Owners of Lionel 21" Observation cars.

Norton posted:

If GGD offers an alternative then for sure that would be an option but in the case of the Union Pacific Excursion cars I am not aware of GGD doing anything close other than the 4 car Train of Tomorrow. K-Lines cars are OK but again represent the cars as built, not as they appear today. 

Pete

My fond hope was that GGD would do the Excursion Cars but for whatever reason - maybe it was licensing - they did not and so the only reasonably accurate version is the Lionel ABS cars. These do have something that I have not seen in any other 3rail O gauge cars, which is accurate domes. Sure, Lionel took some annoying short cuts like no passengers but then GGD's "Little People" are, frankly, not great figures. 

It is no easy/short job to detail the interiors of these cars but it's very rewarding if you do, IMHO. My projects also tend to get more elaborate as they go, which is a great enemy of efficiency/speed. 

Norton posted:

I just finished relocating the couplers on all of my UP passenger cars. The last one was the Observation from the Challenger set. Turns out this car did come with supports to secure the rear body to the frame unlike the Excursion Observation. Also it was devoid of extra tape below the widows so it came apart easily. As this set came out about year after the Excursion cars it looks like changes were made at the factory to do a better job. 

No idea if Lionel will make these available to owners of cars where these are missing.

Clearly visible in the rear window.

Pete

 

A solderless approach , just get a piece of strip brass   make 2 pieces bend flanges at each end , drill a hole on each end to mount paint it to match interior , once screwed to the body and the bottom flange tapped for a 4-40 machine screw , there you have it , most likely will be unnoticeable once assembled , use a flat paint so no glare to draw attention . See diagram 

Many ways to skin a cat. I suspect many will find your solution easier to fabricate.

Pete

It may be a crazy idea but why not offer these special cars in kit form. We have to take them apart paint put people in anyway. I mean a real kit with sepertly molded chairs so we could paint them and doors for all the rooms. It may be a little more expensive but so much easier for everyone who wants to really bring these case to life.

They (the 21" ABS cars) were supposed to be easy to take apart so that you could get at the interior to color it up and add passengers if you wanted. The second run are not easy to take apart because of the excess tape but it can be done. The limitation is the one-piece mouldings that make up the interior assembly. 

All this departed from old Lionel and K-Line passenger interiors that had a lot of separately applied parts, which must have been labor-intensive (= extra cost) to assemble. There are still a few old K-Line interior kits around from which you can scavenge seats, tables and even partitions. But as far as Lionel's scale cars are concerned, the parts you get are those in the assembled cars. As far as I know there are no spare parts even if you wanted them.

Kits would not fit into Lionel's business model for these cars. Nice idea but I don't see them offering that option. There are a few threads, including one by AlexM, about the first run of these cars and how to paint/detail the interiors. But that did not involve adding entirely new interior fittings.