Kitbashing SFE 1524 (Part 2) - Interior of HW Dorm-Lounge - ex-Chair

It's been a few months since I posted Kitbashing SFE 1524 (Part 1) of this series.  While I worked on some other Shadowline projects, several friends have sent me the additional information on these cars, which I need to continue with it.   

History

These cars were converted from 1924 and 1930 built Heavyweight coaches in the 2950-class.  My chosen car, SFE 1524 was originally the 2958, then to chair-smoker 3128 in 6/36 with addition of air-conditioning to the whole group of 14 cars.  

Dorm-side of the Santa Fe 1524 Lounge-Dorm.

Eight of these cars were rebuilt in 1947-48 from partitioned coach-smokers into Dorm-Lounges for service on Grand Canyon service and other long-haul trains on the Santa Fe requiring dormitory space.  (No more sleeping on the dining tables!)

The 1524 was converted in Sept, 1948.  The 1524 was repainted by June 18, 1952 according to the Letter by H. B. Wolfe to the Santa Fe painting shops in Topeka (near bottom of web-page linked) regarding the status of remaining shadowlined cars and the cars that had already been repainted into Two-Tone Gray. Only 1531 and 1537 (different class) remained in Shadowline scheme as of the letter's writing date, but as I had a photo showing the 1524, I chose to model it.

Interior of the Lounge section coming together...

One of the things that a friend sent was the floor plan for the converted 1948 Dorm-Lounge configuration.  The cars were fitted with a mid-car bar where the server/bar-tender could work from.  There was a larger room for the steward with a twin-bunk, and then about 12 bunks in the other three rooms with triple-bunks.  The lounge seating had 8 lounge chairs, four twin-sofas and two 4-seat tables, completing the mixed lounge space.  This car would be run Dorm-forward.  

SFE 1458 San Diego 1948 - Stan Kistler collection, Colin Kilawa collection, from his article modeling SFE 1456.

I'm not 100% sure, but usually the lounge cars are run behind the diners.  The 1948 photo of Santa Fe 1458 in San Diego shows what I believe is a shadowlined HW 1521-class car, Dorm-Lounge on the north end of the diner, next to its kitchen, which would be the forward end of the two cars for the trip north to Los Angeles or Barstow.  Unfortunately, we can't see the rest of the shadowlined chair car.

Now the 1524 and 1525, and I believe many of this class of Dorm-Lounge were assigned to the Transcon-portion of the Grand Canyon (Nos.23/24), but not the 'North' section to Oakland from Barstow. However, if 1524 was needed for the lounge space, perhaps it could occasionally be grabbed to make a trip if there was extra through cars to Oakland. The photo of a possible Dorm-Lounge in San Diego hints that these cars could have wondered somewhat if assignments required it. As for my premise of using one on the Barstow-Oakland trains, it would have to be one of these 'wondering' trips not a 'regular assignment.' Given the timing the dorm space would seem not to be needed on the northward Grand Canyon (No.23N) nor the return trip on the California Limited (No.4N) back to Barstow, which had the HW diner, which probably provided any snack and lounge-type service needed for the 3-5 through cars. Snack-lounge service would be available west of Bakersfield on the Golden Gate's Lunch-Counter car and then after connecting to the Transcon trains, or visa versa. I'll get into car assignments in a future post, as it gets... complicated. But I'll just say here that, given that the 1521-series cars were only half-Lounge cars, if there were too many passengers, for example a chartered section of a train (8 to 12 sleepers) that train would probably use a full lounge and diner to itself. So the use of a 1521-class car would have to be a 'Goldilocks' situation, needed, but not too few or too many.

Five 3120-class cars remained as 1936 chair-smokers, and an additional four cars were converted in 1952 to baggage cars, never being converted to Dorm-Lounges. One of the 2900-series cars was converted to MW service in 1951, and several more from chair-smokers by the mid-1960s.  One 2900-series car was destroyed in 1943 with the rest, and conversions, lasting to at least 1960 before starting to be retired or sold off.

The Floor Plan

New styrene interior floor.

I decided to break from Colin Kikawa's kitbash of Santa Fe 1525 by scratch-building my interior floor instead of stripping the Walthers HW floor all the way down to nothing, which is what would be required.  In addition to the sheet styrene floor, I custom cut some blocks of 0.040" styrene to become thread-nuts for 2-56 screws from below the floor up into the base of the interior.

