18” Observation Lounge Interior

That’s another very fine job of research and modeling the prototype.

Later on and in case the comparison might be useful I’ll post pictures of my own different approach to creating an observation car interior based on the same basic K-Line assembly your car has. First, as general points:

1. It’s interesting that you have found the basic similarity between the K-Line interior and the “Cascade” prototype. K-Line and then Lionel used that interior assembly in innumerable boat-tail observation cars in just about all the railroad liveries they produced - in Lionel’s case until the 21” ABS cars started to be made. My research did not disclose the source of the K-Line design  but then I have not worked on UP cars before.

2.  What it did disclose was that the interior colors and furniture arrangement of cars of this kind changed often over their service life. You’ll also find that with dome and dining cars.

Thanks for posting this very interesting series.

Thanks Hancock52,

That stock K-Line interior should be a great fit for anyone upgrading a Southern Pacific Daylight/Cascade passenger train from 1950 to about 1959.  The book “Classic American Streamliners” even shows a full color photo of the Cascade Club lounge.

This is probably a lesson in how NOT to create a prototypical observation car interior but it was the approach I took using much of the same raw material you had. That includes the K-Line interior assembly although this one was actually used in a Lionel car based on K-Line tooling, which is part of the 6-31755 MKT Texas Special set (21" aluminum body cars). 

Here is the original assembly after I started work on it, mainly trying to fill the innumerable holes in the floor that are typical of K-Line's assemblies:

As you will see below, eventually I gave up trying to smooth out the floor and put a "carpet" over it instead.

The car itself was a beauty of a streamliner; few pictures survive and this is the only one in color I have found:

The stock interior is in fact nothing like the arrangement in the prototype, which was a 2-1 bedroom/buffet/lounge. To start with I only found this sketch plan but later on tracked down the blueprints:

The detailed plans come from Randall & Anderson's Official Pullman-Standard Library, vol. 15 on the Western Railroads. Here's the lounge seating area as designed:

As you will note, there is no half-circle bar in this arrangement. I thought seriously about modeling the interior as built but I found very few photo records of it and I decided that (a) I wanted to keep the bar and (2) modeling the original would be too time-consuming. (I was dead wrong about the latter.) The interior images were either very grainy or were, I eventually surmised, probably of the Frisco observation car and not the MKT:

So this is where the whole scheme I built turned into a fantasy, starting with the bar but eventually including everything else and especially the passengers:

The Tiffany lamps shown above are LED-illuminated. They are in the smoking section of the car; the other two sections are (a) drinking and (b) stud poker/art appreciation (I told you it's a fantasy scheme). I'm particularly fond of the party passengers shown below; I swear that I tried gluing the blonde in an upright posture and she tipped over and set in the posture you see (the goldfish bowl came later so she'd have something to ponder):

Here is the completed rebuild and the car on the rails, which given the lighting features I added glows away like a Christmas tree when powered up:

I also LED-illuminated the drumhead, marker lights and the tail light. From the blueprints it emerged that the tail light was in fact a red Mars light and I added a simulator module to duplicate that.

Incidentally, the "Cascade" car you have a cutaway drawing of appears to have been typical of a number of Southern Pacific tavern and lounge cars. I have thought about modeling this one, which is the Shasta Daylight "Timberline" car:

I think that the Cascade was part of a 3-car articulated set. Some years ago Golden Gate Depot made a version of one of the single tavern/lounge cars which I have and as you can see below the area where the bar is does not have windows:

The interior is otherwise prototypical in terms of seating but the area where the bar would be is just blanked off and it would be difficult to see the bar if I tried putting one in. Unlike GGD cars, K-Line and Lionel did not go in for prototypical window placements but I don't mind that.

Hi Hancock52, great modeling on that observation car!  You have added lots of details to look at and that’s what’s going to make the interior more enjoyable to look at as it goes around the layout.

Also, where are you finding all those scale items for the tables? Last time you told me search for 1/48 dollhouse stuff on eBay but in this Observation car you have a wine list menu on the bar, martini glasses filled with alcohol, liquor bottles and playing cards.  Dang... I’m just not finding those 1/48th items on eBay.

