Modeling SP passenger cars, Part 21

In a previous post, I described lettering for my two streamlined Southern Pacific passenger cars, a 13 double bedroom car (13 DB) and a 4 double bedroom–4 compartment—2 drawing room or 4-4-2 car. I included mention of two sources of decals for these cars in Lark service. That post can be found here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/modeling-sp-passenger-cars-part-18.html .

Then we come to full-width diaphragms, which I wanted to place on one of these cars. I had a pair of suitable parts in my stash for years, and had to poke around to find out their source. They are brass, and it turns out they were made by Samhongsa, for Key Imports, originally as a test sample for some Daylight equipment planned by Key. They are non-working representations of the full-width design.

As you can see above, the part has tabs above and below the door which presumably were intended to attach to a car body. These interfere with the door surround on a Rivarossi car body, so I cut them off. I painted the brass interior and exterior areas with Lark Dark Gray (the color of the car ends), and attached the parts to the car end of my 13 DB model with canopy glue. At this point, the aisle side looked like the photo below.

The next step was to add the Lark color scheme of Two-Tone Gray (TTG) to the outer edges of the diaphragm parts, and black aligned with the roof. This was done by hand with a brush. The completed bedroom side of the car is shown below.

A second project among my existing fleet of passenger cars is one of the Rivarossi streamlined 10-6 (10 roomettes-6 double bedrooms) models, painted in Lark colors and lettered SP 9049. It lacks weight, and has only a partial view block (made with Bristol board). 

In fact, the entire interior should be blocked, because all the accommodations are rooms with doors. You should only be able to see through the car with doors open, which normally they would not be. You can see below that I originally added a view block along the side aisle, which borders the double bedrooms, but not beyond into the roomette area.

I made another view block with styrene, adding a heavy styrene strip along the bottom to act as a foot, and painted it dark gray (Tamiya “German Gray”) on both sides. This is then easy to install with canopy glue inside the car.

Finally, I added two weights, 1/2-13 steel nuts, painted flat black and attached with canopy glue. Two of these nuts total about one ounce of weight, a big help with the relatively light Rivarossi body. In the view below, note also that I have included a passenger figure partway along the view block at left, visible through an aisleway window.

A third project that has been completed was a simple re-lettering effort. I had purchased one of the Class 77-C-1 chair cars that Athearn produced, lettered for the T&NO’s Sunbeam. I wanted to re-letter it for the Daylight, far more appropriate for my layout’s location on SP’s Coast Division. I used an ancient Champ set of Daylight emblem decals and car numbers, and chose a number of a Class 77-C-3 car, not really right (I don’t know that this particular car was ever assigned to the Daylight) but certainly close enough.

As these cars get completed, I can take satisfaction in the interesting construction challenges of the modeling process, and the chance to do additional prototype research to make sure I understand the background of the cars and their operation.

Tony Thompson