The USP skirts are part of the car sides. They come flat, but have to be curved. After assembling the side I tried to pre-curve the skirt but couldn't get enough curve into it. So after assembling the sides to the floor and ends, I glued the plain, preformed ALW curved skirts to the floor. Then with a lot of styrene cement between the two skirts, I used clothespins to pull the USP skirt hard up against the ALW skirt. Once the glue dried, the USP skirts were curved perfectly. Since the USP skirt is part of the car side, when the lower side fluting is attached to the car, that fluting sticks out away from the skirts. The skirts and the lower fluting should be in the same plane, but with the way the USP sides are made its not possible.
The ALW skirt fluting is simply scribed Evergreen styrene that has to be glued to the plain, curved ALW skirting material. This is difficult to do and the skirting is devoid of detail. Therefore on the cars using ALW sides I just left off the skirts between the trucks. What's good about doing this is you can see a lot of the underbody equipment which was prominent on these cars when the skirts were removed.
Also, the USP sides have the vestibule doors as part of the side. On the ALW kit the doors are a separate casting. Assembly of the USP sides are a bit easier because of this.
Here's are some pics of the cars after assembly and before painting:
Coach with USP sides
Combine with ALW sides
10-6 sleeper and 11 DBR sleeper with ALW sides:
Ken
