Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 3) - Mechanical Upgrades

In my previous post, Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 2), I covered "More Body Work and Paint". 

SFE 1458 Right Side

 In this post, I'll be finishing up the body detail work and get the basic mechanicals sorted out on the car.

SFE 1458 Left Side

So let's get working on mounting the trucks!

Coupler Box Mounts (Part 1)

Styrene frame filling block 0.250" x 0.060" and 1.175" long (max) will fit between the end of the car and the bolster pad area.  The actual distance between the frames is more like 0.245", so I'll need to scrape, file or sand a little bit of plastic off the side of the styrene block.

A-End frame filler block fitted.

I flowed in several brush-loads of Tamyia Liquid Glue to weld the styrene blocks into the ends of the frame, between the centersill members.  The exact height of the coupler pads will be added on after the truck-right height at the bolsters and the Walthers trucks is worked out.  Drilling of #50 holes for the Kadee coupler boxes will also be done near the end of assembly, when Diaphragms are fitted and the position on the length of these frame filling strips are determined and marked for the mounting holes.

B-End frame filler block fitted.

The Frames over-all width is 0.353", so I set my calipers to 0.176" and scribe a new centerline on the new plastic filler block, which will become the centerline for the new coupler box installation.  I ran a mechanical pencil along the scribed line, and wiped off the extra carbon, to highlight the scribe.

Weight Fitting

My usual plan for weighting Rivarossi cars is to put a couple of lead bars cut from roof-flashing material.  In this case a couple of 1/8" sections were salvaged from a kitbashed and scrapped Diner that I had from about 25 years ago.

Test fitting the salvaged underframe weight into the SFE 1458.

Some minor 'black-smithing' with an anvil and small hammer is required to straighten the weight after pulling it out of the scrapped body of the old diner.

SFE 1458 with test fitting of weights.

I ended up cutting a 1/16" or so off the end of the weight after reshaping it.  Combined with the metal Walthers trucks, I don't think I'll need to fill the ends of the centersill with weight on the SFE 1458 model.

Filling Centersill Cutaway

The tight radius designed underframe for the Rivarossi car required their cutting away of the ends of the fishbelly centersill shape, which overlap the truck's sideframes and inboard wheelsets.  Obviously, modern Walthers and other RTR cars are not expecting to be operated on 18" Radius curves, so likewise my kitbash is planned for operation on greater than 30" Radius curves.  Thus I'm planning to replace the prototypical sloped center sill shape.

The rough filler pieces cut from 0.250" x 0.060" styrene strip.

These rough pieces ended up being WAY taller than needed, so I could have made them from much narrower strips and saved on the material removal later.

Filler glued in place, waiting final shaping.

I tried to keep as much of the rivets on the bottom of the Rivarossi underframe, but didn't feel too bad about loosing a few.  This is all not really going to be visible, outside of a profile shape seen hanging below the body of the car, so I'm not really making a huge deal about getting the proper I-beam shape and flanges, etc modeled.

Fillers after shaped down to size with flush cutters, then mill file.

The Walthers trucks that I plan to use also have depressed truck frame ends, which allow for the prototypical centersill shape.

Trucks & Bolster Changes

Looking at the prototype photo from Stan Kistler collection, from Colin Kikawa's article in SF Warbonnet, shows the trucks to be most similar to the Pullman 2411 style truck, although the prototype was probably a Santa Fe-Pullman variant of this type of truck. 

Walthers Pullman 2411 Truck

Walthers #920-2204, 2411 6-Wheel Heavyweight Passenger Truck (Note that Walthers liked to change part numbers for these truck series multiple times over the years.  You may have to look up the same name truck, but under current SKU number.

Walther's only other options are the W106 plain-bearing truck (which has the corner steel straps from the truck frame ends down to the outer journals of the truck) or a Pullman 242 truck, which are also very unique looking and obviously not what the Santa Fe diner has under SFE 1458 in 1948.

New Truck Bolster Hole

Trucks with the ejector pin marked for drilling the new bolster hole.

