City of Miami part 2 - 1
W
hile building the City of Miami, I was pleasantly
surprised that most of the manufacturer’s interior
kits are fairly close to the original layouts of the
cars. The woman and children's car has the minor difference
of the nurse’s office, however the Bamboo Grove required a
custom-made interior.
The observation/lounge car Bamboo Grove was custom-designed
for the Illinois Central by the Pullman Company, and is a one of a
kind car. As such, the interior
kit was completely different
from that of the actual car.
I decided to bite the bullet
and build a custom interior
for the car. I used the Paul
1: Carl, the bartender is
taking an order from Todd,
one of the passengers
while another looks on in
the finished interior of the
Bamboo Grove.
Somers book as a reference for the description of the interior of
the Bamboo Grove. I also began searching the internet for any
information regarding the car. I finally found two colorized post-
cards with views of the interior. No color photographs of the inte-
rior exist for the day I chose to model, as the commercial release
of color filmwas still two years in the future!
Two items immediately jumped out at me—the bar in the middle
of the car, and the mural on the wall next to it. The Somers book
had a halfway-decent photograph of the mural, but it is a black-
and-white image. Further research led to the fact that this was a
photo mural, not a painted one. However, it used a colorization
2: This is the photo that I scanned from the Somers
book. There is a small section in the upper left hand
corner where part of the mural is missing and the
remaining portion is very pixilated.
2
Modeling the City of Miami, part 2
Making a custom
interior
By James Eager
MRH-Aug 2013
