Taking apart an Atlas O Comet II Coach for interior detailing (4.4.20 update)

I’ll be following this thread with great interest Kevin. I have a fleet of NJT and Septa cars from atlas I too would like to upgrade the interior and add LED lighting.

The interior photo you showed I believe is from a Comet V, judging by the larger windows and red seats. Now it’s your train and you can do whatever you like, however I think the Atlas cars are Comet 2s, which NJT refurbished a few years ago and they now have green seats I believe. Just commenting - feel free to paint yours however you like and you have inspired me to do mine now! 

Kevin,

Thank you so much for pictures of this.  I tried taking about a Horizon coach a number of years ago and promptly gave.  While they are difficult to disassemble I do truly believe it requires Jedi level knowledge of the Force to put them back to together.  Please share those as well!  My NJT trains run empty while my most of my Amtrak cars merely run at Penn Central era level of ridership.

I remember seeing the Comet IIs testing on the NY&LB with shiny new F40PHs over the summer of '82 as a naive 13 year old not realizing that it spelled DOOM for the E8s I was so used to watching.

M J Breen posted:

I’ll be following this thread with great interest Kevin. I have a fleet of NJT and Septa cars from atlas I too would like to upgrade the interior and add LED lighting.

The interior photo you showed I believe is from a Comet V, judging by the larger windows and red seats. Now it’s your train and you can do whatever you like, however I think the Atlas cars are Comet 2s, which NJT refurbished a few years ago and they now have green seats I believe. Just commenting - feel free to paint yours however you like and you have inspired me to do mine now! 

M.J., those are just two photos that I have on file and am not beholden to them.  Yes, the Atlas O's are Comet II's (I just looked on the blue box to confirm). I like to overkill on certain things and will probably have a dozen photos for reference when all is said and done that will be on display around my painting stand as I'm doing it (did the same thing when I recently built a model of the US Navy ship my Father-in-law served on during the Vietnam War).  I'm already amassing photos of the Tri-Rail trains interiors that I commute in every day. 

Kevin, I too will be following this thread with anticipation for each new entry you supply.  As for documenting what you are doing with photos, that's excellent--but may I suggest you capture all of the various screws, nuts, etc. and keep them in separate containers as your work progresses and accompany each group with notes as to what they are and where they go.  This is particularly useful when, as often happens, projects must be put aside for months.

Good Luck.

Thanks Kevin, perfect timing !!

Clem 

Two weeks later, I finally got around to finish opening up the Comet II coach.

Didn't notice the green circuit board on the floor prior so that makes things interesting.  This adds to the wires running from the trucks thru the floor.  I know zero about electronics so don't want to mess with it if I can avoid to, so I'll probably hand it over to one of the electronic expert members of my club to separate (and then put back together) and maybe even install LED lighting.

My plan is to have the floor separated totally so that I can paint it via airbrush.  

But at least now I have an actual visual in front of me of the seats and how I want to paint them matching the internet photos of a Comet II interior with what looks like to be a blueish gray.

One thing though is that the seats looked like a tight squeeze and I would likely have a lot of passengers who were double amputees.  The seats and between them looked shorter than those in my  Bombardier Tri-Rail coach so I took so some measuring on the fly to compare one 1:48 scale coach interior (as MTH doesn't make the Bombardier coaches full scale length like K-Line did) to another.  As you can see by the photos below, my eyes were seeing an optical illusion.  The seat back heights are basically the same and distance between the head rests of the Comet II - if the seats were flipped facing each other - is the same as the 1-inch separation on the Bombardiers.  My construction worker, which I don't recall where I got him from, but if were standing straight would be 1.5 inches, which is 6 feet at 1/48 scale, so he is the correct height, would have a hard time sitting in the seats that he is standing next to in the aisle.

This is going to be a lot of fun!

Kevin, thanks for the update with photos; this will be a great thread to follow as you progress and describe your process.

Suggestion:  please edit the thread's title with the date you add new material; e.g., 2/3/2020 for tonight's update.

Looking forward to your next installment.

Great idea Carl.  Done.

So today, I had a professional (John Fasso from the Florida Citrus Model Train Society) take apart the car and install a LED Strip.  Lot of the inner guts removed out. 

Left the remaining 4 coaches with him today to work on during the week.

As I mentioned prior, I know nothing about electronics so therefore I don't have any use for keeping circuit boards for supplies so if any of you want a set of 5 (once all cars are done) shoot me a PM.

Here is a before shot from last week:

This afternoon's workbench:

And some shots from home this evening with the beautiful white light:

Now its time to start painting!

Wow Kevin, bright lights for sure'... I wonder what all those circuit boards are for and what they do'... Seems like a lot of electronics in a passenger car..... 💡

Started some painting last night and came to a realization that the old adage of "a man on a galloping horse wouldn't know the difference" would apply in my case here.

My original intent was to paint the seats one color  (Gunship Gray) and the armrests another (Neutral Gray).  I'm not rushing the project, but to do that would be very labor intensive and viewed through the narrow windows of the Comet II coach, and with seated passengers, no one would notice, even standing still.  If we're talking tables in a dining car or the tables in the Tri-Rail commuter coach, then that's a different story.  FYI , the seats with the dark navy color was just a test on my part.

So I changed my mind midstream and will paint the entire seat assembly the same color (Gunship Gray), and I'll be able to spray paint them, instead of hand painting each set of seats.  The floors will remain painted a different color, in this case, I'm using Dark Tan.  

Those colors should look fine Kevin.  What are the colors on the prototype just out of curiosity ?  I know first hand the time involved in detailing a large coach'... Just don't loose patience'....

Quarter Gauger 48 posted:

Those colors should look fine Kevin.  What are the colors on the prototype just out of curiosity ?  I know first hand the time involved in detailing a large coach'... Just don't loose patience'....

Ted,

I don't know the actual RGB color codes of the interior, but based off this picture http://www.rrpicturearchives.n...cture.aspx?id=512333 I'm going with Bluish Gray for the seats and a Dark Gold type color for the flooring.

Looks like your choice of color is just right'....  Have fun'... fabricating'...

Kevin, a suggestion: if you plan to paint the floor a new color, paint it first, then the seats.  I have found it is much easier to touch up the floor around seats than the other way around.

Showing some updates over the past month.  

First off, Peter A, I followed your suggestion on painting the floor first.

Have had an interesting time the past 4 weeks with 2 different orders of paints that looked online that they would work with the seat color I wanted and when they arrived the colors were anything but.  Then there was a paint that I tried which the color was right, but the paint type (I don't recall it off hand) would not adhere to the plastic seats. 

The gray surface primer sprayed on:

So I finally went with #21353E Mountain Blue by Apple Barrel

A select few passengers from the Rail King tour group testing out the seating at the factory 

Well, finally after 3 weeks I've got around to finish painting the seats on this Coach #5633.  Visitors from the Rail King Tour tried out the seats and adhered to "Social Distancing".

Now to rinse, wash and repeat for the other 6 coaches (I just purchased 2 more).  My plan is to have 8 coaches being pulled by the loco.  Will need more passengers for all the coaches.  I'm not going to buy any more Rail King ones as I don't want to have multiple of the same person in the same coach.  I will paint some so that at least if I buy two some of them will look different.  I compared the O Scale Model Power people compared to the Rail King ones and they looked way to large for my taste.  That leaves the bulk bags from China and I'm not buying anything shipped from there for the time being for obvious reasons.  I'm sure I'll find a bag of people somewhere.