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Now here’s a unique car…….

In the early 60’s, the Louisville and Nashville and Atlantic Coast Line assigned several cars to the  Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to transport materials for nuclear weapons. The cars went between Oak Ridge TN and various locations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Washington State.   The ACL also assigned three cars. The L&N assigned three seventy foot baggage cars plus three sleepers that had been purpose modified into dormitory-baggage cars.  These were decorated (disguised?) as a conventional head end car, with the exception of a discrete assignee notice: 

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Here’s a close up

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The photo above is in Jeff Wilson’s book, Express, Mail & Merchandise Serivce, published by Kamlbach publications.  Wilson’s book got me started on this, but I extracted a lot of other information from the L&N Historical society, various online sources, and books on L&N passenger cars and head end equipment lent to me by a Rick Wright.

At any rate, the idea was to hide them in plain sight.

I decided I needed to have a model of one of these cars in my mail train.  (The fact that my layout is set in 1956 did not dissuade me - this is one of those cases where cool-ness outweighed historical accuracy.) I felt both the ACL and L&N baggage cars were a bit boring. But I found the ACL dormitory baggage cars were quite the opposite.  The three cars were numbered 1650, 1651 and 1652.  Photos of all of them can be found online. I chose to model 1651:

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I do not know when that photo was taken, but I am guessing from the D&RG car in front, and the fact that this is clearly a scan of a photo taped in a book, and the car is not on some sort of display track, that it may have been while the car was in use.

1651 started out as a 10 section 3 double bedroom sleeper.  It was originally owned by the N&W.  For the AEC purpose, the baggage section was lined with lead to prevent exposing the general populace, livestock, and wildlife with gamma rays as the car rolled along the countryside.  The rear of the car housed the armed guards. Most of the windows, as you can see, were blocked off. And the guards, obviously, were stationed as far away from the baggage section as possible.

By the way, when these were pulled from AEC service, at least one of these cars was converted to a snowplow.  Maybe all that warm lead in front of the car helped clear the tracks.

There are several unique features about this car that are not normally found on combines and or dormitory-baggage cars

* There are vestibules at both ends.

* The door is rather short, at only 66” wide.

* The round roof

 After a bit of searching around for something that could easily be modified, I came to the conclusion that I needed to do it the way the L&N/AEC did, and modify a sleeper. So I started with a Golden Gate Depot 12-1 sleeper:

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I decided to leave the chassis and trucks alone, as I have limits to how slavishly I want to purse prototypical accuracy.  I did forget to add the baggage door ladder, and I may get to that some day.    

The first step was to completely disassemble the car:

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(Ignore the ABS I beams on the inside of the shell---I’ll get to those a little later) 

Because I would be cutting up this car and gluing the pieces back together, it was imperative that my cuts be straight, perpendicular to the bottom edge and roofline, and be as thin as possible.  To achieve the first two, I clamped a steel square to the car side, lining up one leg with the bottom edge of the car. To make thin cuts I used a UMM P100 saw.  These are very thin, very fine teeth saws that cut remarkably straight and fast.  They look like this:

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You can get them from UMM-USA:

http://umm-usa.com/onlinestore...o.php?products_id=35

Use soap as a lubricant every few passes.  By the way, I used a #11 blade to make the cuts across the top.

Cutting out the baggage doors were fairly straightforward. It’s the hole on the left.

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The cut-out on the right hand side was the first step in my procedure to re-arrange the windows.  I had to cut various sections out of the shell and re-arrange them in order to get the correct window placement.    This resulted in a significant jigsaw puzzle, with a lot of joints that needed to be filled smooth:

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By the way, it was somewhere around here that I made the executive decision that I would make a car that is prototypically correct and looks good from two feet away, as opposed to prototypically compromised, but looks great under a close up lens.  In other words, I realized there was simply no way I was going to perfectly line up all those pieces.

