Lionel 2016 Vol 2 SOUTHERN PACIFIC DAYLIGHT 21" PASSENGER 4-CAR SET (6-83102) - opinions?

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Rusty

While I don't have a dog in this one as I don't purchase Lionel typically, the Budd Car photographed above is not a "Daylight" car.  I'm not the SP expert I'd like to be, but the Budd car painted in the Daylight color scheme was one of a few cars repainted for SP's executive train later in their life as I understand it.  If you look at the number board there is no Daylight script lettering. 

I will offer this however.  I give Lionel credit for trying to enter the scale car business.  It's not as easy as many on this forum would like to believe.  O scale manufacturing is high overhead and low profit in general.  It isn't like building a bazillion iPhones or Androids that still aren't 100% perfect. 

Hot Water posted:

jvega2 posted:

bob2 posted:

I guess I have to answer that. The Daylight cars did not have corrugations on the roof.  Just as important, they had corrugations that alternated large and small, with window and roof sheet metal even with the outermost part of the corrugations.  K-Line missed the mark.   Sunset did better.

I cannot express my question any better than I have in my previous posts.

The Daylight car pictured sure does look to be a Budd built car with a corrugated roof.

Look closer. There is NO corrugated roof on either of those cars. Corrugated /fluted sides, yes.

You mean this? I'd say that has a ribbed roof. I would NOT say these represent Coast Daylight cars that we expect to see behind steam. These look like something I saw listed as at the California RR Museum.

Has anyone been there? Is this a set of full size "Foobies" at the CSRM? Don't expect these represent normal SP Coast Line trains.

They are former SP Sunset Limited cars.  They were not painted in Daylight colors while in revenue service.  Here is the roster of CRSM:

CRSM Roster

Oiling knuckle Couplers on the Kinematic Couplers helps stop couplers from opening.  I had two couplers on my 6-83102 Southern Pacific Lines 21" Passenger cars continuing to open.  The new dry knuckles locked against each other and pulled each other up and down going over switches.  I oiled the new dry knuckles where they grab each other and the cars no longer uncouple. The couplers can now slide up and down past each other.

The upward movement would raise the coupler arm, but NOT the arm with the pin and magnet disk. As the coupler arm moved up, the pin arm stayed in-place, effectively uncoupling the car. 

I did this two years ago with my Wabash, NYC ESE and Chesapeake and Ohio 21" passenger cars, but forgot about until today.  I am getting old ... "sometimers": some times I remember, other times I don't.

I can now run my cars at Speed Step "125" without the cars uncoupling.  Dry metal against dry metal does stick.

I also oiled the copper electrical contact that touches the axle on the passenger car trucks.  I had severe squealing from my fourth passenger car truck.  It was very loud, but has diminished since oiling the contact point to the axle and allowing it to wear down by running the car.

I have a few pictures of the 6-83110 Southern Pacific Lines Sound Station Dining Car in-progess.  I painted the interior, but still need to cut the plastruct for seat backs and glue them to the back of the square boxes that act as seats.  (I believe a mold release technicality kept Lionel from putting seat backs on the chairs.  The dining room floor part would probably not release with seat backs molded into it.) (There are sprue remnants on the bottom of some of the table molds. I trimmed mine with an Exact Knife.)

The pictures have people roughly placed and NOT glue down yet.  Tomorrow when I get my new set of Exacto Knives in the mail I will continue.

I'm looking for an answer did the southern pacific everpaint their sharhnosez in the blachwidow paint schemes.

farmerjohn posted:

I'm looking for an answer did the southern pacific everpaint their sharhnosez in the blachwidow paint schemes.

The Southern Pacific did not own any "sharknosez"!

Jack, are your sure? The Lionel Catalog says otherwise.

Legacy Daylight Sharknose

Matt Makens posted:

Jack, are your sure?

Yes!   VERY SURE.

The Lionel Catalog says otherwise.

Legacy Daylight Sharknose

Good old Lionel and their fantasy items.

Matt Makens posted:

Jack, are your sure? The Lionel Catalog says otherwise.

Legacy Daylight Sharknose

Lionel is not the final arbiter of truth and railroads.

You will never find an actual prototype photo of an SP sharknose, Daylight AC9, Milwaukee Road S3 in Hiawatha paint or NYC Niagara in 20th Century Limited paint.

...Unless it's been Photoshopped...

