18” Dome Coach Interior Upgrade

Nice work and very informative.  Thank you for sharing.

BRAVO! 

I have always wonder why the seats looked like they were in backwards.... great job. Could you do and extra set for ME ?

Also what is annoying is the swiss cheese holes in most cars shown in your earlier post... I really like your work.

Great job, I love the detailing! 

Excellent re-do'..very nice and very accurate adjusting the to the shorter scale difference'...

Outstanding!   NH Joe

Wow, well done.  I especially like the old pics that you used for inspiration.  Can I send you my SP Daylight Dome car so you don't get bored??

Chuck Cook posted:

Wow, well done.  I especially like the old pics that you used for inspiration.  Can I send you my SP Daylight Dome car so you don't get bored??

Lol, Thanks Chuck!   I'm still working on trying to finish the UP cars.

J Daddy posted:

Also what is annoying is the swiss cheese holes in most cars shown in your earlier post... I really like your work.

 

Thanks JDaddy, unfortunately the current status of the UP 7000 is also starting to look like swiss cheese.  Attached is the last photo (circa: 2002) I could find of the UP 7000.  The condition in the Dome area looked pretty bad at that time and nobody has posted a newer photo since.  

That's fine work. The historical research on these cars is always rewarding. Lining the seating up to match the car windows is always a complicated job. More than once I have had to start over again.

I've posted elsewhere a photo essay on my latest dome project (in the Lionel 21" Excursion dome observation car) but I went a little overboard on the partying passengers. However like you in the dome I reconfigured the seating to match photos of the prototype (still in service in the UP Heritage Fleet) although I decided it would be far too complicated to try and match the upholstery:

(P.S. for some reason this first photo does not insert correctly in the post but it is attached below.)

BTW, I've figured out that the Swiss cheese effect is because K-Line used a limited number of passenger car floors and they came pre-drilled to accommodate just about any passenger car interior seating/detail configuration. Of course in those days the details were hand-applied.

Hancock52 posted:

That's fine work. The historical research on these cars is always rewarding. Lining the seating up to match the car windows is always a complicated job. More than once I have had to start over again.

I've posted elsewhere a photo essay on my latest dome project (in the Lionel 21" Excursion dome observation car) but I went a little overboard on the partying passengers. However like you in the dome I reconfigured the seating to match photos of the prototype (still in service in the UP Heritage Fleet) although I decided it would be far too complicated to try and match the upholstery:

(P.S. for some reason this first photo does not insert correctly in the post but it is attached below.)

BTW, I've figured out that the Swiss cheese effect is because K-Line used a limited number of passenger car floors and they came pre-drilled to accommodate just about any passenger car interior seating/detail configuration. Of course in those days the details were hand-applied.

Those photos look great Hancock52!  Where did you find the plates and coffee pots?  The full size overhead dome windows on your Lionel 21" 9000 series passenger car are exactly correct per the UP builders spec.  In your cars these large windows allow a much nicer for your viewers to see all the fine details you added. 

On K-Line cars they have a bar that crosses the window and blocks the view into the dome.  This bar across the window was used on other railroads dome cars but never on the Union Pacific's 7000, 8000 or 9000 series dome cars built in the 1950's.   

Also, now that I see how nice LED lighting looks in the dome area, I want to try that next.  How did you get the table cloth effect?

Inspired by Hancock52 I have started to spruce up my Lionel UP cars. I have no plans now to get as detailed but one detail I wanted to add were headrest covers. Scale City has a few but none for UP yet so I decided to try and make my own. Googling Union Pacific Headrest Covers I found this image. It was a the flatest one I could find. Others with white or yellow backgrounds were not flat and would have produced a distorted image.

Then using a freeware program called Irfanview I made an array of the image and scaled the array so each image would fit on the seatbacks.

Here printed on paper are the results. I plan to print them on decal film for final application.

Pete

T.Albers posted:

Those photos look great Hancock52!  Where did you find the plates and coffee pots?  The full size overhead dome windows on your Lionel 21" 9000 series passenger car are exactly correct per the UP builders spec.  In your cars these large windows allow a much nicer for your viewers to see all the fine details you added. 

On K-Line cars they have a bar that crosses the window and blocks the view into the dome.  This bar across the window was used on other railroads dome cars but never on the Union Pacific's 7000, 8000 or 9000 series dome cars built in the 1950's.   

Also, now that I see how nice LED lighting looks in the dome area, I want to try that next.  How did you get the table cloth effect?

All the plates, cups etc. and foodstuffs are "quarter scale" miniatures actually made commercially for dioramas and indeed dollhouses. You can find tons of it by a Google search or on fleabay.

The "tablecloths" are inkjet printable self-adhesive vinyl.

Yes, whatever else can be said against Lionel's effort on these 21" ABS UP Excursion Train cars, they got the domes practically perfect.