As you might imagine, of all my cutting made the shell became pretty flimsy.  And it’s not that stiff to begin with. I also needed to make sure both ends of my openings remained aligned.  So I added some internal Plastruct ABS I beams to stiffen it. I held them in place with a combination of Walthers Goo and Gorilla Glue Superglue Gel.  I have found this combination to have remarkable adhesion. The bond is both very strong and quite resistant to shocks.

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The hole is for access to the roof screw.  And no, I did not use the interior!

The next step was to glue all five sections to the side of the car.  There were lots of joints to fill in, and some tedious sanding to make that belt rail look straight, but at least the windows were spaced per the prototype.

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Note the floor was temporarily installed. I repeatedly did that to both check clearance with the braces, and to make sure I hadn’t glued anything permanently out of alignment.

I chiseled out all the window vents:

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And added the window blocks (.030” thick styrene sheet):

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Incidentally, I left the opposite side windows alone. First of all, I have no photos of that side. Second, the shell would not have survived that many cuts in it

On to the baggage doors.  I glued  ½” I beam braces across the door openings, about 1/3 the way up.  The braces have spacers glued on them, so they are not flush with the inside wall of the car.  This gives much needed clearance for installation of the doors. I glued in a .188 x .020 “ top sill, and then .060” quarter rounds to make the vertical door jams.  The baggage door will be glued to the backside (flat) surface of the quarter rounds.

Here is the door frame

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Note the lower styrene sill that straddles the gap.

I made the door from .060” styrene using the score and snap method:

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To make sure there is a visible gap between the door jams and door, I glued .015” diameter PB wire as spacers on the door surface

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I primed everything

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I painted the roof and steps D&H gray, which is what I had on hand, and therefore decided is close enough to L&N gray.  For the shell, I went through several primer/putty/sand cycles to clean up the joints as best I could felt like:

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I sprayed Testors Glosscote over the door sills, so I could continue the rivet line along the bottom-- recall the door sill is a styrene fitter piece.  I used Archer Details new “Pullman Car Rivets.”

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These rivet decals were a match much better than I had thought they would be

I painted the body L&N Blue.  Well, Painters Touch 2X Navy Blue, # 249098.  This is me just being lazy.  My friend Rick Wright claims it’s a pretty good match, and since it’s easy to get and easy to apply, I went that route

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As I feared, a few wavy areas showed up where my putty at the section joints was not perfect. On the other hand, I convinced myself that the wavy areas around the seams could be interpreted as wavy areas typical in the prototypes sheet metal. So there.

I applied Testors High Gloss Clearcoat for the decal base. I have extolled the virtues of this enamel paint as a decal base many times before – It dries very hard to a very high gloss, is impervious to decal softeners, is resilient to slitting decals to remove trapped air, and takes all kinds of top coats.

The stripes came from Microscale. Applying them long and straight was a bit of a challenge.  Not only because they are long and straight, but because in the patched sections and on both sides of the doors I did not have the luxury of following the rivet lines. My patch jobs were pretty good, but those bright yellow stripes would bring any misalignment to light.   Anyway, I got through it:

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For the other decals:  The “Louisville and Nashville” and car number came from Great Decals, and the “Railway Express Agency” came from an old PRR refrigerator car Champs set.  Note I did not use “REX Express” per the prototype, as that logo did not come out until 1961.  So while the car may be an anachronism on my layout, my lettering is not!   The AEC assignee sign came from Rail Graphics.  I drew them in Powerpoint and sent them the finished artwork.  Ron of Rail Graphics warned me that stencils would fill in lettering that small, but I risked it and it came out OK:

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If I had to do this over (and I am NOT), I would have shaved off all those rivets under this lettering.  The GGD rivets are pretty big, and even though there is no decal silvering in the above, the light catches the rivets to make it appear like there is. Please understand that none of this means I am a rivet counter

I sealed the decals with Testors semi gloss lacquer.  I prefer to use a semigloss as my weathering base because most of the passenger cars of my era tended to just be dirty. While technically a head end car, something tells me this was probably washed regularly, particularly if it was cut into a passenger train. 