T.Albers posted:

Also, where are you finding all those scale items for the tables? Last time you told me search for 1/48 dollhouse stuff on eBay but in this Observation car you have a wine list menu on the bar, martini glasses filled with alcohol, liquor bottles and playing cards.  Dang... I’m just not finding those 1/48th items on eBay.

Regarding the wine menu and similar table items shown in the pictures (mostly other menus, napkins and other linens used in the cars), these I made myself from images available on the web, which I printed at high DPI and slightly above scale size with an inkjet photo printer and glued them in place. Original items of this kind from MKT and Frisco (especially the latter) have been preserved and there are lots of images of them online. The same goes for UP; take a look at this page from Streamliner Memories for examples: http://streamlinermemories.info/?page_id=6917

The filled Martini glasses came from a truly very  talented miniaturist (Janet of DesertMinis) who has now retired from online retailing. I bought up a quantity of her quarter scale food and drink items for two dining car projects. However she said she'd be willing to make further cocktail items on an ad hoc basis; if you are interested in some of these shoot an email to the address in my profile and I'll see what I can do. (You can find the glasses themselves at the two sources linked below; the real art is in making a miniature drink out of them.)

The liquor/wine bottles and cards are the easiest to source. The bottles are 3D printed in clear plastic and only require a coat of glass paint on one side of them to look filled. Some also come with separate printed "labels" although it's a fiddly job to apply them. The best sources I found are at:

(1) www.virtualdollhouse.net. This site is a little difficult to navigate but if you go to the “Quarter Scale Finished Items” page that’s where the playing cards are listed as items DAY-5 and DAY-6 and there are other glassware and related items in the same section; and

(2) another and more extensive quarter scale source with a vast catalog is at www.stewartdollhousecreations.com. Go to their 1/48th scale section.

Truly an inspiring project - great research and execution!

David

Update 5/18/2021

It’s been 2 years since I made this Sun Valley interior out of basswood and times are changing.  A few weeks ago my son gave me a 3D printer for my birthday.  FYI:  I do not know the first thing about 3D printers or how to print things.  He said, “Go to the ThingyVerse website and print items for inside your O scale passenger cars”.  I searched that website and did not find anything I could add inside my 1930’s ~ 1950’s era passenger cars.  After explaining this problem to him, he said “Go to the TinkerCad website and create your own items”.  Hmmm, you mean I could just create any object I wanted for my streamline passenger car interiors and print it in 3D?  Okay, now we are talking.

I watched a few YouTube videos on TinkerCad.  Once I was ready to create, I looked at my different passenger car interiors and picked the Sun Valley Observation car to be redone.  The Sun Valley was picked for several reasons.

• My soda fountain/bar turned did look like the original:  https://www.gettyimages.com/de...581220?adppopup=true
• I didn't like how my magazine end tables turned out. It was the best I could do at the time using basswood.
• I never could not find the historically correct aluminum chairs to go at the two writing desks.
• I wasn't a fan of my bench seats with attached writing desks. They were rough and I don’t think they look like writing desks at all.

I was ready to create my first drawing using TinkerCad.  To use this program I just had to drag shapes onto the workplane and stretch/shrink them to create things.  There are lots of different shapes to choose from squares, circles, triangles, etc... You can even pick negative shapes to remove sections of your drawing.  After several hours, here’s my first TinkerCad drawing of a 1937 style magazine end table w/ lamp looked like after combining all the shapes together to be a single object.  After a few failed prints I learned the end table needed to be turned on its side so it will print correctly on the 3D printer.

The end table looks large in the drawing but these items are really small.

Experimenting more with this new TinkerCad program, I printed the end table with a 3mm opening in the bottom for an LED.  My thought was to put illuminated lamps in this observation car.  It turned out the white plastic was too thick for the light to shine through so I bought a roll of clear PLA filament.

Nope, way too much light gets through the clear PLA.  Even after painting the end table I could not stop the bright light from bleeding through the end table.  But it’s fun to experiment and learn.

Pleased with my first drawing on TinkerCad, I looked at more old photos of the Sun Valley and decided to try and recreate the 1937 art deco radio that was in this observation car.  Again, after a few hours here’s my second drawing.  With this object I could 3D print it in the vertical position.

