AM domes are in

Good to hear!  Was wondering if they were left bobbing on the ocean in a Hajin container...

No box on my doorstep yet.  But then, I ordered mine on 8/23 when they appeared on the website, so I'm probably further down on the pecking order.  I plan on a review when they show up.

Rusty

My Burlington domes arrived today, sitting patiently on the front doorstep when I got home from work.

I hope to have a review put together by the end of the week, but for now a couple of quickie photos:

This is a Burlington Zephyr without domes. 

And this is a Burlington Zephyr with domes.

Rusty

Received the three I ordered on Saturday. They look great. A big thank you to Ron for having these made.

I hope to have my UP 3 car set by the end of the week!

Ben

I recieved my 3 car UP set. As usual the Budd cars are fantastic.  There is one issue I'm sure you will notice.  I will have to call AM for a remedy.  

Notice the car numbers in the 3 car set - 7010,7011,7013.  The OCD in me will now have to pick up the elusive 7012.  

Ben 

Sorry Ben. If you look at my picture above I have the 7011, otherwise we could have worked out a deal. I do not care which number I have. 

Mark

It looks as if that part that is missing just pops in.  I will find out when I give AM a call.  

Does anyone have any pictures of a populated car? 

Ben

Ron will most likely exchange the car.  I think he has a 10 day exchange window.

Rusty

I populated my Super Chief dome with MTH figures--40 of them, and almost everyone wanted to sit in the dome! Detaching the body from the frame is much easier than with the earlier versions of the Budd cars that frequently pulled the plastic inserts for the screws from the body. All of the previous Budd cars now have LED lighting with a buck/boost converter so that I can run them on 18-volt AC (for Lionel Legacy) or 5-volt DC (for American Models or SHS locomotives) with identical lighting levels that do not fluctuate with throttle changes. The dome car, however, already has LED lighting installed, so I did not add a converter. The lighting does not fluctuate much with throttle changes, and it is a bit more subdued than the other cars, but that makes sense because passengers would want to see the stars at night anyway.

The MTH figures sat a bit high in the dome seats, and their heads contacted the roof when I tried to reassemble the car. The fix was easy: I removed the metal screw-in supports that held both the lighting board and the dome seats. There are two plastic supports directly under the seats/lighting board that may have been meant to support the seats in an early design stage but that do not contact the lighting board in the as-delivered car. Because they are slightly lower than the metal supports, removing the metal supports allows the plastic supports to become lower points for attaching the lighting board. I trimmed the tops a bit to lower the seats/board even more so that the passengers do not looked cramped. I'll try to get some pictures this weekend if possible.

I was able to take a few shots this afternoon of the American Models Budd cars with MTH figures inserted as passengers. They are not perfectly visible, but the windows are clear enough to make out the figures and not notice any painting imperfections.

The figures are visible in an illuminated car. The lighting is subdued when compared to the other Budd cars, but that would make sense for a car from which passengers would prefer to star gaze.

The dome is popular--only one empty seat.

I left the dome car's lighting is. For the other Budd cars, I added the buck/boost module by screwing it into one end where the windows were too small to notice. A capacitor and a rectifier precede the module on the left (in the "doorway"), and the module output attaches to a strip of surface mount LEDs glued onto the original lighting circuit board after I removed the small incandescent bulbs. The blue square on the module has a brass rheostat knob on the top to adjust the amount of lighting. The LEDs light up at about 4.8 volts and stay constant no matter what the throttle setting is to the locomotive and no matter that the locomotive is an AM E8, an SHS F7 Locomatic, or a Lionel American Flyer Legacy model at 18 volts AC.

REA is loading a Great Northern mail car, another American Models passenger car converted to LED lighting with the buck/boost converters. It is not illuminated in this shot.

Only thought it was fair to AM to update the status of the missing part from my UP dome, after speaking with AM they shipped me the end cap and my car is now complete.  

Ben