Passenger Cars 2021

[bob turner]

These things have underbodies:

[De Bruin]

Here is another K-Line/ Mac Shops comparison. ....

Bob, I like the looks of the K lines and have scored a few of the shells for sundry projects but my main problem with them is, like the Lionel/Benson, Williams, Weaver extrusions, they all suffer from the interior floor height, which is set high to allow the truck mounted bolsters characteristic of Lionel et al, evident in your photo here comparing the doors. You can get around it with a remounted floor but you can't hide it on this K line without also carving up the exterior. I have built Bensons with modified floors for scale interiors, but as is these particular extrusions require furniture and humans with amputated legs if your doing interiors.
It's visually most notable with those 80' Weaver baggage cars with the midget side doors.

[De Bruin]

Pete, hate to disagree with you on this one, but I adore the ICC kits......

Brian you’re not actually disagreeing with me, my comment about ICC’s was in the context of comparing them to how they looked to me when coupled to my ALW diner. I like ICC’s just fine but not mated up to this diner, the 17/64 reference to ICC was merely to describe the disparity they have with the built-to-plan ALW in terms of height and the window size, per below.


Purely opinion, but they don’t look right together in the same consist. The ICC's, and I have at least eight of them, are great and look really good with Kasiners, but not so much with the ALW. Not saying the ALW's are bad kits either, but merely that, as a novice I wasn't happy with the results way back then after following the instructions. I do intend to rebuild this diner, it's slated for my Commodore Vanderbilt. As an aside both the 44 seat diner and the 70' ACF baggage were catalogued by ICC(Jones) but sadly never made it to production.

And finally, yes you can build up an ALW to match any passenger car with NMRA standards.
This ALW ( a pre-war 18 roomette) is well-built, sturdy and weighted, albeit still doesn't play well with others. Think Jim scored this one. Note the excellent trucks.

[bob turner]

I shall take another look - I think most K-Line cars had really good (although plastic) vestibules.

[sarge]

Pete, I’ll make an outrageous suggestion here. Looking at the photo (albeit from afar) it looks to me like the visual height disparity is in the bolsters. In the photo, the rooflines are at about the same mismatch as the bottoms of the sides. ICC also shows a little ankle because the bolster end is visible; not so on AL.

For fun, take a couple washers and bring up the AL car to match roofline with the ICC. Use a yardstick or other longish straightedge to match the rooflines. I can’t help but wonder if the rest of your visual objections won’t melt away.

A procedure I learned from the old passenger car master, Lefty Gateman, by the way. When he built “matched” trains to order, he would match the rooflines of the entire train with an aluminium straightedge.

[E7]

Pete, Looks to me like Sarge is dead on correct!

Rich

[De Bruin]

outrageous suggestion here.........visual height disparity is in the bolsters.......ICC also shows a little ankle because the bolster end is visible; not so on AL.

Not as "outrageous" as just obvious, the ICC and the ALW do have different bolster face heights, I've already been this route; the ICC under-body is ribbed and has a integral cast cross bolster that is deep and interferes with with the truck swing, the ALW floor not so, adding washers raises the car body height but didn't look right in my eye, conversely cutting down the ALW bolster pedestal fouls the truck side-frame swing. And again there's the window size disparity too.
Like I said, I will be have to rebuild the ALW anyway as while I could mask off a spare ICC kit to the 44-diners window plan, it's a lot more work than fixing the ALW. Thanks for your suggestions, though.

[De Bruin]

I shall take another look - I think most K-Line cars had really good (although plastic) vestibules.

Could be, I'm only basing my observation about the floors on the few K-Lines I've examined, how about your C&NW bi-levels?

[bob turner]

Here we go - the steel floor stops before the vestibule. A plastic insert with the door is then bolted in. The bottom of the door is just below the bottom yellow stripe.

The two ends take different width spacers for the couplers - helps to have a Kadee height gauge to get the first one. I think I published dimensions way back when.

[bob turner]

I should mention that Youngstown is where I landed my first jet - an Allegheny Bac 111.

Here is the CNW Bi-Level - a truly good model, especially with proper trucks and couplers:



The window arrangement is wrong for SP Gallery coaches, which is why I left them alone. I may even paint an E7 to go with them, although I do have the FM H16-66 in CNW colors.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

Quick! While the dam hosting site works! (Grin!)

An ICC 56-chair Pullman Standard NYC coach.

[sarge]

Here is the CNW Bi-Level - a truly good model.......

Source of model??

K-line.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

.

[sarge]

Back to ICC cars, I do have to mention the clever way the windows are actually flush. Those ends are also lightyears beyond ALW, but I’m not complaining about the variety that the latter range gave us to choose from. We were well served back then. Grin!