Redoing a Business Car Interior

I am in the process of doing the same to my K -Line passenger cars. Coming out very nice.  You have done an awesome job on yours.

Im struggling with what size people to use. I have cut the kegs off my standing O gauge figures so they look better through the windows. Had to cut seated people also.

I think I will try some HO figures and see how they look.

I also made the change to LED lighting. I used white with a few blue thrown in for an evening look.

Anyone have any ideas for figures size that looks best in these cars?  

Personally, I am happy with the size figures that the cars come with. I bought some more from RMT, which has the K-Line molds. If you want smaller, seated figures, MTH sells a great big bag of unpainted Rail King figures for a pretty cheap price. I think these are intended for traditional size cars. Also you could try some of the inexpensive figures coming from China via eBay. They come in many sizes. 

Are you putting passengers in the scale-profile K-Line cars, or the smaller streamliners? The old 13" streamliners would definitely look better with smaller figures than the scale-profile cars. I think HO figures would be too small; you might be best off with S scale people. 

I picked up one of those cars, too, a year or so ago.  Haven't done anything with it yet, but I really like what you did with the interior colors.  Looks like a nice, one evening project, (plus time for the paint to dry)  What i would really like to do is find an open, streamlined railing for that rear "porch".  I really don't care much for the solid piece that K-Line put on the car.

K-Line's Milw Rd cars were done very nicely on the exteriors, but that ivory beige inside color was not good.  I've been working on my various cars to improve the interiors.  On the Superdome, I changed the seating around so it all faced in one direction, which is the way I remember the real one on the "road".  Also painted my seats a reddish  color and then loaded up the seats with people.  My railroad makes money, no running with just a few lonely people!

Paul Fischer

Paul

I've been meaning to ask you, how did you get the dome level floor out of the car? I had loose passengers in the dome on one of mine and when I asked the factory service guy about it, he said, it's hard, just send it in under warranty and we'll take care of it. So that's what I did. It looks like it involves prying a very solid glue joint loose and then re-gluing when you're done.

Bob:  Yeah, I remember that it was a b**** of a job getting it out.  It really was a few years ago that I did the work on the car and I've kind of forgotten.  But, I think that with a bit of experimentation you can get it out.  I also remember that K-Line's lighting was a bit of a problem.  There are no lights in the upper, dome compartment, but there are a number of holes in the floor that let light shine through to illuminate the dome area.  When you reverse the seating some of those floor pieces tend to cover over the open area that lets the light through and I had to cut some of the floor away to get the right affect.  Actually, I don't particularly like the way the light shines up through those holes but I didn't know what else to do about it.  Visitors don't tend to look right down into those open floor spaces so you might not have a problem with it.

As I recall, I also installed kind of  railing for the stairs that went down on the prototype car at each end.  The real car had no passage through the car the way a regular dome car has.  People passing through had to walk up through the dome on their way to the next car.

Anyway, putting it back together again was not a problem for me.

Paul F.