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.  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, sadly the pdf link above doesn't have the modeler's name on it that I could give him his proper credit here.

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!

The roof needs a large number of strips with rivets added.  The original kitbasher 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Related Articles:

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

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