Originally Posted by Forrest Jerome:
"pictures would be greatly appreciated."
echo that!
Here's a few.
In putting it together, the A units were easy, in that for the most part the only thing to do was remove the TMCC antenna and attach it to the inside roof of the IC shells. The only visual difference from the outside is that the lead unit now has interior and crew figures, and the dummy A has a cab interior. (I used chassis' from a Milwaukee Road F-3 ABA set that had TMCC, R/S, electrocouplers, directional lighting, etc. The dummy A is equipped with TMCC for separate operation of its electrocoupler and lighting.
The B unit was a bit more work. There are probably different ways to do it, but I used a Dremel and cut out a square part roof of the Milw. Rd. B where the speaker fits (because it has the round plastic frame molded in which the speaker fits on) and glued it to the top of the IC roof. Note that the B unit already has vent openings (just not the wire mesh type) so the sound can radiate out of the shell.
It is also possible to fabricate a speaker frame, and glue that into the inside of the roof to fit the speaker against. I did that with a set of Santa Fe blue freight F-3s that I converted to TMCC/RS, but that's another tale.
The speaker volume pot on the Milw Rd B was attached to one of the roof fan covers, which you can turn to control the volume. On the IC, this wasn't available, of course, so I removed the pot from the fan cover part, and mounted the pot in the rear of the IC unit and stuck the metal shaft through the rear door window. It is readily accessible that way, and I painted the metal shaft with some brown paint, and it really is hardly noticeable.
I also drilled a hole in the rear and mounted the backup light there. I managed to delicately cut off the rim of the light from the Mil Rd unit as well, and glued it to the light opening and painted it brown.
As far as the electronics, the antenna was moved, and then the one block of electronics was moved from the roof of the Mil Rd unit and attached to the roof of the IC. The electronics block on the floor was just left in place.
I took a few pictures of the observation car to show the finished interior. Hard to get decent pictures, but you get the idea. I decided to color the center rear light red, and just used magic marker for that.
The tinted clear windows were removed and transferred over to the IC cars; one of the more challenging jobs because with the new cars with interiors, the windows are tack-glued in, as opposed to just sliding in like the silhouette ones. I used wooden coffee stirrers from a Starbucks to remove them, gradually sliding them back under the edges of the plastic windows to free them from the glue. I thought the wood stir sticks were less likely to mar or damage the plastic than something like a screwdriver.
As a little bonus, the newer Lionel 15" cars (I used a Lionel Pennsylvania Southwind set, incidently) have a small light for a lighted drumhead, so the City of New Orleans drumhead is now illuminated. The newer cars also have detailed undercar details, and the total result is that the IC cars look is now much improved, IMHO.
Why do these modifications to this set? Well, this was the first aluminum passenger set I ever saw, on a shelf in a hobby shop in Chicago many years ago, and it wowed me and was part of my incentive to get into O gauge. I've always liked the colors, and the City of Miami went through Memphis. My wife was from near there, went to college there, and we got married there, and the observation car of this set is the "Memphis." There are some other sentimental attachments as well.
There are a number of pictures of these IC trains in the Memphis depot, incidently. I asked my late father-in-law if he ever saw the train, and he had many times. He said they used to call it the "Whoosh," because it went by so fast.
