Yesterday I opened up my AtlasO California Silver Rapids 10 Roomette 6 Bedroom sleeper to install replacement windows and to add a few passengers. Recall that the first two Cal Zephyr models AtlasO imported had their simulated venetian blinds printed on the outside of the window inserts rather than on the inside as was done in later runs. To address this Atlas brought in replacement window inserts and gave customers the option of either doing the replacement themselves or shipping the car to Atlas to have the job done. As an assist AtlasO posted a short video on their web site showing how to do the job. I opted to do the window replacement myself as I wanted to take the car apart to paint the seats and add passenger. The good news is that the window replacement task was straight forward and took less than 30 minutes. Painting the seats took about another hour or so. So far so good. As I was reinstalling the floor in the car body I noticed that the room partitions (walls) in the 6 bedroom half of the car were sitting in full view against the windows - not right! Curiously the partitions in the 10 roomette end of the car were in the right place relative to the windows. I don't know why I hadn't noticed the issue before since I've been running the car for two years at the head end of my favorite passenger train - PRR's The General.
The AtlasO 10/6 car uses two one piece injection moldings to model the interior (floor, walls, furniture) - one for the roomette end of the car, the other for the bedroom end of the car. The two interior moldings sit tight against one another and are attached to the steel underframe with 4 screws. Placing the interior molding against the car body I found that if I moved the bedroom interior 5/16" toward the center of the car body the windows and bedrooms would properly align. Using a Zona saw I cut 5/16" off the interior piece. Then I drilled and tapped two new holes in the steel underframe for 2-56 mounting screws. In its new position the plastic interior piece won't clear the on- off electrical switch and the tabs of several underbody detail parts protruding above the underframe. This was readily dealt with by some careful filing and nipping to the underside of the interior molding. What started out as a quick fix became a half day project - but I think I have a much better looking car for it.
Ed Rappe
PS - Just curious - are the interiors in later run AtlasO Cal Zephyr cars in the correct location?
