TOMLINSONRUNRR
I'm a fan but not a student of railroad car diners. I think they came about by removing very early passenger cars from their trucks and leaving them at the side of the tracks. The Whistlestop Diner model is two inches wide (8 feet full scale), enough to have been an early passenger car. Many older railroad-car style diners are wider than a railroad car (maximum about 10 feet), so either they were not made from railroad cars or they were widened after becoming diners. That's why I think the Whistlestop model may be prototypical as is.
The tile floor of my model was a piece of paper supplied with the kit. I have made similar floors for other models by drawing the tile pattern onto paper and filling in the areas using a fine black marking pen. See photo below of another of my models.
MELGAR