The dome lighting was another exercise in going over the top. All the LEDs I used come from Evan Designs and are supplied as standard by them fitted for wiring to track power. The overhead lighting is two "Mega Chip" LEDs (big square ones that throw a lot of light). But what I read about these cars is that they also had floor lighting. They come stock from Lionel with no lighting at all but four rectangular holes cut into the sides of walkway well to let light in from the illuminated compartment underneath. That does not work well so I added floor lighting, again using Evan Designs LEDs that come wired in sets of four, one set on each side fitted in mock Fresnel lenses that are actually push button inserts from Mouser Electronics: 

This is not a finished project. There is one area in the front of the car where I am adding a few more interior details (in the prototype it’s a rest room area and small “lounge” as our ancestors called it), which I won’t get to until I finish something else. So this is what the work in progress looks like with a large quantity of my crappy wiring in place:

I admit I lavished a lot of effort on a bar area in the belly of the car under the dome seating. All of the figures had to be placed to match the side windows, which again Lionel rendered based on the prototype car:

P.S. Norton (Pete) doesn't know it yet, although he'll find out in due course, but he's been my inspiration on a completely different project that is also still in progress. He also put me on to the idea of headrests and I have some coming from Scale City but I think I will end up printing my own.  As Pete says, finding suitable images for this purpose is problematic. 

Norton posted:

Inspired by Hancock52 I have started to spruce up my Lionel UP cars. I have no plans now to get as detailed but one detail I wanted to add were headrest covers. Scale City has a few but none for UP yet so I decided to try and make my own. Googling Union Pacific Headrest Covers I found this image. It was a the flatest one I could find. Others with white or yellow backgrounds were not flat and would have produced a distorted image.

Then using a freeware program called Irfanview I made an array of the image and scaled the array so each image would fit on the seatbacks.

Here printed on paper are the results. I plan to print them on decal film for final application.

Pete

 

Hi Norton, Thank you for the link to the headrest covers.  If I upgrade to the correct high back coach seats in my K-Line cars I will definitely use these headrest covers.  Are you also running the 21” UP dome cars from Lionel?

I just started collecting UP cars. The one pictured is Lionel 21" but I have K-Line cars as well. Both have their pluses and minuses but it appears the Lionel cars are closest to the modern prototypes that I am trying to imitate. 

Pete

Hancock52 posted:

T.Albers posted:

Those photos look great Hancock52!  Where did you find the plates and coffee pots?  The full size overhead dome windows on your Lionel 21" 9000 series passenger car are exactly correct per the UP builders spec.  In your cars these large windows allow a much nicer for your viewers to see all the fine details you added. 

On K-Line cars they have a bar that crosses the window and blocks the view into the dome.  This bar across the window was used on other railroads dome cars but never on the Union Pacific's 7000, 8000 or 9000 series dome cars built in the 1950's.   

Also, now that I see how nice LED lighting looks in the dome area, I want to try that next.  How did you get the table cloth effect?

All the plates, cups etc. and foodstuffs are "quarter scale" miniatures actually made commercially for dioramas and indeed dollhouses. You can find tons of it by a Google search or on fleabay.

The "tablecloths" are inkjet printable self-adhesive vinyl.

Yes, whatever else can be said against Lionel's effort on these 21" ABS UP Excursion Train cars, they got the domes practically perfect.

The dome lighting was another exercise in going over the top. All the LEDs I used come from Evan Designs and are supplied as standard by them fitted for wiring to track power. The overhead lighting is two "Mega Chip" LEDs (big square ones that throw a lot of light). But what I read about these cars is that they also had floor lighting. They come stock from Lionel with no lighting at all but four rectangular holes cut into the sides of walkway well to let light in from the illuminated compartment underneath. That does not work well so I added floor lighting, again using Evan Designs LEDs that come wired in sets of four, one set on each side fitted in mock Fresnel lenses that are actually push button inserts from Mouser Electronics: 

This is not a finished project. There is one area in the front of the car where I am adding a few more interior details (in the prototype it’s a rest room area and small “lounge” as our ancestors called it), which I won’t get to until I finish something else. So this is what the work in progress looks like with a large quantity of my crappy wiring in place:

I admit I lavished a lot of effort on a bar area in the belly of the car under the dome seating. All of the figures had to be placed to match the side windows, which again Lionel rendered based on the prototype car:

P.S. Norton (Pete) doesn't know it yet, although he'll find out in due course, but he's been my inspiration on a completely different project that is also still in progress. He also put me on to the idea of headrests and I have some coming from Scale City but I think I will end up printing my own.  As Pete says, finding suitable images for this purpose is problematic. 

Hancock52, that LED lighting is amazing!

Hi T, 

I wanted to ask you this question. I have the same kit from Evans'. Great stuff.

I know where to hook up the positive lead, but where did you place the negative  lead.  I'm building a car using Atlas CZ, 3rl trucks.  I don't see a connection point for the negative lead?   This is the only lights I'm placing in the car. Thanks for your help'..

Quarter Gauger 48 posted:

Hi T, 

I wanted to ask you this question. I have the same kit from Evans'. Great stuff.

I know where to hook up the positive lead, but where did you place the negative  lead.  I'm building a car using Atlas CZ, 3rl trucks.  I don't see a connection point for the negative lead?   This is the only lights I'm placing in the car. Thanks for your help'..

One of the wire leads must go to the center rail pickup roller and the other to the outside rail ground. Usually the connection for the outside rail ground is on the truck block and consists of a screw fixing, or at least that is the case with Lionel passenger car trucks.  I am not sure if the particular Atlas trucks you are using have wipers/contacts on the inside of the wheels but again those will usually connect to a screw fixing.