GGD Santa Fe Parts Breakdown, new coupler

Charlie...that coupler really looks great.  Sure does make a 100% improvement...

 

Alan

Charlie, thanks for posting.

Looks really good, Charlie.

 

Art

Certainly a big improvement, Charlie.

Very nice! Just love those Protrocraft Scale couplers.

These cars are wonderful. I still have not seen my set yet. I need to get off my rail and pick them up.

I just noticed the fluting is almost dead on. Pretty nice.

Adding a scale coupler from norm really finishes the Vista series nicely. Add the steam line some chain; cut lever and it a photo prototype quality model. Beautiful car.

No lens over the tail light?

Best "how to..." post I've seen on the forums...  Thank you....

"Train of the stars!"

Thank you Charlie!  I missed your post the first time around and I'm glad it showed up again.

 

Very nicely done.  The pictures are great.

I don't recall if the Vista series had Venetian blinds. This coach yard HO sample of the Indian name series PS 1938 cars has them.

The Vista series did have Venetian blinds in the lounge area.  I've verified that from a few sources, one the SFRHM book, "Sleeping Cars of the Santa Fe".  I have one color photo of the outside of the ACF Vista Club.  The blinds appear white with grey or silver tape ladder and base (the bottom below the slats).

 

Photo lie, especially with age.  I haven't been able to find a description of the blinds.

Marker is right on the money

Photo courtesy:

The official Pullman Standard Library
Vollume 1
David Randall & William Ross

T610 cool site, I will check it out further.

 

Erik, thank for the image. Although I have not seen that one before, it is interesting that is shows the rear coupler black or not painted. Most of the other color images show the Santa Fe couplers silver. When I see this images the coupler jumped out at me as being wrong. Just goes to show how effective promotional material can be.

 

As for the window treatment, I like the look of the shades in the images and I really think the models don't look finished so I will try to come up with a plan to insert them.

 

If I find a source, either commercial or hand made, I will post.

 

Thanks again, guys.

 

Charlie

Charlie,

That photo was a builders photo. Often they did not paint trucks or couplers etc. The atsf was in practice painting the running gear on the SC on every trip. Keep that train pretty and clean. Your spot on painting your coupler silver.

Make no mistake about it -- Santa Fe painted the rear coupler on observation cars and the front coupler on passenger diesels with the same flat aluminum paint used on passenger car and passenger locomotive trucks.  The trucks and pilots of locomotives were frequently painted during layovers at Los Angeles and Barstow, and they sprayed the coupler and hoses right along with the pilot.  The passenger car trucks frequently got fresh paint at Los Angeles, and the rear coupler was also touched up when convenient.  Many celebrities rode Santa Fe passenger trains, and there were always press photographers at Los Angeles Union Station and at Pasadena at train time.  Santa Fe was not going to have anything less than the best equipment in the best condition appear in any press photos.  Every now and then, a passenger locomotive would accumulate dirt on the pilot and trucks, but, right up to Amtrak Day, it was the policy to repaint the running gear and pilots frequently.

 

Locomotives captive to the Eastern Lines (mainly the EMD E-units) did not get pilots painted as often, because the weather often made it impossible.  However, when they were able to repaint the pilots, they sprayed the couplers and hoses, just as in California.

 

I don't know if ICC rules required couplers to be unpainted, but nobody took issue with it.  Today, we have the FRA, which operates differently, and Santa Fe would never get away with painting couplers.

Charlie this is definitely helpful for me. I need to take my dome apart as 4 of the seats are bouncing around in there.

Do you have any pix of the finished obs car with cut lever and steam hose?

Did you figure out why that truck was shorting out and did the tape fix it?

Hello and good morning Laidoffsick:

 

I have not finished the cut lever or added the air hoses since the last posting. I just got tired of working on this and moved onto another project.

 

However...since that time "Marker" from this forum has kindly provided me with a few pictures that show the car with and without "cut levers". Maybe the pictures were not as obvious to me, but there are some photos that simply do not show any lever rigging. And, due to the extreme angle needed, I am having problems on how to add the levers that do show up on some of the images. Does that make sense?

 

The other issue that I wanted to resolve first is the interior window shades for the observation car. 3rd rail supplied the side windows with shades, but the curved portion of the car has no shades/blinds and it clearly shows them in the pictures I have. My issue is that they look like Venetian blinds, not the standard roll-up/down kind and I don't have a good source for the Venetian kind of blinds.

