Lamp Replacement Baby Madison style car

Try pressing one at a time and inserting a small strip of index card in the gap, then another one a little bit and another piece of index card, and so on. Clearly bulb replacement was not on the mind of whoever designed these cars.

modeltrainsparts posted:

Try pressing one at a time and inserting a small strip of index card in the gap, then another one a little bit and another piece of index card, and so on. Clearly bulb replacement was not on the mind of whoever designed these cars.

 

That's exactly what I did on the passenger car, but there is absolutely no gap to be seen on the baggage car windows. And there certainly is no gap between the roof and body unless you first get that satisfying "snap" sound as the first window releases while pulling up on the roof! It's just too tight.

It's coming down to which do I want more, lights or intact plastic windows?

Mine are tight too. I press one window at a time and slip an narrowed feeler gauge for autos in till all four are wedged, then pull, wiggle, and pray.

So far, so good.

Well, the baggage car windows were just too small for fingers, I ended up laying the flat blade of a small screwdriver on the top edge of the window, i.e. the most protruding portion, then pushing til I thought it might break. I was at the same time, prying the roof upward using my thumbnail. Admittedly, I don't have much of a thumb nail, and it's sore as heck right now, but it was enough pulling force to make the top pop when I finally got the top edge of the window depressed enough.

Some of the windows had slight gouges when I finished. So to kill two birds with one stone, I took a single edge razor blade and carefully trimmed the upper portion of each window to rid it of those gouges. At the same time, the trimming also beveled the top edge just enough to make any future removals much easier.

Poor design .... but nice, close tolerances!

Once you get them open, replace the bulbs with strip LED's

Marty

Joe_pgh posted:

I ended up cutting some clear adhesive bumper pads to the width of the windows, then applying them to the 4 window tabs.  I then used a set of quick grips to simultaneously apply pressure to all four tabs, and then popped the roof off.  

 

Definitely like this idea!

In my video on removing Baby Madison car roofs I didn’t address this, as the only baggage I had was a Super Baby Madison car, whose roof is held on with tiny Phillips-head screws.

I like that Milwaukee Road solution!

Jon  

I take wooden coffee stirs, sand the tip to a point, slip them in one window at a time, and once all four are in, roof comes off. The wood is forgiving and doesn't gouge like metal.

KOOLjock1 posted:

In my video on removing Baby Madison car roofs I didn’t address this, as the only baggage I had was a Super Baby Madison car, whose roof is held on with tiny Phillips-head screws.

I like that Milwaukee Road solution!

Jon  

I like that solution too! Too bad we weren't in charge, right!?

rogerpete posted:

I take wooden coffee stirs, sand the tip to a point, slip them in one window at a time, and once all four are in, roof comes off. The wood is forgiving and doesn't gouge like metal.

That is the SECOND time somebody has found a clever use for wooden coffee stirrers (first one was wood decking on a train platform, first observed at a recent train show in Norwalk, OH) - I'm going to have to go get a few thousand of them!