Bachmann amfleet interrior into a walthers amfleet car?

Hello,
Unfortunatly one of my Bachmann amtrak amfleet cars took a nasty spill. I no longer have it asthe body shaddered and the windows fell. I was able to salvege the interior and the seats as well as the red marker lights. Would I be able to put them into a walthers amfleet car? Thanks in advance

Do you have a Walthers Amfleet car? I should expect the interior, if it doesn't fit "as is", could be modified with a minimum of work to allow it to fit. Same for the marker lights.

Les

I'm going to be buying one from my local hobby shop. He has an old "Northeast Direct," amfleet that I wanna get. I try to collect as many rare pieces or retired pieces I can find. This is one that fits into one of the categories.

Just tried it out and the Walthers Amfleet shell won't fit over the Bachmann Amfleet frame without some major mods...The frame on the Bachmann Amfleets are too wide where the mounting holes would match up and you could crack the sides of the Walthers Amfleet shell trying to squeeze the frame in.

So it won't fit then =( I don't have the car yet so maybe I'll just get rid of the interior I have.

I'm almost 90% certain the older Bachmann Amfleet frames will seat inside of a Walthers Amfleet shell. You'll have lights (incandescant bulb) & seated interiors, but using the old Bachmann Amfleets, you give up the red LED end of car lights and depending on which older Bachmann frame you use you would be stuck with the old "horn hook" couplers as well.

The car I have in mind is the old Northeast direct car that walthers put out years back. My local hobby shop has one avaliable. I'm not to concerned about losing the red marker lights as long as I can light and seat my interior. Couplers I can always replace if possible with something else.

B44NYC already said it, but you're going to have a tough time putting the Bachmann interior inside the Walthers car. Though--funny enough--the problem isn't that the Bachmann base is too wide; it's that the Walthers one is too narrow! I'll spare no criticism of the new Bachmann Amfleets for their half-assed retooling and atrocious paint detail, but credit is due on the shape of the cars. The Bachmann Amfleets in all iterations as well as the earlier Metroliners have the correct shape. The Walthers cars curve too far back inward around the car floors and MU receptacles and are a fraction of an inch too narrow.

Anyway, while I wouldn't bother trying to make the Bachmann interior fit the Walthers car, what I would suggest instead is to save the Bachmann guts to get an idea of how to implement a lighting system or pickup for marker lights in a car and get some .030" styrene, HO-scale seats, and paint to make your own interiors. Here's a site that shows basic Amtrak interior diagrams. Just a warning, something looks off about the Amfleet cafe interior as I'm almost certain that all the booths line up with the windows in an Amfleet I cafe, but I don't know what the prototype is for the diagram (probably an Amfleet II). Anyway, these diagrams give you the spacing for the seating as well as how they line up with the windows plus details showing spaces for luggage racks, bathrooms, electrical cabinets, etc. Precision Scale Co. makes perfect seats for interiors that are pretty cheap. I used some of them for a Viewliner interior last year and have lots more for my own Amfleets and future commuter projects. Make some styrene of appropriate height to divide up the car (bathrooms, vestibules, luggage racks...), and if you want to get fancy, try even making some styrene strips to represent the overhead luggage racks. I've been toying with how I'd want to light car interiors myself--say with LED strips on top of styrene shaped like the overhead luggage racks to simulate the indirect lighting in the cars--but I have no experience with the electronics behind lighting, so I've been trying to research that and read up before investing in the various lights, resistors, wire, decoders, aspirin, et cetera.

Also, since you're interested in marker lights, take a look at this as a guy from the Atlas forums did custom marker lights for his Amfleets. That might be something good to check out, and--with a little handiwork--a nicer effect than Bachmann's setup which illuminates way too much.

There's also a company called Evan Designs...www.ModelTrainSoftware.com that manufactures LED model lighting. These are prefabricated LEDs with the bridge rectifier and wires.

I used their 1mm bulb 5 pack, which cost $15, to add red marker lights into my Walthers Amtrak Budd and Superliners. Since Walthers already has the metal contacts added into these cars for interior lighting, just solder the wire ends to each contact and match up the LEDs to the "marker holes". Glue them in place (be careful of which type of glue) and VOILA...marker lights!

Also, I would recommend adding black electrical tape to put over the LEDs to prevent the red light from "bleeding" into the car.

Mirai Zikasu wrote:B44NYC already said it, but you're going to have a tough time putting the Bachmann interior inside the Walthers car. Though--funny enough--the problem isn't that the Bachmann base is too wide; it's that the Walthers one is too narrow! I'll spare no criticism of the new Bachmann Amfleets for their half-assed retooling and atrocious paint detail, but credit is due on the shape of the cars. The Bachmann Amfleets in all iterations as well as the earlier Metroliners have the correct shape. The Walthers cars curve too far back inward around the car floors and MU receptacles and are a fraction of an inch too narrow.

Anyway, while I wouldn't bother trying to make the Bachmann interior fit the Walthers car, what I would suggest instead is to save the Bachmann guts to get an idea of how to implement a lighting system or pickup for marker lights in a car and get some .030" styrene, HO-scale seats, and paint to make your own interiors. Here's a site that shows basic Amtrak interior diagrams. Just a warning, something looks off about the Amfleet cafe interior as I'm almost certain that all the booths line up with the windows in an Amfleet I cafe, but I don't know what the prototype is for the diagram (probably an Amfleet II). Anyway, these diagrams give you the spacing for the seating as well as how they line up with the windows plus details showing spaces for luggage racks, bathrooms, electrical cabinets, etc. Precision Scale Co. makes perfect seats for interiors that are pretty cheap. I used some of them for a Viewliner interior last year and have lots more for my own Amfleets and future commuter projects. Make some styrene of appropriate height to divide up the car (bathrooms, vestibules, luggage racks...), and if you want to get fancy, try even making some styrene strips to represent the overhead luggage racks. I've been toying with how I'd want to light car interiors myself--say with LED strips on top of styrene shaped like the overhead luggage racks to simulate the indirect lighting in the cars--but I have no experience with the electronics behind lighting, so I've been trying to research that and read up before investing in the various lights, resistors, wire, decoders, aspirin, et cetera.

Also, since you're interested in marker lights, take a look at this as a guy from the Atlas forums did custom marker lights for his Amfleets. That might be something good to check out, and--with a little handiwork--a nicer effect than Bachmann's setup which illuminates way too much.

Hello, Sorry for the late response. I don't visit the toy train forum all that much. I checked out your viewliner car on the this forum titled "latest projects," I still have the guts to the old amfleet car. I wanted to know where I would be able to get styrene from? I am going to try doing an interior for a viewliner car with some modifications to the interrior I have.