 

The last issue was the short. I did resolve the problem by adding some electrical tape between the truck and frame. If you’re having the same problem I can send you some picture of more detailed truck modifications that I added. I just don't have them with me right now.

 

As for the question on the dome, I unfortunately did not have the funds to purchase both sets so I did not get the set with the dome. I did get the two add-on cars, but no dome for me. Maybe sometime down the road I can find the set.

 

 

Its a nice set, but needed some TLC to get it up and running to my liking, Overall I like the results.

 

Keep in touch and keep up the great work like you did on the E6, just beautiful.

 

Thanks.

 

Charlie

Great job Charlie!!

Thanks Charlie, thats why I asked for pictures if you had finished it, because I wanted to see exactly how you approached the cut lever on a curve.

I started working on my cars last night. For now I ditched the thumb tacks (I have 3 rail cars) and painted the diaphragms silver. Huge change in appearance with silver diaphragms. For now, the only car I will take apart is the dome, to fix those seats.

Does anyone know the correct place of cars in the train, besides RPO... Baggage... and of course Observation on the rear?

Wiki has the correct order, I checked with other sources.  Just substitute the car names/numbers from your set.  As you can see on the boxes, there were 2 sets.

 

From rdunniii:

• Baggage/mail storage

  RPO

  Pine/Palm 10-6

  Regal 4-4-2

  Regal 4-4-2

  Dorm/Lounge

  500 series Dome/Lounge

  600 series Diner

  Regal 4-4-2

  Regal 4-4-2

  Pine/Palm 10-6

  Vista Sleeper Observation

Thank you sir!

Laidoffsick:

 

"I started working on my cars last night. For now I ditched the thumb tacks (I have 3 rail cars) and painted the diaphragms silver. Huge change in appearance with silver diaphragms. For now, the only car I will take apart is the dome, to fix those seats

 

You hit a couple of key points here.

 

First, I should have added that I also removed the uncoupling tacks since I had posted the pictures. I really have no use for them so I just wheel cut them off with my Dremel. I'm not switching this set to Kadee's because I had a bit of a problem on the modular layout going through back to back switches.

 

I was also going to paint the diaphragms but was looking for "flexible" silver paint. Can I ask what paint, type/kind you ended up using?

 

Airbrush, paint brush, dip? What method did you use to apply the paint?

 

As for the cut lever, I'm glad you understood my description of the problem. I can probably fudge a solution, but I want it to be correct looking on the first try, so I put that project on the back burner.

 

Thanks for keeping this thread up to date.

 

Charlie

 

 

 

I did the same thing with the thumb tacks, Dremel with a cutoff wheel. I dont switch passenger cars and they are an eye sore. I'm not going to convert to Kadees either, they are close coupled nicely, and they run through 072 curves hassle free this way.

I brushed on some Scalecoat II silver, and Floquil Bright Silver. Not an exact color match, but close enough....much better than black in any case. The rubber is prone to warping with the paint, but easily formed back to straight by hand. I'm sure this paint will chip, but just like the real ones, I'll just touch them up.

Charlie

 

I was late to this so I only got a remaining 5-car SF SC set. I planned to run them with the 18" Lionel and Kline bi-levels and the LNL ABBA SF until I realized the Golden Gate car lengths dont match... oh well!

 

I'll run then together anyways!

Not trying to hi-jack your thread Charlie, just adding a few pix of my own. You said you already removed the thumb tacks as well. I don't want to put these pix in the other thread where Erik compared the cars (goes no one can compare with the pix he posts), and put his fabulous pix in so here ya go.

 

 Thumb tacks and black diaphragms:

 

 

No thumb tacks with silver diaphragms:

 

 

Lastly I painted the red pick up wire black so it don't stick out:

 

That's about all I'm going to do to mine. Some day I will add people to all of them, but for now... they are pretty darn good.

 

Yes, the silver paint is going to chip off, just like the real cars. So I guess I will just have to touch them up as needed. If you find a better product that's rubberized and won't chip off....give me a shout.

 

Charlie did you come up with a solution for the RPO???... I have the same problem with the brake details. They hit the side ladders and don't have much pivot at all. I don't really see any other solution but to grind down some of that extra detail. Most of it stays hidden right behind that ladder, so hopefully it won't look to hideous. 

Looks great!  The nice thing about passenger cars is that they tend to hide the Lionel sized couplers.  