Truck bolster is 0.397" wide, so again, dividing that in half, 0.1985".  However this time I decided to go with the back-to-back distance between the sideframes, 0.860", half is 0.430", what can I say, sometimes you have to change your plan when you're working out these dimensions and trying to get an accurate scribe in.

Truck bolster holes drilled, I enlarged them after this to full clearance size for 2-56 screws.

I then flipped the trucks over and scribed a line across the truck at 0.315" in from the end of the bolster that doesn't have the larger hole.  There's an ejector pin witness mark there, and I then mark the center of the hole along the centerline of that with a chisel-blade X-acto.  I could have also used my carbide scribe for this, but the blade worked.

Painting the Trucks Aluminum

Walthers Pullman 2411 6-Wheel Truck, shown under my SFE 1458 and painted Aluminum.

I painted the 2411s for my SFE 1458 with the same Tamyia Gloss Aluminum as the rest of the car.  I did more of a dusting, not a 100% coverage, as the prototype's trucks were dirty aluminum, so this paint just needs to provide the base color, primarily on the journal lids and the parts of the truck that stick out from the shadows under the car.

Body Bolster Mechanical Changes

Truck screw location marked.

Not really needed, but I marked where I expected to drill the bolster screw hole.  This location will be covered by the bolster block.  I suppose I could have cut down the Rivarossi bolster boss, but decided the new bolster would structurally clear the original center bolster.

A-end body bolster block

I built the basic bolster from a piece of 0.250" x 0.125" styrene.

B-end body bolster block

Perspective view of the block added to form the bolster for the Walthers truck.

The 0.250" x 0.125" styrene block and marked for center hole.  I used a No.50 to drill the bolster hole and tapped the hole for the 2-56 bolster screw. 

SFE 1458 with 2-56 tapped threads.

After checking the ride height of the car against other completed models (my Walthers Santa Fe Chair cars), I added pair of 0.015" Kadee (Red) Washers to each bolster to bring the car up to a good height comparing the top of the bodies.  The coupler installation will come quite a bit later, after I have installed the diaphragms, which will set the coupling distance of the car.

Final Body Changes

Looking at larger zoomed in views of the SFE 1458 at San Diego, shows that there were two splice plates for each of the lower car-sides.

Spice Plates

Left side placement of the splice plates.

I scrapped away the rivets below the belt for about 3-4", which will receive a plate of 0.060" x 0.010" styrene and then a double-row of rivet decals.

Right side placement of the splice plates.

  The final coat of Aluminum paint will have to wait until these splice plates and rivets are done.

Here's the styrene strips glued to carside with the Archer Rivets applied.

These splice plates will be covered completely by the shadowline stripes, so they don't have to be 'perfect', but to cause some breaking up of the shadowlines and casting some different shadows of their own.

Detail view of the new splice plate with rivets.

Here's a detail view of one of the splice plates after I had put on the last coat of Gloss Aluminum.

Replacing Rivets

Right side vent with vertical Archer Rivet replacements.

I also need to put two vertical rivet rows to replace the rows on each side of the blind-end of the car's vents that I covered and sanded aggressively last post. 

Left side vent with vertical Archer Rivet replacements.

These Archer Rivets that I received for "Pullmans" didn't really have the right spacing for this application, so I went with the wider spacing, just to put "something" back onto the side of the car.  The upper portions of this area will be covered with Shadowline stripes, so I'm not bothering to replace the horizontal rivets on the vent patch.

In Closing

SFE 1458 Left side's ready for decals!

Generally this wraps up the mechanical and finish detail work on the sides of the car.

SFE 1458 Right side's also ready for decals.

In the next blog post I'll be covering applying the 'much feared in the hobby' Shadowline decals!

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 1) with a Rivarossi Model and Opening Thoughts - My Part 1 of this kitbash.

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 2) - More Body Work and Paint - My Part 2 of this kitbash.

Articles from Other Authors:

SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash by Colin Kikawa, along with multiple other interesting kitbashes - Enjoy!

Tom Casey's ATSF_hwt_Diner.pdf - SFE 1404 Kitbashed Diner

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 2) - More Body Work and Paint

In the previous article, Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 1), I covered the overview and some starting body work.  