I test assembled the car and promptly realized that I forgot to add the drip rails over the baggage door. Since I had already painted the roof, I had to come up with a non messy way to attach the drip rails.  

Enter Adhesive Transfer Tape.  I had read about this stuff, which is basically ultra thin double sided tape, in an article Brooks Stover wrote in Model Railroading. In summary, IT WORKS GREAT!

I made the rails from .040” square styrene, and pre bent them to the right shape. I attached the adhesive tape, and then trimmed it to match the styrene;

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I peeled off the other protective coating and attached the rails to the roof.  They were held quite securely, and that is probably all I needed to do. But I did chicken out a bit and add some Plastruct Plastic Weld

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I painted the drip rails after they were installed with the same D&H gray.

I weathered the roof separately with Vallejo dark gray wash, using Lee Turner’s “Mr. Miyagi Wax on Wax off” method.  That’s what Lee calls it. I then assembled the car again and weathered the shell with a weathering mix applied lightly with an airbrush. As a final touch, I highlighted the rivets with a Prismacolor Soft Core Sepia pencil.  While I did highlight all the rivets, I did not count them. 

All that was left was the windows and shades.  The problem with the GGD windows is they are quite thick, and that would be really obvious if I put shades behind them per the prototype photo. A bigger problem was that most would no longer fit due to all my butchering. Once again, Adhesive Transfer tape came to the rescue:

I glued  Evergreen 9006 .010” clear styrene to Evergreen Corrugated metal siding #4527 (to simulate the shades).  These were slightly larger than the window opening, so they would fit into a recess in the backside.  Care had to be taken to make sure the Plastiweld did not wick into the front of the shade.  So that meant the primary bond was from the top and bottom.  In some cases I was able to do the both of the paired windows, but for the “jigsaw” side I had to do each window separately.

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While the transfer tape held reasonably well, I did go back and add a drop or two of five minute epoxy to help secure things. Care had to be taken to ensure it did not run out into the front surface

I also added the internal handrail. It’s a bit too high, but that is an artifact of the internal bracing. It prevented me from getting any lower and still be able to see what I was doing.

So now the car is done:

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To save you the arduous task of scrolling up the page, here's the prototype again

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Oh, and even though it’s not strictly correct, I just had to have a soft green light emanating from the baggage compartment:

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After I took that photo, I realized I had just built the scale equivalent of my old Lionel 6805 Atomic Energy Disposal Car

And here it is, “hiding in plain sight” in my mail train:

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Last edited by John Sethian
Original Post

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Another superb article -- thank you for writing these, and explaining not only what you did, but [ as the title says ] "How......".

In my opinion the DRGW vehicle in the photograph is one of the steam generator cars that the Rio Grande converted from steam locomotive tenders.  This suggests the photo was taken somewhere on their line of road.

With best regards, SZ

[ Auric Goldfinger would have had the stencil resprayed to "Return to US Army, Ft Knox.......]

Thanks everyone for the encouraging comments!  Particularly considering the skills you guys have!  A lot of the techniques I used were learned from this forum (Malcolm's use of bar soap to help get smooth cuts. Max's Port Elderly Series, Erik's TOFC series and Flanger's N8 cabin car were but a few of many.)  Sharing techniques is the most valuable thing I get out of this forum, so I that's why I write these.  

This was a fun project, albeit a bit tedious at times.  

rattler21 posted:

I cannot imagine the number of times you had to 'just a tad off this piece' to make each cut edge fit as well as it does.  

Rattler was spot on with that comment. There were a few times that unprintable utterances were heard from the basement 

SANTIAGOP23 posted:

Adding coupler cut bars and steam lines should help the GGD sleepers look!

Good point. But I have decided to wait for the GGD Detail Fairy to descend upon my layout one night and not only add cut levers and PSC Barco steam connectors, but proper (Scale City) diaphragms, brake hoses with glad hands, and window shades.  Not to mention reposition the coupler boxes to shorten the intercar gap to all my GGD cars.   I have about 30 of them.   It hasn't happened yet, but I remain optimistic.

Last edited by John Sethian

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