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I thought I was finished making interiors for my K-Line Union Pacific City of Los Angeles passenger train.  I completed the interiors of a Rail Post Office, REA-Baggage car, Dome Diner, 5-2-2 Pullman Sleeper, Dome Coach and two Observation cars.  That was until I found a great deal on a 18" K-Line Western Star 4-12 Pullman sleeper.  As other have said in this forum, I think this hobby might be addictive.

Before I began this build, I went back through my other post of the problems upgrading a 5-2-2 sleeping car: https://ogrforum.com/...enger-car-1305-k4690.   After reviewing that old post, I followed the steps below so I would only have to upgrade this Western Star 4-12 Pullman interior once.



Before and after Western Star 2

According to the book The Union Pacific Streamliners by Ranks and Kratville the twelve Western series cars that were made in 1949 by A.C.F. are unique in several way from any other Union Pacific Pullman sleepers.   First, A.C.F. gave these car interiors an unusual color scheme.  The room colors alternated throughout this car.  Even the roomettes on either side of the hallway were opposite colors.  Also,  room colors on the two sets of double bedrooms alternated.  Second, unique item was the Western series of cars were the only 4-12 sleepers the Union Pacific fleet owned and they normally ran them with the vestialbe forward for easier passenger boarding.  Third, was the Western series sleepers included an 8' x 9' area with full size seat and drop down bed for the sleeping car attendant.



Here are the steps to upgrade this interior.

Step.1, Start by removing the existing K-line interior from the shell.  Then separating the benches seats and passengers from the plastic base.

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Step.2, Put down a new basswood floor and mark where the windows are located.  Be careful, sleeping cars have a lot of walls and the rooms can be very small.  On this car I marked the room numbers on the basswood floor per the A.C.F. plans to keep everything in order.   Western Star passenger cars have 4 bedrooms marked A, B, C, D and the 12 roomettes were marked 1 ~ 12.

5

Step.3 Glue the seats in the place so the people can see out the windows.  Then start putting up walls. The existing K-Line bench seats were not long enough to be used as convertible sofas in the bedrooms.  But with a little bit of modification I was able to extend/stretch these bench seats to the length of the room.  To do that, I used 1-1/2 bench seats per room.  Do this by cutting one bench seat in half and attaching it to another full size seat.  To get the smaller roomette seats I cut about 1/3 off the other K-Line bench seats I had laying around.

11



After all the walls were up and painted I repainted and reinstalled the K-Line people that originally came out of this passenger car.   I recommend trimming the bottoms on your figures to make them fit in the seats better.  The windows on this K-Line shell are not the correct amount or spacing apart for a real Western series 4-12 sleeper.  But if you look close you will notice this build does have the correct amount of bedrooms and roomettes based on the original A.F.C. plans.  I managed this feat by slightly stretching some rooms and shrinking other rooms.

IMG_5991



This is the second sleeping car interior I have completed using Hennings 21000 Passenger Car LED lighting kit.  This LED lighting kit gives more vertical room for standing figures and interior walls than the original K-Line Streamline lighting.  The new LED kit is about an 1/16" thick while the old K-Line incandescent lights were about 3/8".  And the new LED kit’s circuit board fits perfectly in the middle hallway just behind the roomettes.

IMG_5995



On the inside of the K-Line shell I attached a metal hand rail that goes down the main hallway next to the four bedrooms.  This hand rail is not shown on the A.C.F. plans but it can been seen in the black and white historical photos before UP tinted the windows.

IMG_6015



The Western Star is currently riding the rails today as part of Union Pacific's Heritage Fleet.  I took the photo below of the Western Star (now called Omaha, UP car# 200) in October 2019 while it was going up the Cajon Pass.  All the windows on this side of the Western Star/Omaha are still in their original locations.  But the windows on the other side were heavily modified in 1965 when the interior was changed to be an 11 bedroom sleeper and its name changed to Sun Rest.  In 1974 the interior was modified again by UP, this time to be an 8 bedroom deluxe sleeper and its name changed to Omaha.

Omaha R1 Cajon Pass

My advice for upgrading a semi-scale K-Line Pullman sleeper is the less items you put into the rooms the more your viewer will be able to see.   I will attach the original Union Pacific plan view, printable curtains and Pullman quite signs at the end of the post.  I hope this write-up helps others who want to upgrade their K-Line sleeping cars.

