This was car was bought second hand for $10 and is 60' long. I use it as my way freight train on the branch line. It only serves two towns with 24" radius curves. It is not intended to be a model of an exact CN car but it is correct for the era. It needed to be repainted on the outside and touched up on the inside. I then added older square CN decals to age it a bit. I also added LED lights to the inside that get power from the axels. The roof was always removable so that helped when I refurbished the car.
Here it has been sanded to remove paint runs and brush strokes. The glass for the windows was glued in as a single piece on the inside so I cut out masking for the windows on the laser. It only took 40min to draw, cut and install the window masking.
This shows the end view of the masking. I didn't have to mask the door because it is all black along with the diaphragms.
This is the inside of the roof with the 2 lights installed with a connector.
This is the string of LED lights that you would stuff in a jar. They are cheap and about 3' long. I cut 2 bulbs off the end and the spacing worked out well. They are a nice warm white 3000k
Here the car has been painted CN green #11 on the outside and you can see the male plug that comes up from the axle.
Once it was painted I removed the plastic as best as I could and repainted the diaphragms with a brush.
The repainted ends
In this shot you can see the old glue that holds the clear plastic in place. It was too much work to try and take this off without making a bigger mess so I just painted grey over the inside where there was any glue.
In this shot I have finished painting the inside, added some shades and have added the decals to the outside.
Here you can see the interior after the glue marks have been painted over. I also added a few more blinds on the windows.
This shows the lighting in the car.
This shows the connection I used to get power from the axles. The trucks are Central Valley with axles that are insulated on one side. I cleaned the wheels and axles as they had paint on them. They conduct and run really nice. There is no flicker in the lights. I thinks it is nice looking car.