Test fitting into the interior of the car.

One of the problems I had with pulling out the original interior is that the weights were released by doing that!  Thus to keep the weights from bouncing around inside the car and getting into trouble, at least fitting the styrene sheet and screwing it in will keep the car from damaging itself. 

Time to Form the Walls

I'm building the interior out of 0.020" sheet styrene.  I'm using Tamyia liquid styrene glue and my machinist 1-2-3 blocks to keep everything square and true.  The 0.020" styrene is very easy to cut with scissors and No.11 Xacto knife.

The Lounge section marked out for chairs, sofas, and tables in the center.

I like how balanced the lounge space is inside this floor plan.  Some single lounge chairs, which could be moved around or turned to have conversations, the twin-sofa chairs forming the core of the four corners of the lounge, and then the central tables at the middle window to gather more closely around drinks or snacks, play cards or whatever.  Given how loud the ride was on the Tioga Pass when I road it on jointed rail in 2017, it was hard to hold a conversation without yelling only a couple of chairs away when you're traveling over 60 MPH.  Conversation wasn't too bad at 20-40 MPH.

Bar area with 2-56 screw holding the interior in place from the underframe of the car.

I went ahead and sketched in the bunks and walls inside the Dorm space.  The bunks have diagonal cross-hatch, showing how little free floor space the crews had in their dorm rooms.

Close-up of the Dormitory space.  I still need to frame out the annex in the front right corner of the car.

The aisle area needs to have a long stainless steel safety rail installed, which I'll be doing soon.  I've already installed the window shades across this section of the Dorm, I may adjust the color to be a darker gun-metal color so there's some contrast to the same color that I used on the exterior of the car for the shadowline scheme.

Overview of the completed interior walls from the left side.

The Dormitory space would have some partitions splitting it into four rooms, but with my dorm window shades pulled down, I'm not sure I really need to do any more interior in that portion of the car.

Completed interior walls from the right side.

The aisle side of the 1524 with the interior walls fitted.  The next steps from here are building out the bar and fitting the seats and tables.  I'm figuring to paint the interior after the bar is in place and I'll paint the seats and table parts before I mount them.

A couple top views here to show my sketched details.

Painting the Interior

Checking my 'through the window' view of the table seats.

Close-up of the sides with shadowline looks really nice.

Starting to position the tabe seats... which I missed centering them perfectly. - Oh well.

 
I decided on a darkened red for the floor compared to Colin's model.  I used Apple Barrel 'Bright Red' with 'Brown Oxide', which is more of a freight car red/brown, to darken it and knock down the glaringly bright side of the red.

Top of the mounting screw painted floor red to blend in.

Palace Car Co. Dining Car seats and table are used after a quick coat of very light tan/straw color.

Planning out the table chairs.

I went ahead and painted the interior walls with a light tan, I'm not sure what the prototype had in terms of interior colors, but I think this fits with the 'southwestern' color scheme that the Santa Fe liked to use on their cars.

The furniture layed out for painting beyond the 1524's body.

Roughing in the tables and starting to scratch away the red floor paint to glue the seats in place.

The car floor plans that one of my friends sent me showed the tables had their corners cut, resulting in this interesting shape.  As these were drink and snack tables, not full dining tables, this follows that they would be a smaller type of table.

Starting by locating the twin-sofa chairs relative to the windows on the left side.

Next are the straw-colored twin chair car seats from Palace Car, but with their head rests cut off to match the height of the single lounge chairs they offer.

Right side of the twin lounge seating.

I took quite a bit of effort to get the placement correct from the drawings.

Top view of the Lounge seating in place.

Roughing out the placement of the interior seats.

Close up of the aisle-side of the Lounge seating.  Still need the magazine rack and the writing desk.

I scratched away the acrylic paint from under the seats with a flat screw driver.  I'd push the seat out of the way, but taking note of exactly where the edge was, with the blade of the screw driver.  Then scrape away the paint so that the Tamyia glue would work on the plastic furniture.

Left-side of the Lounge seating.  I still need to build the Bar.

