Boston Elevated, 12 Bench, Open Car
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Concept
A turn of the century (the other one)
double truck open bench car.
Products used:
Bachmann Open Cars - 2 each
Disassembly
Separate the roofs by gently pulling
outwards on each side of the letterboards. There are several
clips along the inner letterboard edge, that clip into the body
to hold on the car roof. Carefully pryor pull apart by hand the
upper edges of this letter board, and as you do, it should seem
like the roof is now separating from the main car body.
Carefully lit up on the roof section. There are some wires, but
they should separate by themselves, as they have clips and
sliding parts.
Remove that plastic structure (bumper?)
where the coupler is under or in front of the dashes.
Next, carefully cut, as straight as you
can, across the floor and the letterboard. Once these have been
cut, basically each in half, splice them together.
Decide how long your open car will be. A
12 bench car, 14 bench car were the standard lengths, but this
being a hobby, go for it, Make a stretch Open car !! Getting
back to the project at hand… Splicing these bodies
together is not quite as difficult as it might seem. Getting
the roof to line up is a bit trickier. Be very patient. Make
many, many test fits before you begin to glue either the bodies
or the roof together. This includs getting the upper clerestory
windows to look OK.
Once you have the roof spliced together
and it fits onto the car body shell nicely (well, as best as
one can!), then splice the trolley boards together. As
you can see from the model, the upper windows are not yet in.
If you can, make a few of the clips line up. You will probably
only need a few, and you’ll be handling this model, so
you’ll know it’s weak points.
Cut off four of the first inner seat
castings off the car shells that are surplus. (This is the seat
right behind the bulkhead with the three windows). These were
added to the fronts of the car. The seat back and bottom were
taken from the surplus ends and added to this car. Now you have
a front seat at each end!
Some styrene (wood strips) were added
across the backs of all the bench seats.
The front dash area has also been
modified to simulate a larger bumper on this car. The old
running board was cut off (leaving behind the old brackets) and
fabricated new running boards (left + right side) to be applied
later on.
Click the forward icon below to continue to
the next model
project.
This is the model to date, still in
progress. Still requires trucks, motors and interior work.
This is the unused portion of the open
car.
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