Stanstead - Kitbashing Grand Trunk Passenger Cars

I recently started to kitbash a few Roundhouse Overland 50ft passenger cars. My rationale was that they were quite close and it would take about 1 weekend to improve them... Fast forward two weeks later... I'm still deep into the proverbial rabbit hole!

At some point, I wanted GTR old time cars for the layout and thought about repainting and decaling a few Roundhouse 50ft Overland cars I had on hand that were leftovers from an abandoned QRL&PCo project.

 

In my mind, it would be easy: install better platform railings, redo the truss rods rigging and paint it. You know, the proverbial one weekend project. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the “fast and easy” task became an adventure on itself and down the rabbit hole I went.

 

The first thing that bothered me was that Roundhouse coaches are in fact patterned on Pullman sleepers. They are fairly accurate models if you want a coach, but all that fancy side panelling looks out of place on a mundane branchline train. I thus decided to cut the lower parts of each side and replace them with tongue and groove siding to get a more generic look.

 

It was quite fast and gave a more familiar look to the car. Two were converted in that way and I kept one sleeper intact just in case. Then, I moved my attention to the future baggage car I wanted to model. At first, I decided to use a stock Roundhouse Overland baggage but I had a hard time finding one. They were to pricey due to shipping cost and I didn’t want to use a brand new RTR version. Fortunately, Chris Mears came to my rescue and provide a second combine car which provided me with enough material to think about something much more ambitious and prototypical.

 

2 combines + 1 Overton baggage = 1 combine + 1 baggage

As you know, the passenger compartment on the Roundhouse Overland combine is laughly small. Only 4 windows. On GTR (and most other roads), the passenger compartment was generally twice that size. I started to wonder if I could splice two combine shells together to get a more accurate car. Unfortunately, doing so meant that I would have not enough material to build a 2 door GTR baggage car with the remnants of the combines.

That’s when an old Roundhouse 36ft Overton baggage car from a 3-n-1 MoW set came to my rescue (again!). I would splice two combine passenger sections together and use the 36ft baggage car for the baggage compartment. I would then have two nice baggage compartments that could be spliced together to create a relatively accurate GTR baggage car. Nothing lost in the process, it would be a 100% win-win.

 

These car ends are accurate for GTR cars

However, the car ends were completely wrong on the baggage car because it doesn’t have end platforms. The style of door and the two windows didn’t match my reference pictures (generally of poor quality). It was time to fire up SketchUp and model a correct car end including the brake apparatus. At this point, it was evident the coach and combine ends were also wrong, so I simply made new ends for these cars too. About 2 hours later, the 3D printer had provided me with correct parts. I also printed correct arched windows for the baggage car and new chimneys for all roofs. 

When came time to tackle the platform railings, I first thought about making mines out of brass. But after a while, I decided to simply 3D print them. It was both faster and more consistent. It could be argued I printed them a little bit on the thick side, but sturdiness does matters, and I don’t want these to break easily. Also, since they are painted in black, they should blend well with the rest of the model. To make printing and gluing easier, I create new platform beams and cut the plastic one from the Roundhouse underframe.

 

Also, I replaced the stock Roundhouse thread truss rods with 8 lbs monofilament fishing line and added Tichy turnbuckles. The underframe brake system is the stock Roundhouse stuff. I didn’t bother improving it that much. Underframes in the K-brake era of earlier 20^th century weren’t that complicated when you look at technical drawings of that time.

Finally, I installed new Kadee coupler draft boxes to replace the truck mounted ones. At first, I installed them flush with the platform end beam but car spacing was too wide and looked silly. After looking at prototype pictures, it became evident couplers on old cars were located under the platform, with only the knuckle protruding from the beam. I thus glued the draft boxes about 1.5mm from the beam face. All in all, it reduced the car spacing by 4mm, which is more than a scale foot in real life.

 

At this point, the cars were ready for priming and painting. According to my less than stellar research, it seems GTR cars were painted in Pullman Green, or more accurately Vallejo 71.019. As you know, on scale models, colors tend to look darker than in real life, under the sun. For this reason, I mix a lighter shade of green with a ratio of 15:1 Pullman Green to White. Even that is a little bit dark to be honest. In my mind, the cars must blend with their surrounding, i.e., the layout. I want a color palette that is shared on all elements. So, I will probably exaggerate a little bit the color variations on cars to make them pop. The same can be said of structures, which right now are looking quite dark. If this layout had taught me a lesson, I would say it’s that I paint and weather everything too dark and I don’t fade my paint enough. We, railway modellers, tend to believe that if we use the prototype color, it will look prototypical. But in truth, when modelling rolling stock in service or buildings that have been under the sun for more than 2 years, it’s all but a pernicious fallacy.