A couple of the seats I decided to turn the seats for future patrons to be holding a conversation.  After all, the chairs, just like the window shades, would only stay in their normal positions when the attendants had prepped the car at the beginning of the trip or first thing in the morning.

Wrapped up the majority of the lounge seating.

Here's how my interior looks overall after mounting the various tables and chairs.

Dorm

Dorm interior before mounting the dorm walls.

At the end of the last part I covered all the dorm windows with the Scotch-Tape and then this section of painted paper window shades.

I painted the interior of the Dorm black.

I painted the interior of the dorm black so that light leaks will be limited, without this the 0.020" styrene otherwise will 'glow' if I put in lighting later.

Dorm interior partitions added and painted Apple Barrel Light Mocha color.

I went ahead and put in the dividing wall sections.  I also sketched out the bunks... I doubt I'm going to be building the bunks, as the windows will be sanded glass, preventing much detail to actually be seen.  Also with all but about 6" of the windows being covered with the window shades, there's nothing to see.

Right side view of the interior of the Dorm rooms.  Far right room is the Steward's Room.

I'm debating if I want to add some detail on the aisle side for where the dorm room doors would be visible through the aisle windows.

Top view of the dorm partitions.

Aisle side of the left side with the interior wall painted a lighter tan.  I have not installed the safety rail yet along the windows.

Finally Fixing the Damage?

Original damaged area of the frame flange... No idea how it happened, but our jobs are to fix the revenue passenger equipment and get it back on the road!

I don't know how this car got damaged... but about 1" of the lower flange of the frame C-channel was chewed up.  Over ambitious mice with a hankering for a plastic chew-toy?

Here's after I cleaned out the damaged area with a No.11 blade.

I removed the damaged section of the lower flange with a blade, then squared up the ends of the damaged area in prep for the replacement styrene strip. 

First try with 0.020" doesn't fill the damaged area up to the existing flange size.

Originally I planned to use a 0.010" x 0.020" strip, like my trim molding on the 'Surprise Valley', but instead settled on the wider 0.020" x 0.040" which filled the space properly.

I like this version better.  Maybe a tad on the thick side, as this is 0.020" thick strip.

I made sure to put the new strip right against the bottom of the channel.  Tamyia liquid glue worked very well to weld it in place to the freshly cleaned out area of the car.  A bit of damage to the Aluminum paint from the glue, but that was easily fixed.  I lightly sanded and adjusted the outer edge to blend well with the stock flange, plus I don't want any risk of the repaired flange catching on anything and re-damaging the body again.

Second try with the 0.040" looks much better.

I've also run a Silver Sharpie across the area to paint it back to match the Tamyia Gloss Aluminum (then dullcoated) paint.  I found that the Silver Sharpies are a pretty good touch-up match for various "Aluminum" color paints.

Dorm windows with ScotchTape 'sanded glass' finish from the inside.

My Scotch Taped dorm windows do a good job of breaking up any shapes from showing what's in the Dorm rooms.  I removed the paper window shades for now, as the multiple removals of the interior will tare them up with the close clearances.  I also have been wanting to change the color of the window shades to not be so close to the same Aluminum color as the body has.

In Closing, Let's See How It Looks!

Left side of the lounge from the exterior.

The left side of the lounge as viewed through the windows.  Can't see much until I put some subtle car lighting in, but I like the look so far.  As I get the rest of the details in, I'll also probably put some passengers relaxing in the lounge space.

The right side of the Lounge from the exterior.

So far I'm pleased with how the interior of this car's coming along.  Who knows, I may even put some drinks or snacks on the table... or maybe some playing cards...

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Kitbashing SFE 1524 (Part 1) - Shadowlining a HW Chair Car

SFE 1458 Diner in Shadowline scheme

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 1) with a Rivarossi Model and Opening Thoughts - My on kitbashing a Rivarossi HW Diner into a Shadowlined Santa Fe diner, circa 1948.

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 2) - More Body Work and Paint - My Part 2 on kitbashing a Rivarossi HW Diner into a Shadowlined Santa Fe diner, circa 1948.

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 3) - Mechanical Upgrades - My Part 3 on kitbashing a Rivarossi HW Diner into a Shadowlined Santa Fe diner, circa 1948.

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 4) - Shadowlines - My Part 4 on kitbashing a Rivarossi Diner decaling the car into Shadowline scheme.