of the car. It amounts to a shade over 2% of the overall interior
dimensions of the car. However, for the 10' - 6” width and the 14'
– 6” height of the car a full 1' - 9.6” is lost. In this case, 16% of the
width and 12% of the height of the cars interior dimensions are
missing.
In order to get everything into the car some selective compression
had to take place. Selective compression can be done in a couple
of ways. Either the lengths can be reduced in the shortest dimen-
sion, or something can be left out.
The floor
A basswood strip is used as the floor. I wanted a single surface
for attaching the different floor finishes in the car. I traced the kit
interior floor onto the basswood sheet and then cut it out with a
City of Miami part 2 - 4
sharp X-Acto blade. A bit
of sanding and test fit-
ting and I had a snug fit.
I sealed the entire strip
before I added anything
to it.
The floor of the original
car was covered primarily
with two different colors
of carpet. The carpets for
the Bamboo Grove were
described as having a pat-
tern of different colors,
but were predominately
burgundy for one end and
light blue for the other.
I was not able to get an exact match of the described carpet, but
they were close.
I discovered many years ago, that the best thing for modeling
a carpet is velvet flocked wallpaper. Sample wallpaper sheets
are now available on the internet. This turned out to be a good
thing because the only wallpaper store in town was out of old
sample books.
With the wallpaper samples in hand, I traced the portion of
the floor required on the back of the correct color of wallpa-
per. Then I cut them out and glued them to the basswood floor.
Unfortunately the “brown and blue” wallpaper was flocked on the
brown color, not the blue that I wanted. A trip to the craft store
where I had gotten the basswood yielded a blue paint that would
not eat the flocking. Five coats of paint later, it was ready.
7: I used a piece of basswood for the floor. The burgundy car-
pet is in place with the light blue ready to be added.
7
8: All of the flooring has been placed. The parquet tiles
have a basket weave pattern that contrasts nicely with
the carpet.
8
9: This photo and the next two
show the service end of the
car compartment and parti-
tion. This one shows the sofas
attached to the partition.
9
MRH-Aug 2013
