To paraphrase Vane Jones, "Knowledge is of little value until shared with others."

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

North Shore Line 409 - Part 15 Interior with Seats, Passengers, and Lavatory

The model came with a false interior floor - a sheet of brass mounted a couple of millimeters above the floor upon which the trucks are mounted. The area between the 2 sheets of brass was where the model's wiring to the trucks was located.

Depending upon if the false floor is retained or not may alter how the interior is installed. There are probably as many ways to install an interior as there are modelers. Since the roof is fixed on the model of the 409, the interior has to be installed from the bottom of the model.

A glitch or pain in the butt are the small tabs onto which the floor is secured with screws. If the interior is built-up on the floor something has to be done to accommodate the tabs.

A way around the "tab" glitch is to install the seats either directly to the sides of the model and/or on a thin floor strip. If the seats are installed on a thin strip of brass or styrene, the seat "units" can be "glued" against the side above where the tabs and floor are located.

The lavatory is located at the #1 end exactly where the "lav" was in the original 409 set-up as a dining car. The walls of the "lav" can be built-up of styrene and attached directly to the bulkhead. The open ceiling of the "lav" is to be used to direct wiring from the roof to the floor to the trucks. Some lighting from the coach part of the model will spill over into the "lav".
The drawing is looking down at the floor. The dimensions of the lavatory are in inches.

The "lav" can be assembled, painted the same color as the bulkhead then glued to it. 

Depending upon your preference, the glazing in the "lav" section of the model can be frosted before or after the "lav" is installed. Some modelers have started to used the flat part of a plastic milk or similar container or jug. This plastic comes frosted. All one needs to do is to cut up the plastic to the desired size and attach it with canopy glue to the interior of the car's glazing.

I made my own frosted glazing by using an emery board on a piece of clear, colorless 0.010" styrene.


Don't forget to thread the wiring from the ceiling (light stick) through the lavatory.

The seats installed in the 409 were not "top-of-the-line" seats as installed in the other Silverliners.  The seats were medium grade seats available in the late 1940's and 50's. One feature of the seats which shows up in photos of the 409 is the chrome color metal tubing which went along the side and over the back of the seat. The seats were easily reversed by swinging the seats around on the base of the seat. The color of the seat and back was a "medium-dark red" color.

Once a supply of seats has been obtained, there's a couple of ways to proceed depending upon your preferences and how much you desire your model to reflect the prototype. The goal is to get the floor a dark color, the seats "medium-dark red", and the chrome tubing to show.

In preparing the seats for painting, since the chrome tubing over and around the seats shows up so much in photos of the 409, a piece of 0.020" wire was ACC'ed to all the seats. After the seats were painted a "red" the wire was painted a silver color. Even if the seat castings have a chrome tubing included, the addition of the wire makes the tubing just that much more prominent.

As with other NSL cars, the single seat by the window in the bulkhead (the railfan's seat) was fixed (did not rotate or move). The double seat immediately in back of the motorman's cab was also fixed. With the "lav" located in back of a motorman's cab, the seat adjacent to the "lav" was fixed. These double seats were often shorter so the door in the bulkhead could be fully opened.

The reason the above seats are mention is, they can be painted and attached to the sides and/or bulkheads separate from the other seats. I used clear DAP bathtub caulk - the type which comes out of the tube white and dries clear. If one of these seats is located above one of the tabs to which the floor is secured, the area of the seat above the screw location has to be filed or grounded out to clear the screw.

It's time to talk passengers. From whatever source of passengers you use, a number of passengers should be placed on the seats. Every modeler has different thoughts on passengers and the number to use. I try to place 1 passenger on about 55% of the seats in a model. Some are near the outer side. A few are placed on the inside away from the side. Children, if any, are placed on the seat facing the parent or adult. The conductor will be mentioned later.

DAP bathtub caulk was used to attach the passengers to a seat. I like the DAP product because it dried clear and colorless. Passengers can be removed from a seat without damaging the paint on either the seat or the passenger. Finally it's easy to clean-up by pulling the dried caulk off.
The seats with passengers have been ACC'ed to strips of 0.010" styrene. Notice the random pattern to the passenger placement.

For my model only the exterior floor was to be used. The interior floor was placed in the parts bin. Originally I tried to attach the seats to the sides using DAP bathtub caulk. It was hard to keep them square to the sides. Before the caulk completely dried, the seats were pulled out.

The best way to keep the seats square is to attach them to a thin piece of styrene or brass. I used a piece of 0.010" of styrene. The seats were attached with ACC. Allow the ACC to cure overnight before spraying everything the seat color. Paint the floor at the base of the seats a medium to dark brown or similar color and shade using a brush.
Install the light stick before installing any seats. The amount of space for tools and fingers is limited once the seats have been installed. 
 
Allow the "glue" to completely cure prior to turning the model over to install the other set of seats!
 
How well the passengers look with regards to height in the car can be seen. 
 
The other set of seats have to be installed.

The above photos shows the wiring from the light stick in place. Finishing-up the model is the topic for the next post so don't let the attached coupler cause you worry. You haven't missed anything.

The original brass floor with the holes for a speaker was used. Just so this item is not overlooked, remove the center air tank casting from under the floor which blocks the swing of one of the trucks. The bottom of the floor was painted matte "Grimy Black" and the top, the interior floor a matte dark brown.

This is the only photo of the floor prior to painting and installation. The thin strips of styrene (I forgot the dimensions.) along the sides of the floor are required to move the seats up a little bit to compensate for the metal "L" shape located at the bottom of the car sides. Note the styrene strips are pushed back from the edge of the floor side.

The piece of styrene tubing secures the ground wire as it passes from one truck to the other thereby guaranteeing a good ground for the car's wiring. More about the final wiring in the next post.
All the white styrene was painted a matte dark brown.
 
The floor can be secured to the bottom of the model. This will prevent any damage to the interior of the model during final assembly and touch-up.
 
Cheers,
Ed

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