Car made from a American Lightweight/Standard kit.

Folks,

I have resurrected the construction of my Daylight train #99. The first in line (so to say) is the Chair/Baggage car #3302 or 3303. The car type is Southern Pacific 79-CB-1. I have been using the book Daylight Train 98-99 as my reference for details and pictures. For your enjoyment, here are the first few pictures of the new born:



The Beast....79 scale feet, very precisely.



Under the skirts,the generator, the two massive batteries boxes, the main water tank, the air conditioning unit and the two baggage elevator control boxes.One can guess the two tubes containing the white LEDs used for the lighting of the stairs and deck when passengers step out at night.



The roof is missing 8 aerators (on order from Keil Line) and the antennae.



Details of the main door and the baggage elevator door and controls. Notice the light for the stairs. All these details are built according to pictures from the book.



Details of the sides, showing the skirts, AC exchangers and the main baggage section door.



The interface between the tender and the Baggage/Chair car. The whole consist of cars will be equipped with a DCC decoder in each car (tuned to address #99 of course). The decoders are from Lenz and provide 4 light functions only. This specific car will be equipped with the main light, and the stairs lights, using a total of 5 white LEDs. Each car will pick-up electrical current from the trucks and also be daisy chained from the main GS-4 engine, electrically. This way, hopefully, current fluctuations and or interrupts will be extremely reduced.

Stay tuned for the next part.....

Yves

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Yves,

Yves,

What are you using for the basic car or are these completely scratch-built? Very nice fabricating work. How do you like working in plastic?

Butch

Butch,

I should have been more specific: these are Daylight kits made by American Lightweight (formerly American Standard cars). You can find them on E-Bay.
My consist is made of 14 cars as was the Daylight #98 or 99, in 1939-40.

Yves

I was wondering because I have 6-7 standard streamlined kits that I haven't done anything with up to this point. Looks like they build up into a pretty nice cars. Or, I guess I should say they will build up into as nice a car as the builder has time and skills to build. Yours are looking great as always.

Butch

SOunds as though you will need your own reactor for power. How many amps and volts will your consist use?

Thanks

Dick

Wow! Nice work. Glad you're back on the project.

A couple of questions.

Where'd you get the bolsters? I've got a few MTH autoracks that need lowering and I'd rather use bolsters.

Where'd you get the hose connections with the plug-in pins? I've got a locomotive project that's going to require a tether and I'd much rather use MU cables and "air hoses" to connect the units.

Totally forgot about your project. Always a nice sight to see, even in the working stages.

great work.

keep us posted.

Stan

DFW O Scale

Div'n Southside RR Modelers

Dallas, TX

Nice craftsmanship, there. Thanks for posting.

quote:

Originally posted by AGHRMatt:
A couple of questions.

Where'd you get the bolsters? I've got a few MTH autoracks that need lowering and I'd rather use bolsters.

Where'd you get the hose connections with the plug-in pins? I've got a locomotive project that's going to require a tether and I'd much rather use MU cables and "air hoses" to connect the units.

Matt,

The black bolsters are provided in each American Standard/Lightweight kit. Keil Line may have these, or you could check with Precision Scale, too.

The hose connections with plug-in pins are recuperation from DB15 or DB-19 connectors. I found a type of connectors that is sold in kit (so you can customize the connections as you wish) and got a few of the male and female types. The tender will be equipped with a pair of females plugs, and each car will have male pins at the forward end and female pins at the rear end. Each pair will be color coded to help me organize the #99 train in the proper order.
These connectors are slightly over-sized for my taste but they should carry easily 1 to 2 Amps that may circulate (or not) on that bus. The good thing is that these connectors are gold plated and thus should be very reliable. Besides, they look like brake hoses or steam lines.

I will describe in a future pictorial session, how an electrical bus runs all along the entire consist (engine + 14 cars) and how each car taps current from that bus. Most cars will have some electrical pickup to feed the bus. Each car will have an independent DCC decoder (Lenz 6 light functions only - No motor) all programmed with address 99 (tandem programming). The main function will be the light inside the cars, of course. Another function will be the stairs/dock lights, when boarding passengers. Other function will include the logo light on the Observation car, classification lights on the Observation car and a couple of surprises on the Tavern car....but that will be for another article.

Thanks for your encouragements and praises. It helps fuel the motivation required to bring to completion such project.

Yves

nice Yves! reminds me of the photo essay of your twin (triplet?) unit articulated diner project.

quote:

Originally posted by Yves:

Matt,

The black bolsters are provided in each American Standard/Lightweight kit. Keil Line may have these, or you could check with Precision Scale, too.

The hose connections with plug-in pins are recuperation from DB15 or DB-19 connectors. I found a type of connectors that is sold in kit (so you can customize the connections as you wish) and got a few of the male and female types. The tender will be equipped with a pair of females plugs, and each car will have male pins at the forward end and female pins at the rear end. Each pair will be color coded to help me organize the #99 train in the proper order.
These connectors are slightly over-sized for my taste but they should carry easily 1 to 2 Amps that may circulate (or not) on that bus. The good thing is that these connectors are gold plated and thus should be very reliable. Besides, they look like brake hoses or steam lines.

I will describe in a future pictorial session, how an electrical bus runs all along the entire consist (engine + 14 cars) and how each car taps current from that bus. Most cars will have some electrical pickup to feed the bus. Each car will have an independent DCC decoder (Lenz 6 light functions only - No motor) all programmed with address 99 (tandem programming). The main function will be the light inside the cars, of course. Another function will be the stairs/dock lights, when boarding passengers. Other function will include the logo light on the Observation car, classification lights on the Observation car and a couple of surprises on the Tavern car....but that will be for another article.