Rusty

Is this a broken coupler on my new 6-82889 Amtrak 21" Station Sounds Diner #8075?  How can that be when Nicholas Smith Trains inspected this car and the new 2-pack of Southern Pacific Lines passenger cars that just arrived by FEDEX?  There was no post for the coupler finger/tongue/thing-a-ma-jig in the packaging.

The roof-to-end-wall does not fit properly at one end and has a nick out of the roofing corrugation.  This is one more new Lionel 21" passenger car costing me money to ship it back to the dealer.

I hate to say it but this is ridiculous accepting this stuff from the manufacturer.  I wouldn't buy another thing from Lionel. Everything is tainted in some way.  That is downright awful....there is no doubt that quality control is severely lacking if not downright missing totally.  

Rusty didn’t get the joke

Is there a photo of the prototype for the Lionel Looneytunes Train?  That's all folks.

I received replacement cars for my 6-83107 Southern Pacific Lines 21" passenger cars yesterday along with an Amtrak Station Sounds Diner to run with my Atlas O Amtrak cars. The dealer is sending me a replacement car for the Amtrak Dining Car that arrived with a broken coupler and damaged roof. I went ahead with painting the removable floor section to keep my detailing progress moving forward.  The seats are being painted tan to match my two Atlas O California Zephyr and one Amtrak twelve-car passenger car sets that I detailed with Preiser 65602 Seated Figures that I painted.

Here are photos of the scrap plastic on the tables that is left over from the interior mold. (See right rea table in first two photos.) An Exacto Knife can easily trim the excess off the bottom of the tables. The tables have four coats of Flat White Acryl Paint. The seats have two coats of a 50-50 mix of Flat Earth Red and Flat White.

The people are similar to Preiser 68209 1/50 Seated Passengers that came in two color schemes.  These 68209 figures have been out of production for two years. They are perfect for the dining cars with a little grinding of their bottoms.  I can also use a few of the Preiser 65602 Seated 24 Figures in the Dining Car. 

I am still waiting for my Plastruct Order to arrive with a new Excel Knife Kit. The rectangular backs for the seats will be cut and then applied behind the seat cubes molded into the car floor.  A coat of the tan paint will then finish the seat backs.  The cars will then be ready to ride the rails.

Just picked up the Penn Central Stationsounds diner and made a full review video for it on youtube. Feel free to watch it if anyone wants to 

I just discovered paint chipping on my amtrak diner, of course it has to be on one of the blue 8075 number boards. 

I finished car six of my Southern Pacific Lines seven-car set. It is the coach from the 6-83107 2-pack.  The coupler on the front end would not stay closed.  I had to work some oil into the coupler and oil the faces of the couplers so they would slide up and down through each other when going over a switch or bridge.  It now runs at Speed Step "125" without a problem.  The coaches look similar, and positioning the 24 Preiser 65602 figures leaves me struggling to find new ways to place these people in the cars.

I am waiting for my paint order placed eight days ago.  (I really miss Parma Hobby.)  I will paint the baggage-lounge next, using a wet blend of four different wood tones to create the floor of the baggage area. (Earth Red, Sand, yellow and Dark Earth)  The crates, carts, packages and bicycles arrived from Woodland Scenics.

Thank you for putting up with my pictures.  Here is car six of seven. (The fifth Dining Car is waiting for plastruct for the seat backs.)

The seventh and final car, the Southern Pacific Lines Baggage-Lounge, is finished and drying. The two day project included painting the Baggage floor, painting the bar and coolers, and painting the tan seats, white table tops and brown table supports.

Here are a few pictures.  The people are Preiser 65602 and 68209 seated figures that I painted.  I just ordered another 16 packs of Preiser 65602 Unpainted Seated People (384 unpainted people) for the UP and Pennsylvania passenger trains.

Tomorrow the Union Pacific Excursion train arrives, and I start the process all over again.

Nice work! You must have the patience of a Saint..............

I just finished cutting the seat backs for the Lionel 6-83110 Southern Pacific Lines Station Sounds Dining Car.  The backs are glued in place and painted with two coats of a 50-50 mix of Earth Red Acryl Flat Paint and White Acryl Flat.  

I will leave the car empty for the times that the announcements say the car is empty.  The six other cars are filled with people, and the empty Dining Car will be a nice contrast.

I noticed that my 6-83107 Baggage-Lounge Car has a chipped Daylight placard that is also mounted at an angle, not straight, in the middle of the opposite side of the car. (Engineer's side)  Tomorrow I will call Nicholas Smith Trains and buy a third Baggage-Lounge.  Joey M. sent me the best they had, but he may not have noticed the placard.  We were focused on the Name Strips that were cut too long on most Baggage-Lounge cars.  I have waited too long and put too much money into detailing these cars to settle for less.

