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A look at the vestibule end. This coach is the first and only passenger car in HO scale plastic
to have this amount of end detail, and a vestibule you can actually see inside, or anything
worth seeing if you could!
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Notice the inside angled wall, the treadplate in the vestibule, and the detail of the
vertical rods on the diaphragm. You can even see the end plates of the drop steps. Ron said
nobody would ever see these... but they are quite clear in the photo! Oh yeah, the steps are there too -
so if you want to do a little cutting, you can model the vestibule open. I think.
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The other end of the car - no vestibule but it still looks like you could walk right in.
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The best rendering of a ponger in HO scale yet. Ok, "diaphragm". But I've been calling them pongers
for 40 years, and I think it's a good word. And it's shorter, and easier to type than "diaphragm" or
the other alternative, "squishy things between passenger cars".
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Another first... aluminum window frames represented in the proper size and effect. Too often these are
oversize or overdone. And the release of this car was delayed to get the frames in *aluminum* and not
chrome. Worth it.
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Another side view of the vestibule end. Check out the trucks too. These are not one-piece droppings,
but a rather complex fully sprung all metal truck. I'm sure we'll be seeing these on the market
by themselves soon.
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A really lousy look at the whole car. My digital camera has this quirk, that it will take a picture
in perfect focus in it's close-up mode out to about 15 inches or so... but in "normal" mode it won't
focus closer than about 3 feet - but it will lie to you and say it's in focus. The result is garbage like this shot,
which doesn't do the model justice at all. But I wanted at least one attempt to show the whole thing.
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When I popped one side off the car to try and fix what I thought was a loose interior, here's what
I found. Because of the way the seats sloped upward, I thought the ends of the interior had come
loose and flexed upward... but the whole thing is quite secure, just warped.
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So this is where it stands now, while I think about if I want to try and level up the vacuum-formed interior
(which looks perfectly decent from the outside, even better if I made some nice white antimacassars
to go over the seats) or make up my own interior to replace it.
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A look at the whole interior showing the problem. It's a really, really minor problem on an exquisite
model that breaks a lot of new ground in plastic passenger cars of the lightweight variety. It's also
a lovely ACF body core that promises to get used again for other projects. I just wish it was available
as a kit, but everybody involved already knows my feelings on that subject.
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