the damaged areas with the new paint formula that had been
used on the engine. While the color matched fairly well, the
texture did not. Brush painting versus airbrush, I think was
the issue.
Using eBay, I located
the individual who had
bought up the stock of
the defunct IHC com-
pany and was selling
it both on eBay and
a separate website. I
broke down and bought
three more coach cars.
Know that Carl's “eras-
ing” technique would be
valuable information, I
“erased” the names and
numbers. This worked
much better than the
previous methods. I stole
all the special parts (the
#508 Kadees, the Adair
Shops weight kits, and
the interiors) from the
older three cars and put
them on the new cars.
Finally, the interiors of
the four coaches on
the City of Miami were
not all the same. (See
City of Miami - 4
7: The lettering partially erased.
7
8: And completely erased. The
results are much better than
my previous attempts.
8
the sidebar for the consist). On the practical side, the differ-
ences don’t show on the outside, as the window arrangements
remain the same.
The differences are as follows: All four coaches have unique
names and numbers (covered by the renumbering and nam-
ing I did). The Camellia has a slightly different design from the
other three. It has eight fewer passenger spaces, four seats.
It had a nurses quarters, and it was for women only. On the
inside of the standard coach, there was a small lounge at each
end of the car and revenue seats in between. One lounge was
for men and one for women. I decided that, for now, changing
the interior kit isn’t worth the effort. I can always come back
and change that decision later.
Drumhead
The IHC c observation car did have one detail wrong. On the
rear of the observation car is a red lens, as if some sort of light
was to shine there. The City of Miami had a uniquely shaped
drumhead in that position. There was no correct version of this
drumhead commercially available.
While the IC streamliners book has a nice photo of the correct
drumhead, scanning it does not work. The scan is too pixelated
to be usable. Fellow IC modeler Todd Brinkmeyer found the
digital image he had made up for his decal set and was nice
enough to send it to me.
Using Photoshop, I made up several versions of the drumhead,
with slightly different yellows and with slight variations in size,
about 10% between sizes. I printed all the variations onto a half
page of card stock. Using a brand new #11 blade in my X-Acto
knife I cut out the ones with the best matching yellow color in
MRH-Jul 2013