 

I have painted some diaphragms silver (haven't gotten to the SC yet) and also had the flaking problem.  Charlie has a great idea about finding a paint that can be used on a flexible surface.  I did a search and they are out there.

 

If anyone comes up with a good paint please post.

 

 

Charley and Laidoffsick fine job on sprucing up your cars they look much better. Quite A few years ago I hot glued in 100 K Line sitting people into 6 K Line Santa Fe passenger cars and they look much better! I am glad I'm not the only one that thinks the cars look better with more than A few people in them. Back when I was gluing the people in I was working on the last car and my dad came downstairs and saw me taking apart the last car and he flipped out! What are you doing to the new cars he is yelling at me. I told him to calm down they look better with more people in them. After A while he cool off and told me they did look better with the extra people in them. Well at least I did not get into trouble for that one. Choo Choo Kenny

Hello guys:

 

Laidoffsick: no problem with adding to the discussion, it’s all good as I think we are all trying to achieve the same thing. The painted diaphragms make a huge difference. As Marker stated, the paint is out there, I just need to find the color and experiment.

 

Kenny: I too have added people, not as many as you, but two packs of Little people from GGD and I was still short. However, I will leave them as is until I have a need to reopen the cars.

 

As for the RPO and truck swivel. I purposely did not want to discuss the subject because I thought maybe mine was the only one with the problem. Now the Laidoffsick seems to have the same issue I will post some photos of what I did to minimize the problem. I probably should have taken some pictures while I had the RPO apart; it would have shown better the grinding that needed to be done. I will try this evening to shoot some finished images and post for you guys the results. I will say that even with the modifications I had to make, I still may have a problem on all but the very widest curves. I still don't this will go through 072 switches.

 

Again, I'll try to add pictures later tonight.

 

Thanks for the discussion guys and have a great day.

 

Charlie

 

Well I used a cutting wheel in my Dremel to do some grinding on the brake details, and got the RPO to run without derailing through the switches and curves.

 

As I suspected the Floquil and Scalecoat II silver paint made the diaphragms hard and brittle. As soon as you put some flex on them the paint cracked and chipped off. I got a couple different kinds of FABRIC PAINT from Michaels but it was so thin it wouldn't cover the black unless you did about 50 coats of it.

 

I found this at Michaels as well, and it says multi surfaces and stays soft so I tried it. It takes a couple coats to get the coverage I wanted, but it stayed flexible and soft. I've run the car around, and bent the diaphragm pretty good with no cracks or flaking. It stayed soft so you can even flex the diaphragm with your fingers and still no cracking after drying overnight. I'll take the set of cars to the club in San Diego next weekend and put about 6 hours of run time on them, so we'll see how it holds up. For now, I think it will last.

   

I think it was $1.99 or $2.49 at Michaels. The color I picked is "STERLING" and it's pretty darn close. They have others but are too light or too dark. Just takes time to paint them all.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you guys with my version of a solution of the RPO issue.

 

Posted below are pictures of the car with as much as I can show while the car is assembled. It really would have been much easier to shoot and document while the car was torn apart.

 

The first image shows the two areas that interfere with the swivel of the truck. While not easy to see, I did grind a fair amount of "break" detail off the side and than repainted. I started off with a small file, than just switched to the Dremel and finished it by hand.

 

 

 

The next image is as viewed from the bottom. Here you can see the grinding of what I thought was the problem. The curve area seen was originally straight across. I thought the break cylinder was hitting that area. However, I discovered the car trucks acted much differently when on the track versus lying on the side or upside down.

 

 

 

The last image shows (again from the bottom, but on a slight angle) the real problem area. I discovered that truck was/is actually hitting the mounting bracket for the ladders. What I also discovered was that it was a bit different for each end of the car, meaning, the interference was being caused by a different area of the truck/ladder bracket. So I disassembled the truck on the other end (not shown) and put it back together with the breaks assembled on the wrong side...hopefully that makes sense.

These modifications do allow for more swivel, but not nearly as much as the cars without the ladder bracket. The real fix is to find another mounting solution for the ladders that does not interfere with the truck swivel.

 

 

 

Hopefully that helps. As Laidoffsick also discovered, the problem is not that hard to find, the problem is finding the solution without damaging the great looking exterior of the RPO, which is one of my most favorite renderings that GGD did with this set.

 

Have a great day.

 

Charlie