Thanks,



To look at the other interior builds in this series click on the links below. They are listed in the order I run them on my layout:

https://ogrforum.com/...-an-e-8-cab-interior

https://ogrforum.com/...interior-upgrade-rpo

https://ogrforum.com/...6327-k4690#lastReply

https://ogrforum.com/...car-interior-upgrade

https://ogrforum.com/...enger-car-8003-k4690

https://ogrforum.com/...lounge-car#lastReply

https://ogrforum.com/...enger-car-1305-k4690

https://ogrforum.com/...upgrade-k-line-k4690

https://ogrforum.com/...upgrade-k-line-k4690

https://ogrforum.com/...senger-car#lastReply

https://ogrforum.com/...upgrade-placid-haven

https://ogrforum.com/...oenix-aluminum-shell

https://ogrforum.com/...pullman-sleeping-car

https://ogrforum.com/...c-passenger-car-1575

https://ogrforum.com/...-passenger-car-k4690

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Last edited by T.Albers
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Great work yet again and thanks for the curtain and sign graphic. That original K-Line interior surprises me because they also made some more detailed ones that found their way into 21" cars even though they are only 18" length. Although this is ostensibly a Lionel sleeping car interior it comes from K-Line parts:

3546096205499013

But this is not even close to what you have done. Sleeping cars have so many internal partitions that duplicating the prototypes is a real challenge, especially in Lionel and K-Line cars whose interiors are sub-scale. 

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  • 3546096205499013
Hancock52 posted:

Great work yet again and thanks for the curtain and sign graphic. That original K-Line interior surprises me because they also made some more detailed ones that found their way into 21" cars even though they are only 18" length. Although this is ostensibly a Lionel sleeping car interior it comes from K-Line parts:

3546096205499013

But this is not even close to what you have done. Sleeping cars have so many internal partitions that duplicating the prototypes is a real challenge, especially in Lionel and K-Line cars whose interiors are sub-scale. 

You are right, that’s definitely a K-Line interior.  I only have the 18” passenger cars and all of mine have came with all white plastic interiors from the factory.  It’s nice to see some of the premium 21” cars came fully painted.

Hancock52 posted:

Great work yet again and thanks for the curtain and sign graphic. That original K-Line interior surprises me because they also made some more detailed ones that found their way into 21" cars even though they are only 18" length. Although this is ostensibly a Lionel sleeping car interior it comes from K-Line parts:

3546096205499013

But this is not even close to what you have done. Sleeping cars have so many internal partitions that duplicating the prototypes is a real challenge, especially in Lionel and K-Line cars whose interiors are sub-scale. 


Hancock52, did you convert your silver Texas Special passenger cars to overhead LED’s?

T.Albers posted:

Hancock52, did you convert your silver Texas Special passenger cars to overhead LED’s?

I did not convert the first car of this aluminum set I did (the observation car) to LEDs because I mistakenly thought that the original incandescent lighting was in a ceiling moulding that reproduced the original car. I am sure that you know the part I mean, which is nicely detailed. I adapted it to the additional lighting I installed in the car, which was all LEDs from Evan Designs with a GRJ constant voltage power supply.

I later learned that that the ceiling part is generic in K-Line streamliners, or at least 18" and 21" ones. Please remember, as I have said before, that I believe many of Lionel's finest aluminum passenger cars - possibly all of the 21" ones - actually have K-Line parts.  

So I have dispensed with that part and LEDs have gone/will go in the rest of the cars of this set. Otherwise the amp draw of the lighting of all the cars on the rails will be as much as the engines when powered up (OK, that's a slight exaggeration).

Last edited by Hancock52
Hancock52 posted:
T.Albers posted:

Hancock52, did you convert your silver Texas Special passenger cars to overhead LED’s?

I did not convert the first car of this aluminum set I did (the observation car) to LEDs because I mistakenly thought that the original incandescent lighting was in a ceiling moulding that reproduced the original car. I am sure that you know the part I mean, which is nicely detailed. I adapted it to the additional lighting I installed in the car, which was all LEDs from Evan Designs with a GRJ constant voltage power supply.

I later learned that that the ceiling part is generic in K-Line streamliners, or at least 18" and 21" ones. Please remember, as I have said before, that I believe many of Lionel's finest aluminum passenger cars - possibly all of the 21" ones - actually have K-Line parts.  

So I have dispensed with that part and LEDs have gone/will go in the rest of the cars of this set. Otherwise the amp draw of the lighting of all the cars on the rails will be as much as the engines when powered up (OK, that's a slight exaggeration).

Yes, I see what you mean. The first part shown below was K-Line’s overhead lighting strip I removed from a 2005 passenger car.  The bottom part was K-Line’s lighting strip removed from a 1999 passenger car.  The 1999 version had 12 bulbs.  I heard those old incandescent bulbs could pull as much as 75 milliamps each.  If that’s correct, then it’s drawing .9 amps per passenger car.  Times ten passenger cars and that’s it’s 9 amps.  Yikes!

0CA98802-D8C0-4280-859D-4BF7FC8C7C48

The newer K-Line boards do have the nice ceiling details you mentioned and only used 6 bulbs.  I see why Lionel would have continued to use this newer part on there deluxe passenger cars.
E4333960-7257-4BF9-9CE8-7E26E4C81C3C

 

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  • 0CA98802-D8C0-4280-859D-4BF7FC8C7C48
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