The next step with these cars involves plating over the carbody vents and the unwanted windows. The upper vents were all plated over on these cars, but the windows varied from car to car, and were done later. Up until the late 1960s and probably into the early 1970s, the cars all would have had their original windows still. In the 1970s however, some of the cars started to have windows blanked out and plated over when they received a full shopping.

The car I’m currently working on represents AC 306 (ex-AC 205, ex-US Army 7883). Photos I’ve collected from various sources online show that on one side of the car, 3 windows (2 to the right and 1 to the left of the baggage door) were plated over, while on the opposite side, only one window to the right of the door was plated.

Note that the windows I’m referring to here are all in the first double pair of windows; the original troop sleepers have a single window on either side of the original entry door, but both of these windows and the original man door are overlapping with the space where the baggage car door will go. Those windows will need to be completely gone, not just plated over with the frame still in place. That’s a little bit more involved, so I’m leaving that until later.

I plated the required windows quite simply by cutting rectangles of .010″ styrene sheet to fit the window openings. (Actually I cut this just slightly oversize and then carefully file down the edges so that it fits in perfectly.) When you look at the windows on the model, you can see the riveted frame around the window, and then an inset window sash, which on the rear car would have been the moveable part of the window. To plate over the window, I just cut the plate to fit just inside the outer frame, and lay down on top of the recessed sash. The .010″ thickness of the styrene sheet set on top of the recessed sash perfectly represents the plated over opening.

Car with upper vents and two windows at left plated over. The two windows at right will remain open and receive the original kit window glass pieces when the car is fully completed.

Similarly the vents along the top of the car body were also plugged with .010″ material but in this case their narrow width meant a 010″x.080″ strip cut to length will fit perfectly in the vent opening. Again the recessed depth is such that a .010″ strip is almost perfectly flush.

That takes care of the easy part of the car side modifications; cutting out the door, removing the single windows and smoothing everything up again will be considerably more invasive surgery.

The doors for these cars was an interesting scratchbuild project. It’s been a while since I worked out the measurements, but I was able to come up with something that looks pretty good. Here’s my drawing from my notes:

Measured construction drawing of the baggage car door.

The scratchbuilt door master consists of a .020″ styrene door blank with the trimming made from scale 1″x6″ strip (except for the centre vertical that divides the lower part of the door into 2 panels with is a little wider – 1″x8″. Working carefully and measuring with my dial calipers, the trim was fixed by applying liquid styrene cement with a fine brush. My favourite here is the Testors liquid plastic cement. I highly recommend against Plastruct’s Plastic Weld in this application as I’ve found it to leave a nasty surface residue when used on styrene.

To get a nice clean upper window, I applied the trimming to the door blank before cutting out the opening. I don’t remember doing the cutting anymore, but the best approach would be to drill out the corners and then play “connect-the-dots” to cut out the rough opening. What I definitely do remember is carefully opening up the window opening with a series of fine needle files, filing the opening even with the 1×6 trim strips.

Since I knew I wanted to probably make more than one of these cars, I planned on making one door master which I could then make molds from to cast several copies in resin. The door blank was therefore cemented to a piece of .060″ styrene backing.

The window mullins were added after the door was cemented to the backing plate. This ensured that they were nice and flush. The mullins are .030x.040″ strips, laying on their wide side to match the ~.030 thickness of the .020″ door + 1×6 (.011″x.066″) trimming. These should be evenly spaced. (I didn’t keep notes for this spacing, but measuring the door master shows each window pane to be an average of .145″ wide (within a variance of .005″, well within a margin of error and not detectable by the eye).

Finished door master.

Following the completion of the master, I was able to create the rubber mold from the master and use it to cast several copies of the door. I now have more than enough doors to do several cars.

Rubber mold and scratchbuilt door master.