Left side of SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash as of 20260425

Right side of SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash as of 20260425

Let's continue on in this post with the rest of the body work details.  The Decals also came, so I'm looking forward to putting some paint on the body and then doing the "complicated" Shadowline decals on... which everyone says is hard, but look fairly easy.  I believe most of that challenge will be in the details of getting the edges of the Shadowlining to match up with the faux-letterboard lines, etc to get the lettering to look good on the car.  I will say that I haven't sorted the 0.005" Styrene that I need to for the roof rivet strips, so I'll delay all work on the roof until Part 3.  Let's get started!

Witness Paint Coat and Finishing Louvers

I'm using Tamyia Spray Gloss Aluminum for my silver paint on the car.  The underframe, trucks and roof will have to catch up later.  So when you see the body suddenly change from brown to silver is when I figured I was far enough along to start moving into the witness coats.

Finishing Frame Flanges

Left side frame extension to the end of the car.

I grabbed a couple more short strips of the 0.020" x 0.010" to form the end sections of the flange outward from the stirrup steps.  

Right side flange extension to the car-end

Once I got them to weld in place with the Tamyia Liquid Glue, I used my flush cutting nippers to cut off the extra plastic strip even with the end of the channel sidesill frames.

Door Panels

As the photos above show the door modifications, let's finish up looking at that detail.

Chamfering of the corner complete on the left (kitchen) side.

I used a section of Evergreen 108 to fashion the bulge panel onto the sides of the kitchen door.

Chamfering of the corner complete on the right (aisle) side.

Filling Vent Louvers

So last time I was focusing on plating over the upper transom windows, this time I'm doing the other body filling work on the dining room end of the car.  

I used Evergreen Scale Models #107 (0.010" x 0.156") and #108 (0.010" x 0.188") styrene strips to fill in the vent louver areas.  I had to narrow the material a little more and spend some time getting it to fit, then bond in with a healthy drop of Tamyia Liquid Plastic Glue, then using the tip of my Xacto blade to drop the filling plate into the opening.  This did tend to squeeze some plastic out near the rivet rows, which I'll have to sand or scrape down with the tip of the Xacto blade when it dries.

Plugs placed into the vent cavities.

I removed the horizontal rivets above and below the louver areas, trying not to touch the rivets on the letterboard, roof edge, or belt rivets, only the ones on the middle of the window band.  

Rough scraping with the edge of the Xacto blade wasn't clean enough, as shown by the first witness coat of aluminum paint.

I also tried to keep the two vertical rows of rivets, but it's very hard to get the sanded and filled area right up to the edge of the rivets.

More aggressive flat scraping with a chisel blade before sanding 

Eventually, I gave up on trying to keep the vertical rivet rows as well, just like Colin Kikawa did on his kitbash.

More scraping!

These vent plus probably have taken the most focus of any part of this kitbash so far to get it to come out smooth and finished with good fit.

Time to get into sanding, but trying not to hit the other rivet rows.

At this point I started working with much finer sand paper to clean up the final and very fine issues.  

Micro sanding pads from Hobby Lobby (which is about my only 'local' hobby shop).

I also alternated this with limited point-applied surfacing primer to fill some of the very small holes where the plug was not 100% effective in closing the vent and providing a solid surface.

Over the last 5-10 years I've come to the conclusion that 'fillers' such as Squadron White really are only useful for large and grossly problematic holes and surface issues.  Filling 0.005-0.010" seem lines and stuff really needs a more fluid filling material, not the flaky paste of the Squadron White.  So in the last 1-2 years, this is now what I'm starting to use when I need a 'thin viscosity filler'.

Window Sill Modifications

Kitchen window modifications.

I looked a little closer at the prototype Stan Kistler photo in San Diego and decided that I need to raise the lower window frames by a couple inches. 

Intermediate window modification.