Thanks for your encouragements and praises. It helps fuel the motivation required to bring to completion such project.

Yves

Thanks. I forgot all about DB connector kits. I should be ashamed of myself since I've been working with computers and communication for over 30 years.

Thanks again.

Hi Yves,

Looking very good. Keep it up.

Following up on the building of the Daylight Baggage/Chair car:



The car is now equipped with a LENZ 6 functions only decoder. The great thing about this decoder is that the four main functions can be completely customized with dimming of the lights. The main lights are linked to Output A, controlled by function 1 (you can select what you want). One can see the bus running all along the car and terminated by the DB-15 gold plated wires at each end. The front truck is connected to the Positive side and the rear truck to the negative side. The decoder was installed near the partition wall between the baggage section and the chair section, as seen on the next picture. The roof is held by two pieces of basswood, a T-nut and a threaded rod. Works well and is easy to disassemble.



I use twisted pairs wires inside the car, as these wires must remain below the thickness of the coins (pennies) used for weighing the car. Besides, I do not want to raise too much the floor so that interior details do not seem out of place.

The lights for the ceiling are installed on a very practical breadboard strip sold by Mouser (less than $2.50 a piece). You can then mount as many white LEDs as you wish and spread them to your liking. The Chair section will have 3 LEDs whereas the Baggage section will be dark. These strips glue to the roof with double sided sticking tape. Very easy and practical. The thing with this breadboard is that it stay confined inside the roof, and you can install a ceiling if you wish to, by just drilling holes to pass the LEDs. Once installed, the breadboard is not visible from outside and you have to really lean to see it through the windows.





The roof is almost complete. The aerators were received from Keil-Line as well as the interiors which will be for a next installment. The only missing pieces are the handrails and the antennae.



The steps lights are also made with white LEDs, which happen to be flat at the tip. Again from Mouser Electronics. The two LEDs are wired in series, and like the main lights, the intensity can be adjusted for the whole train at once or for each car individually.



The white LEDs (thanks to the dimming function) can pretty much mimic the Neon and Fluorescent lights used in the prototype cars.



The car in the dark....the baggage section is completely dark. Next section, the interior....

Yves

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Yves,

Great project!

Any chance you can give us less than proficient electronics guys the parts or kits numbers of the light systems. They are brilliant.. great job.

Yves,
Great job! Thanks for posting the photos and the lead on the LED mounting strip.

I am intending to begin converting my bulb lit passenger cars to LEDs to lower the amp draw now that I'm slowly converting over to DCC.

Question for you --- other than the remote dimming function, is there other advantage to using a decoder in each car vs. just a bridge rectifier and resistor circuit?

Charlie M

quote:

Originally posted by AGHRMatt:
Where'd you get the bolsters? I've got a few MTH autoracks that need lowering and I'd rather use bolsters.

Matt,

Drop an email, may have a few.

Charlie,

I want to equip each car with a DCC decoder for the following reasons:

- I can control independently the main lights and fine tune them with the dimming function.

- I can control the steps lights on all Chair cars, when the train is in a station and stopped to board passengers at night.

- I was even toying with the idea of having the restrooms on a separate circuit. You could then switch them on or off, at your leisure. I'll probably drop the implementation of this feature.....

- The Tavern car and Observation car will have additional functions that will be disclosed later.

I recognize that it is an expensive solution as it adds about $25 to each car. However, the flexibility is such that it out-weights the price increase.

Yves

Thanks for the reply Yves. That sounds like it will be quite a show to watch in a darkened layout room.

I'm dealing with heavyweights so about the only variable light I might need is in the passenger sitting/sleeping areas. The restrooms, vestibules, and hallway lighting level would be constant in my scheme.

Charlie M

Little progress this week, but worth sharing: we are now working on the interiors
of that Baggage/Chair car.

The flooring is comprised of three parts: The baggage section (of grey color), the
seating section (made of blue rubber like floor with creamy/white stripes) and the
vestibule area also made of blue rubber like flooring.

The seating area is made of a plate of styrene 1.0 mm thick, covered with a thin blue paper
imitating the aspect of rubber as on the prototype. A thin white marker is used to draw the
boxes used to delineate the walking area from the seating area (all details are again from the
excellent book Daylight Trains #98 & 99). The seats are from Keil Line (no less than 22 of them)
and I have selected the 20's style armrest, that matches very closely the seats used on the
Daylight train. The U shaped table is a special desk, where passengers could pick-up the latest
trade press and newspapers, from the Baggage section.




The next picture shows the vestibule area with a restroom for the Ladies and one for the Men.
Here, I debated some time about doing the detailing of the toilet rooms. I had the parts but decided against it as it is impossible to see the inside. I may simply represent the doors leading to these two little rooms but they will be empty. The glass/window panes are frosted and do not allow any peeking. I may add some suitcases in the elevator areas, near the main doors, later on. Again, all is done with styrene 0.75 mm thick.




The Baggage section with its rubber like grey flooring.




The whole flooring in place, hiding all the wiring underneath. The vestibule section locks the seating area in place and prevents this "heavy section" to fall if the car is placed upside down. I have kep the capability to access the wires underneath if any damage occurs or if I need to add additional features, such as the lighting of the Baggage section or some other things.



The next parts will be about the so unique diaphragms system used on the Daylight and the painting of the interiors and the exterior of the car.

Yves

Yves,
Thanks for taking the time to photo document your work and share it with others.

Your progress has helped to jump-start some projects that have stalled on my hobby bench.

Thanks,
Matt