I thought I'd ask about this before starting out blind on a weekend project.
I need to take apart all of my Lionel 21" aluminum Texas Special passenger cars, mainly to replace the window strips that are afflicted with the "snowflake" effect from the adhesive originally used to mount them. Apart from that I want to see what I can do about adding extra passengers and other interior details.
I'm asking about the observation car as that may be the trickiest to take apart.
I've worked on Lionel 18" aluminum cars before and with those it's a matter of taking off the vestibule/end caps, unplugging the lighting wires and the interior will then generally slide out with the frame. But the Texas Special cars are I am sure based on K-Line tooling and the manual does not describe how to get at the interior to replace the light bulbs, which might mean that they are assembled differently.
Here's a photo of the bottom of this car. There appear to be three screws mounting the frame with the trucks and interior attached to the body shell. The yellow arrows show where the screws are:
The Lionel parts diagram shows that (as with the 18" cars) there are separate parts for the tapered end of this car:
I assume that you have to take those three screws out to slide the ends of the car off and then remove the body from the frame. But does anyone have experience of doing this and is there more to it than that? Thanks.