I used 0.060" high x 0.040" deep styrene strips on the intermediate small windows in the space between the pantry and the dining section.  The Kitchen windows need a series of 0.04" x 0.04" styrene strips.  I scrapped the inner edges of the windows to remove the paint down to the bare plastic so that I could use the Tamyia liquid glue to weld the styrene strips in place.

More Surface Work

After my first pass on the dark gray areas around the windows.

This close work on the Kitchen window sills made me take closer note of the remains of the incorrectly tooled window bottom sills, which I mostly removed earlier.  However I left behind some very shallow remains, which the Aluminum witness coat made more obvious that I would need to still deal with some more.

I did a bit more scraping with the chisel blade to take down the last of the ribs.

This area is still not received another witness coat as of April 25th, but should clean up nicely at this point.

Overview of Progress

This is how the model looks with the roof put back in place as of April 25th, 2026.

Left side of SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash as of 20260425

The areas around the kitchen windows still shows the last of the cleaning up needing another witness coat, as does the finely sanded area of the covered vents at the rear end of the car.

Right side of SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash as of 20260425

The right side is pretty well finished up, just needing another witness shot at the rear of the car where I did the final sanding on the vent patching.  I did do a total of about three cycles on the vent patches to get them to really be closed and sanded smooth.

Future Plans & Closing

I am considering looking closer at the prototype photos to see if there should be any remaining vertical rivet lines on the sides of the vents.  If so, I'll use some Archer Rivet decals, but I'd like to do that before I do the last witness coat.

I'm also considering doing the rest of the body's mechanical work to do all the work to install the couplers, truck bolster modifications, and prep the ends for the Hi-Tech Diaphrams to be fitted.  The roof and underframe detailing work is still in the future.  I also am planning to put in cut lead sheet down the centersill fish-belly to provide the car's weight.  I want to have that all done before I start doing the Shadowline decals, so as not to risk damaging them during the mechanical work and handling.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 1) with a Rivarossi Model and Opening Thoughts - My Part 1 of this kitbash.

Articles from Other Authors:

SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash by Colin Kikawa, along with multiple other interesting kitbashes - Enjoy!

Tom Casey's ATSF_hwt_Diner.pdf - SFE 1404 Kitbashed Diner

Kitbashing SFE 1456-class HW Diner (Part 1) with a Rivarossi Model and Opening Thoughts

Jason, Why Are You Modeling The Santa Fe?!

For many years I've thought about doing a Santa Fe Heavyweight passenger train.  Probably something like a Grand Canyon or California Limited consist.  A number of a years ago I also picked up some Walthers HW metal-sided kits for various Santa Fe cars to do such a project, mostly these were HW Chair Cars and a HW Lounge, but I didn't get a dining car sadly.  Thankfully, I knew the Rivarossi HW Diner is a good starting point for a fairly involved kitbash for a SFE 1456-class Diner using Colin Kikawa's pdf file from the 4th Quarter Warbonnet (which is also on-line in pdf form, linked here).  So that's what we'll be looking at first.

The goal of my kitbash is to do a modern kitbash of this kitbashed model by Colin Kikawa.

I've also decided to model this car as one of the Santa Fe's unique "Shadowlined" cars with the faux fluting, which was painted on over the aluminum painted HW cars to blend in with the newer Santa Fe streamlined trains circa 1947-1948 (iirc).  The Santa Fe kept some cars in this scheme for a while after the extra Budd consist cars were delivered, until most of them were repainted into the TTG by the 1950-1952 era, as I recall.

I also don't really want to paint the Santa Fe's TTG scheme on any more cars than I have to.  Many of my cars for this project will need to be painted in the more 'classic' Santa Fe 'Coach Green' and I'll be debating what scheme to paint the HW Lounge in.  

Santa Fe's TTG scheme was not like SP's, but added a splash of Aluminum (Silver) to the roof and trucks.

Speaking of Santa Fe TTG, I already have one TTG car, a Walthers 6-6-4 that I'll plan to include in my train, the Chama Valley.  I still need to do some finishing on the model, a little running weathering and some window shades will be nice to give the car a more completed look. 