I decided to print the AM radio in clear PLA filament.  Then paint everything a brown/wood color except the radio's glass channel selection area.  The end result should give my visitor the illusion you are looking into the radio to select an AM station.

Okay, I’m learning to make simple objects in TinkerCad and having fun.  I’m not fast at making these drawings, and I go through several failed versions but I’m learning.  Now it’s time to try and recreate the bench seats and writing desks in this observation car.  I used a lot more shapes in TinkerCad and this took a lot longer to draw.  Luckily I only needed to draw one set of bench seats below, then I mirrored the image and flipped it over in TinkerCad.  Again, I had to combining all the shapes together to be a single object then turn the drawing on its side so it would print correctly on my 3D printer.  Since I’m using a basswood floor that is elevated for the trucks power wires I had to make the bottoms of the benches shorter than in real life.  My favorite part of this miniature recreation is the small brass lamps on the writing desks.  They are the exact same lamps with built in pencil cups that are shown in the original photos inside the Sun Valley.

Finally, it was time to tackle that Soda Fountain/Bar.  As a beginner it takes me a long time to draw these more complex items but I feel these 3D printed creations are turning out better than I could ever make using basswood and styrene.  The small sinks were made by dragging in a negative shape on TinkerCad.

The area on the left is the Soda Fountain/Bar and on the right is the barber shop.

I wanted the outside of the Soda Fountain/Bar to match that classic 1937’s art deco look shown in the original black and white photos inside this car.  Those old photos it showed it had a rounded outside corner, two aluminum trim strips with wood grain paneling at the window level.  Here's the drawing:

Here's the printed version:

Here’s what it looks like with a little tan paint, wood-print paper and glued in place.

The three art deco aluminum trimmed chairs used inside this car had a difficult time printing.  I drew them several times and each time my 3D print failed.  In the end, I made the aluminum legs really thick to get the chair to print correctly.  It’s not really a problem, because nobody can see the chairs legs anyways with the passenger car shell in place.

But what my visitors can see looking into the windows are those neat looking brass writing lamps on the two writing desks and the front of the Soda Fountain/Bar.

This was a fun first project with my new 3D printer.  In my opinion, 3D printers are a good tool for O Scale modelers.  I still have lots more to learn about drawing objects in TinkerCad so I can get good like the other members on this forum.  Also, I have to work on dialing in the settings on my 3D printer.  As an example, the lamps on my magazine end tables did not print as clean as I wanted.  So, I cut the lamps off and went back to using my original ScaleCityDesign metal lamps and glued them on top of the 3D printed end tables.  The next step in this project is to reinstall my original passengers and lounge chairs.

Thanks,

Greetings @T.Albers - and fantastic to see more of your work. The only thing I am going to try to add at this stage concerns 3D printing.

As noted further up this thread, in recent years I have used 3D printed "quarter scale" items in my passenger car interiors. Some are very fine examples of the miniaturists' art; some, particularly if very small,  are as rough as older white metal cast parts. I don't have a 3D printer and have always considered the learning curve too steep or at any rate too long. Based on your experience maybe that's not right - but for the time being I have found an alternative.

Recently I laid in a stock of 3D printed "quarter scale"or 1/48  parts sourced from makers other than Shapeways and have found that the printing of these very small scale parts seems to have moved on a long way just in a couple of years. They must be using a different filament now because the detail and finish are, in a word, staggering in their precision and realism. These are not train car interior parts but they do for my purposes.

You mention a passenger car magazine table with an illuminated lamp. I wanted to put a small table lamp in one compartment of my Lionel 21"/scale  "Lone Star" business car. I sourced it from a company called "Tru2Scale" who make diorama and dollhouse fittings.

When I came to the point of trying to put an LED inside it, I found that it had already been molded with the hole for the wire right through the minuscule lampshade support as well as the base. There is such a thing as a Z size LED (available from Evan Designs) that can be threaded up through the lamp and shade - or a larger size can be threaded from the top down if there isn't a resistor installed already.