"Go forward, or quit."

The dealer who was sending a replacement for my Amtrak Station Sounds Dining Car notified me that the one he had was also damaged. He had to go to another Lionel dealer to get a 3rd good Amtrak dining car,  which I really appreciate. 

I have done all I can on the car that arrived with body damage and a broken coupler.  Here are photos of the seat backs glued in place and painted waiting to be transferred to the new Amtrak Dining Car as soon as it arrives.

John Rowlen posted:

 

Tomorrow the Union Pacific Excursion train arrives, and I start the process all over again.

As far as I am aware you might be one of the first to see these sets and there are a lot of people (like me) waiting with trepidation to see whether they have the same assembly/design defects as appear to be present in so many second run ABS cars delivered to date. You know what to look for so I for one am anxious to know what you find.

Your work on the dining car interiors makes a huge improvement and I suppose Lionel deserves credit at least for making it easy to access them to do whatever you want by way of detailing. I hadn't thought of making the seat backs thicker to match the moulded-in pegs that represent seats, which certainly improves the look. 

Leaving the dining cars empty of passengers is not an option for me. From your photos the car interiors look big enough to accommodate true O scale figures, which makes populating the interiors an easier proposition than with Lionel's earlier 21" cars. Might you consider just putting in a few dining car stewards? K-Line and Lionel used a few figures of this kind in the past although they are not easy to find. 

Hancock52 posted:

Leaving the dining cars empty of passengers is not an option for me. From your photos the car interiors look big enough to accommodate true O scale figures, which makes populating the interiors an easier proposition than with Lionel's earlier 21" cars. Might you consider just putting in a few dining car stewards? K-Line and Lionel used a few figures of this kind in the past although they are not easy to find. 

This must be obsessive where passenger car interiors are concerned; I'm quoting my own post.

But as a postscript to what I said, here's what I did with the dining compartment of one of the last generation of Lionel 21" aluminum cars (based on K-Line tooling), the 6-25496 Texas Special StationSounds diner.

The interiors of these were at least a stab at representing the prototype Pullman cars, with a total of 36 seats and 12 tables. The moulded interiors of the ABS cars are nothing like this (it's a part for an 18" car but Lionel used the very same thing for the 21" versions):

I literally threw in the kitchen sink when doing mine, with LED table tamps, loads of figures and table settings. Please excuse the figure of Queen Elizabeth II on a state visit to Texas; I got it at York and could not resist finding a place to use it in what is a totally whimsical scene within the car:

At one end and the middle there are dining car stewards; these are figures from Lionel/K-Line parts as mentioned in my earlier post.

The condition those cars arrived in is shameful.

@Hancock52 Where did you get the lamps and what size LEDs did you use? Great work! I want to do the same to my Lionel CZ set. 

Trainlover9943 posted:

@Hancock52 Where did you get the lamps and what size LEDs did you use? Great work! I want to do the same to my Lionel CZ set. 

The Pullman table lamps used to be available from a supplier in Australia called DCC Concepts. They were pre-wired with nano LEDs and were actually made for OO or 1/72 scale passenger cars, which I understand are popular in the UK. Unfortunately they don't make the lamps on their own any more (I found them only after searching a long time) but do have them as part of a table setting moulding, which again is in OO scale. These are not cheap. 

The alternative is to use a nano LED placed on one of the available passenger car table lamp parts available from , for example, Scale City Designs, who produce the old Keil Line parts. There are dollhouse quarter scale lamps and indeed whole LED lighting systems that are another alternative.

Hancock52 posted:

Trainlover9943 posted:

@Hancock52 Where did you get the lamps and what size LEDs did you use? Great work! I want to do the same to my Lionel CZ set. 

The Pullman table lamps used to be available from a supplier in Australia called DCC Concepts. They were pre-wired with nano LEDs and were actually made for OO or 1/72 scale passenger cars, which I understand are popular in the UK. Unfortunately they don't make the lamps on their own any more (I found them only after searching a long time) but do have them as part of a table setting moulding, which again is in OO scale. These are not cheap. 

The alternative is to use a nano LED placed on one of the available passenger car table lamp parts available from , for example, Scale City Designs, who produce the old Keil Line parts. There are dollhouse quarter scale lamps and indeed whole LED lighting systems that are another alternative.

Cool thanks!