For my example here, a Centralia Shops N-scale 6-6-4 in MoPac scheme that I'm considering doing.  This image is one I found on a ebay sale tonight. - Where's all my MoPac modelers to help me with this one?

I also have a second Walthers 6-6-4, which is undecorated that I picked up about 15 years ago with the intention to paint it also in either the 'shadowlined' scheme or in the much more challenging MP Eagle's blue and gray-scheme, if I can find some good decals and paint color info for doing that scheme, that is.  So far, my research suggests the name 'Colorado River' would be a good choice for the car.  Sadly, I've never seen a Walthers 6-6-4 car done in the MoPac's scheme.

The reason for the seemingly random choice for MP car is that the two 6-6-4s that they regularly used on the Richmond (Oakland) Grand Canyon "North" trains used one that was assigned for the through passengers to New Orleans on the MoPac connection.  Thus 1/3 of the days a MP car was assigned to the pool to balance mileage for that assignment.  So it wouldn't be a surprise to see a MP 6-6-4 running in the Santa Fe's train west of New Mexico.

Tom Casey's SFE 1404 extreme kitbashing of two Rivarossi Diners to make his model. - his photo taken from his pdf kitbashing article, linked below.

One of my delaying factors was that my friends pointed out that the larger 1401-1418-class cars should be used for modeling the HW trains that went over Tehchapi Pass, but at this point I don't want to go to the trouble of kitbashing a 1401-class car.  Those cars have been modeled before by extensive kitbashing, as seen on Tom Casey's ATSF_hwt_Diner.pdf on the old.atsfrr.org website page.  While Tom did an AWESOME job on this model, I am already up to my ears in SP Diner-bashing projects!

The Starting Point for My Diner

I'm deciding to start with a second hand PRR-painted Rivarossi HW Diner body.  Most of the modifications are removing a couple of the older kitchen window dividing frames, and adding a lower flange to the car's channel-frame, which is visible below the side-sheets.  In the kitbash pdfs that I'm using for reference, they remove the whole underframe and replace it with completely new styrene fabricated floor and underframe.  That's a bit too much work to do on this 'simple' kitbash, so I'll be keeping the underframe of the Rivarossi car and only doing the modifications.

Right side of the car with no work done yet.

Left side of the car with minimal work on the vertical kitchen window bars.

I seemed not to have taken a picture of the kitchen windows before I removed the vertical bars from them.  Oh well.  Here's the mostly stock left side of the car.

Detail view of the kitchen windows being cleaned up.

The upper windows (called "gussets" according the Santa Fe articles, but SP modelers would know these as "transom windows") need to be covered and filled, except for the kitchen windows, which were kept as full height windows on the Santa Fe 1456 in San Diego.

Transoms Covered

Right side with roof installed, transom windows covered, and NERS A/C Duct installed.

The Dining section had the transom windows covered along with the aisle transoms covered as well.  I used some 0.010" x 0.100" strips cut to length to fit inside the depressed window frames.  The original kitbash article calls for 0.010" x 0.125", which I assume was done by removing the top of the bar of the window, and allowing the plate to cover down to the main window.

I had put a section of New England Rail Service air conditioning ducts on over the dining section.  The kitchen end of the duct is a little short, so I'll probably need to extend it a little with solid styrene, as we'll see later.

Left side with roof installed, transom windows in the dining area covered.

The left side is coming together with the transom windows going away in the dining area.  The prototype photo of 1458 in San Diego in Shadowlining, has the upper windows still operable, and the left two are open in that photo.

Adding Lower Flange to Frame Channel

Scrapped lower edge of the channel so the glue may bond to it.

While the original kitbashing article called to remove the whole channel details and replace it all with 0.100" x 0.030" vertical strip and 0.010" x 0.040" wide flange on the bottom, I don't really want to do all that so I'm trying a simpler version to see how it looks using a single 0.010" x 0.020" strip, which is aligned flat to the channel, this way it will only stick out 0.010" and be stronger bond to the body, making it less likely to get knocked off.

Strip installed down the length of the carside.

Mid-car frame flange.

Detail of flange across the stirrup step installed.