This is a project in progress and I do not have many photos so far, but this one on the left shows the lamp in place and the second shot shows a bathroom with scale fittings 3D printed from yet another supplier called "LaserShrinkRay" (a British lady). These are tiny enough to challenge a macro lens so not everything is in focus, but note the 3Detail of handles. Most of these parts available pre-painted too, which saves effort and reduces the potential for mistakes - at least in my case.

Bear in mind also that I only produce facsimile/fantasy passenger car interior schemes. With this one I tried to stay close to the prototype, which I have seen, but in the end the advantage of using someone else's machine-made parts won out:

Great job on those rooms @Hancock52 !  That Z-scale light was the exact look I was going for the lamp in my build but I had a swing and miss on my lamp.

Its always good to see photos of your projects and see the fine details and sources you have found.   I didn't know about Z scale lights, LaserShrinkRay or Tru2Scale.  Besides all those great room details, the flooring in your Lone Star looks incredible.   

I have only scratched the surface of the TinkerCad program.   The learning curve was not that bad after watching a few videos.  You can use it for free to see if its something you like.   

I have been tempted to try 3D printing myself, for passenger car interior fittings, but don’t know enough about the machinery, let alone the software, to take the plunge.

The parquet flooring in the photos is also from Tru2Scale. It’s printed on some kind of fabric that does not fray easily when cut. It’s totally non-prototypical but provided some good contrast. The Z LEDs lighting from Evan Designs is a relatively new product. In person it looks like a bright light bulb; could probably have dimmed it down by a color wash over the face of the LED. Instead I had to put several brush coats on the lampshade to keep unevenness in them from showing through. Airbrushing would not have been so effective.

I started with TinkerCad moved to 123Design[now defunct] and finally to Rhino 7.

You got to start with an additive-based 3D modeling program taking solid shapes like squares and spheres then moving them into position then using Boolean operations to create the final models.

Wow, very impressive work

Here's just a couple of other images just to round off what I was saying about current standards of printing.

@T.Albers mentioned not getting chair legs to print properly, and I have had that too, and with other fine scale supporting parts, even with commercially supplied items.

Lately however it has not been so - these are two more items provided by Tru2Scale that are roughly similar to some fittings I know were in the real Lone Star car after it was refurbished some years back. The curve and really tiny proportions of the legs are rendered with incredible accuracy and the finish is totally smooth, but I don't know what filament was used in printing them:

The only problem is how to fix them in place if they are freestanding - glue on those feet isn't going to have much to adhere to!

Those look to be resin printed versus 3D printed. 

Kathy Millatt has a video which gives a good presentation on resin printing.

@TexasSP posted:

Those look to be resin printed versus 3D printed.

Kathy Millatt has a video which gives a good presentation on resin printing.

Yes, that makes sense judging by the finish and the way a few items I have were arranged on a sprue. Thanks.

@Hancock52 posted:

Here's just a couple of other images just to round off what I was saying about current standards of printing.

@T.Albers mentioned not getting chair legs to print properly, and I have had that too, and with other fine scale supporting parts, even with commercially supplied items.

Lately however it has not been so - these are two more items provided by Tru2Scale that are roughly similar to some fittings I know were in the real Lone Star car after it was refurbished some years back. The curve and really tiny proportions of the legs are rendered with incredible accuracy and the finish is totally smooth, but I don't know what filament was used in printing them:

The only problem is how to fix them in place if they are freestanding - glue on those feet isn't going to have much to adhere to!

Yep, those are great and look like they were made on a resin 3D printer.  I hope you considering using super thin CA glue, if not the pad of glue is going to be bigger than the feet!  Resin printers have the advantage in O scale because they can print very fine objects like your tables.  The legs on those items are super delicate and would be difficult to make on a basic 3D printer.

Currently I'm working on making wine bottles and glasses for the Soda Fountain/Bar area of the Sun Valley.  Also, I wanted to test and see how small of an item I could reasonably create on this 3D printer.  Some of the tiny glasses turned out good and some didn't.

A couple of months have passed and I still have this observation lounge car on my work bench.  While searching the forum I have found pictures of members installing pull down shades and venation blinds in their passenger car windows.  As long as this car was apart, I thought I'd give it a try.

