Knowing I wasn't going to be satisfied with the empty single color interior of my new Atlas O Amtrak Diner car I did a little google image search to find out what the interior should look like. I found plenty of great pictures that showed just what I was looking for. I painted the seats blue and the tables white. With a little help from the dremel tool, the MTH seated figures work really nice and look great. A drum sander on their butts and a little snip off their legs aloud my passengers to sink down nicely into their seats.
Then the fun begins. With a few more google image searches and Photoshop fun I created table settings for each table. They all vary depending on the people seated at the table. I found images of Amtrak menus, both regular and children’s menus, for the time period I’m modeling (1971-73). And some napkins with napkin rings, just like the ones shown in the photos. I then drew in a few circles for plates with colored blobs for food and some silverware. The nice thing with photoshop is you can very simply add shadow effects at any angle you want. This really gives it a 3d effect when vieweds from outside the diner car windows.
After that I just printed them to size, cut them out and glued them to the appropriate table top according to the location of the figures. The gray shown is my trim line. Just cut at the inside edge so no gray shows once trimmed. Some tables are curved on two ends. It was a fairly simple and fun way to add great detail to these outstanding cars. Now I am looking for something to use as a small vase with a couple flowers to put on each table right inside the windows. The photos show Amtrak usually has these on each table.