The main trick is that the end of the car, I need to make the flange look like it goes behind the stirrup steps.  After looking at this detail view, I still need to add some little bits of the strip at the very end!

Completed channel flange Right side.

Completed frame rail Left side.

The car body's starting to look pretty good now.  

Removing Unwanted Underframe Boxes & Tanks

Removing the Boxes and Tanks except for the double-box.

The double boxes are mostly correct for the SFE 1456-class, but the rest of the underbody tanks and boxes have to go.  I remove them by carefully cutting with my key-saw Zona razor-saw blade.  

Underside view with most of the bits removed, notice that the tank is part of the center sill.

I probably should have done this before adding the frame flanges, but I was able to do it without damaging the flange.  If I decide to remove the rest of the tank remains on the centersill, I'll have to do it with my Dremal end-mill bit, and very carefully mill it away.

3/4 underside view with parts removed.

I finished up with some light file work to clean the plastic edges of the boxes and tanks up to the channel flange.

Underside view of removed parts.

The new underbody parts will need to be built up with styrene blocks to support them below the channel flanges.  I'll also fill in the openings with some styrene plugs later.

Model Within The Model? - The Roof!

This is one of the fun parts of this whole conversion, building all the roof details!

Colin Kikawa's kitbash roof view photo, which is what I'm working from.

The roof needs a large number of strips with rivets added.  Colin Kikawa used 0.005" strips with rivets added.  I'll probably use some of my spare Archer Rivet strips to do this on the Santa Fe Diner which I picked up to do all the rivet replacement on SP 10014 project car.

I started by removing the existing details from the roof.  This includes three small box vents, the small roof hatch at the end of the car and also the injection point at the center of the car roof needed to have a little sanding and cleaning up.

Right side of the roof with my pencil notes.

I spent a bit of time working out from the photos of the other kitbashed model where the details should go.  The major square patches are where the Steam Injector Air Conditioning hatches go.  On this side there will be an overhanging vent intake and one of the small hinged hatches.  I'm using a mechanical pencil to sketch out where the details will go on the roof.

Left side of the roof with my pencil notes.

The lines across the center of the roof will have some narrower roof vents on them with a peak, for now I'm just roughing out the size of how large they will be.  The right two of the clerestory side vents should have a box vent built-up on them.  There will also be some smaller hinged hatches, one near the A/C duct and one between the door and the end of the car.

Straight down top view of the marks.

The roof hatches are roughly 6.5ft x 5ft towards the kitchen end and 5.5ft x 5ft long towards the middle of the car.  I may enlarge these bases of the Steam A/C hatches, as I have some new info that Colin Kikawa sent me.

Scribed bonding surface of the roof.

So I decided to scribe the roof with the corner of my chisle x-acto blade and then bond the hatch 0.020" base plate on with ACC glue.

The 5ft roof hatch is glued on now, and the 6.5ft one is scribbed to be glued on.

On the second hatch, I decided to glue a 0.040" x 0.040" styrene strip down the center to create a more pronounced ridge line to the hatch.  Extra ACC was used this time to fill the triangular voids between the hatch piece and the scribbed roof.

Here's with the second hatch bonded onto the roof.

If I end up needing to make these pads larger, I'll probably do that by adding strips of styrene of known size around the edges of the basic pads before I add the 0.010" cap sheet on the top.

The 6.5ft roof hatch needs 4" of elevation, so I added another 0.020" set of plates to it.

In Closing

Someday my shadowlined diner will be done?

I think that will do it for tonight... Lots more to do on this project but I'll close with the end-goal photo of what I hope to achieve when I'm done.

Jason Hill

P.S. Much and many thanks to Colin for getting in contact with me and offering more support for this project.  I look forward to putting some more information into the next part of this blog as I continue working on this model.  Currently, I'm researching and digging up parts to continue the project.

Related Articles:

SFE 1456-class Diner kitbash by Colin Kikawa, along with multiple other interesting kitbashes - Enjoy!

Tom Casey's ATSF_hwt_Diner.pdf - SFE 1404 Kitbashed Diner