My research turned up this observation car used tan venation blinds in the passenger lounge area and most likely silver pull down shades in the crew areas.  eBay had an old set (circa 1957) of Walters O-scale tan blinds and I clicked buy now.

First, I installed the silver pull down shades in the crew areas.  Then I trimmed the old water transfer decals and applied them to windows using Micro Set in the passenger section. The water transfer decals worked great.

At this point, it seemed like a good time to update the cars incandescent lights to LED.  I purchased a Hennings 21000 Passenger Car LED lighting kit and mounted the circuit board in cars front hallway.  Realizing there wasn't any place in this car to hide the circuit board, I just pulled down the tan venation blinds in the front hallway.

The LED lighting worked so good… I had to install more details inside the lounge car.  Mostly, the walls inside this car seemed too plain.   According to historical data this car should have blue walls, tan ceiling and the curtains were a striped pattern done in tan, rust and blue.  Based on old photos, here's the best curtain pattern I could recreate.  The reason my pattern is extra long, was so I could cut the exact lengths needed to fit in-between the windows.

Here’s what the new curtains look like installed next to the blue walls and tan venetian blinds.

This is a semi scale car and a basswood floor was used during construction.  Therefore, I needed to lower the height of the chairs so my passengers would not be above the side windows.  This was done by removing the legs from the chairs.   Also, most my passengers are 1/45 scale and there feet and bottoms needed to be trimmed so their heads would be about the middle of the cars windows.  Here's an inside view from the back of the car looking forward towards the bar.

I'm ready to put this lounge car back on the shelf and move on to the next project.

More super-fine work, @T.Albers - BUT now you have gone and done it, in terms of suggesting a way to deal with a passenger car detailing issue that has always really bugged me.

This is the fact that no matter how much work you do on interior furnishings, passengers etc., what someone looking through the windows is going to see is the background of window inserts and mostly unfinished car body side walls behind details built on to the car's floor. Not such a great problem on K-Line and Lionel aluminum cars of the past where the side walls are flat (and were mostly painted passenger interior beige or green). However, at the moment I have two projects going on Lionel 21" ABS UP Excursion cars. In these the windows are individual plastic inserts, which are large and stick out like a sore thumb. Here are a couple of examples, one from the City of San Fran observation compartment and the other the full length of the Lone Star Business car:

What I originally wanted to do with each of these was mock up the wood panelling that I know was installed in the real cars some years back. This is anything but easy because the panels are pretty ornate and contoured, one example being the Lone Star observation compartment that looked like this after a 2001 refit:

They didn't use Venetian blinds in this but cloth Roman blinds - although as you have illustrated you can mock up cloth by high-res inkjet printing. I used that to try and replicate parts of this compartment's fittings, which include the absolutely gigantic Serpentine sofa - although that and the dining chairs got a flocking/fake felt spray-on treatment. The wood panelling is in fact printed on peel and stick vinyl inkjet paper:

I think that so far as the interior side walls of these cars are concerned I will try doing something like your treatment. It won't be prototypical - none of my efforts are - but it could address the through-the-window view issue. More work, of course!

@Hancock52 posted:

More super-fine work, @T.Albers - BUT now you have gone and done it, in terms of suggesting a way to deal with a passenger car detailing issue that has always really bugged me.

This is the fact that no matter how much work you do on interior furnishings, passengers etc., what someone looking through the windows is going to see is the background of window inserts and mostly unfinished car body side walls behind details built on to the car's floor. Not such a great problem on K-Line and Lionel aluminum cars of the past where the side walls are flat (and were mostly painted passenger interior beige or green). However, at the moment I have two projects going on Lionel 21" ABS UP Excursion cars. In these the windows are individual plastic inserts, which are large and stick out like a sore thumb. Here are a couple of examples, one from the City of San Fran observation compartment and the other the full length of the Lone Star Business car:

What I originally wanted to do with each of these was mock up the wood panelling that I know was installed in the real cars some years back. This is anything but easy because the panels are pretty ornate and contoured, one example being the Lone Star observation compartment that looked like this after a 2001 refit:

They didn't use Venetian blinds in this but cloth Roman blinds - although as you have illustrated you can mock up cloth by high-res inkjet printing. I used that to try and replicate parts of this compartment's fittings, which include the absolutely gigantic Serpentine sofa - although that and the dining chairs got a flocking/fake felt spray-on treatment. The wood panelling is in fact printed on peel and stick vinyl inkjet paper:

I think that so far as the interior side walls of these cars are concerned I will try doing something like your treatment. It won't be prototypical - none of my efforts are - but it could address the through-the-window view issue. More work, of course!

