I never had LEGO trains to play with when I was younger, but we did have a good collection of HO trains and would usually have some sort of layout running in the basement. My favourite cars and train were the Rivarossi CN Super Continental that my Dad had picked up used somewhere for a good price. It was made up of 5 passenger cars, including an observation car and was powered by an F9B and two FP9s painted in CN's distinctive Zebra Stripe paint scheme.
Now that I'm a older and have young kids of my own, we've been setting up an HO train set every year at Christmas to run around the dining room table. This has made me realize the HO trains are too delicate for my 3 and 6 year old to handle, but a LEGO train that can be rebuilt will be fun for all of us. I got a great deal on a batch of used LEGO including a set of Santa Fe Cars and BNSF loco, but I wanted to build my own passenger set. So, drawing upon some ideas I found on the web and here, I made up plans to build my own 7-wide/44 long passenger car.
My original inspiration for creating a 7-wide Passenger Car was Cooper's excellent collection of 7-wides. Though I came up with the window design on my own, I later found that Tim Gould had posted instructions for the windows on brickshelf. I did follow some of Tim's plan for the doors on my car.
Here's a shot with one of our old HO scale cars for comparison. I don't have the HO scale car that I based my LEGO car on (38-seat Club Galley).
The ends of the car are currently open, I'd like to add a door but haven't gotten a good idea yet.
Beneath the removable roof we have seating for 20.
I'm looking into sticker options now, as I need to add the 'wet noodle' CN symbol and the car name. I do plan on building more of these cars and the engines to go with them, but for now I'm happy with how this one turned out.
cheers - mark













