
A really dim Pullman that’s a good example of how light levels can be used to tell a story. I use it with my Walthers troop train as “officer territory.” The left side is the bedroom used by the commander, so he’s burning some midnight oil writing reports, etc. The middle of the car has sections and is dim because about half the junior officers are trying to catch some sleep. The right side is the bathrooms, which are lit because you never know in the middle of the night nature may call…[:)]
A really cheap and easy way to make an allegheny mountain backdrop is to cut a continuous curve of varying height on thin paneling and cover it with ground foam. then mask from the bottom up and spray two or three levels of progressively grayer color on the foam to represent a series of mountains.