@Hancock52 The flocking on the miniature sofa turned out great.  I sure hope your visitors can see it when looking in through the side windows.  It would be a loss if their view was blocked by a wall.  You did not mention the carpet, is that a printed cloth material or ink jet?

This forum is great resource for seeing what other members are doing to upgrade passenger car interiors.  I have gathered many ideas from your creative interiors and found new vendors for 1/48 scale parts.   That being said, Union Pacific specifically had that sofa made for the Lone Star observation car.   Where did you ever find a 1/48 scale serpentine sofa like that to apply the flocking too?

Also, after looking at my photos posted yesterday I realized I forgot to change the drumhead.  K-Line put a generic Union Pacific Overland shield on rear of this car... and all historical photos show this Sun Valley has a City of Los Angeles Streamliner drumhead.   I printed up a few different sizes on a clear plastic sheet.  One of these sizes should fit.

   Oh well, back on the work bench it goes.

I didn't find the serpentine sofa; I made it out of acrylic modeling putty. It looked like Flintstones furniture to begin with - maybe still does. It's fully visible through the observation compartment windows; I'll post photos of that when everything is fixed in place, including the passengers.

All the carpets in the car are inkjet printed on fabric paper. I've done quite a lot of this in the past and have got the hang of it, I think.

There's a drumhead on the rear of the Lone Star car (UP 150th anniversary) that I intend to replace with a 4014 Excursion version. More on that when I actually figure out how to do it.

Drumhead update 07/25/2021

The first style drumhead used on the Sun Valley observation lounge car in 1937 was round glass and illuminated from inside.  This glass drumhead was painted black around the edges and the word “Streamliner” was written across the middle in red. In The Union Pacific Streamliners book by Ranks and Kratville it shows the Sun Valley in July of 1938 (page 203) with this original round glass drumhead. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/713679872171354407/

Then, in the same book (page 354) it shows Sun Valley again with a newer neon style City of Los Angeles drumhead in 1941.  Besides the changing to neon drumheads Union Pacific’s City fleets went through other shop upgrades in early 1941.  As an example, the original 1937 City fleet colors were Amour Yellow, Leaf Brown with gold lettering.  Then in 1941 the City fleet colors were changed to Amour Yellow, Harbor Mist Gray with red lettering.  Also, on the Sun Valley they added a large red Mars signal light on the roof above the existing white Pyle National Company back up light.  Knowing these small changes makes it easier to date the old black and white photographs.

If you want more photos for reference, inside The Union Pacific Streamliners book you will also find a rear view close up of Sun Valley’s sister car Nob Hill #1576 with its original 1937 City of San Francisco glass painted drumhead (page 187).  Then on page 186 you see another rear view close up of Nob Hill with a newer neon City of San Francisco drumhead (post 1941 retrofit).  Here’s an interesting photo (circa summertime 1950) showing Nob Hill wearing a neon City of Los Angeles drumhead http://www.snowcrest.net/photobob/upr8.jpg

To complete this part of the project I needed to remove the incorrect Union Pacific Overland shield that was painted on my K-Line observation cars drumhead.

After a little light scrubbing with a Mr. Clean Magic eraser I was left with a 1/2" plain white circle on the back of the car.  Next, I picked the 1/2" round color emblem from my clear printed sheet of CoLA drumheads and cut it out.

A small drop of clear Canopy glue was spread around the white circle and the new CoLA emblem was secured in place.  In these photos the 3mm cool white LED looks a little bright for this small 1/2" drumhead, but it person it look good.

In closing, I'm happy with the end results and think the Sun Valley lounge car looks better than before and it’s more historically correct.

WOW ! truly outstanding work !

Alex

Wonderful write-ups and demonstrative photos @T.Albers and @Hancock52.  Thanks.