James Mathis' Santa Fe Dome Car

[Phil B]

I am looking to build James Mathis' Santa Fe Dome Car MOC .. this one:
 

(photo from Flickr by https://www.flickr.com/photos/kwreinsch/)

@James Mathis hasn't visited this site since 2019, and his website is long gone (I found it on the wayback machine, but since the instructions were for sale items, they are no longer available).

Does anyone know how I can get to the instructions, or is there a digital build somewhere?  If not, I will have to try and reconstruct the car based on the above picture, which might be a challenge.

[Westcoatje]

All I know about are his brickshelf pages Brickshelf Gallery - Santa Fe Super Chief. But you probably already know about these? Sadly no instructions here too. Lot of other nice stuff there as well btw. 

Edited March 8 by Westcoatje

[Phil B]

12 minutes ago, Westcoatje said:

All I know about are his brickshelf pages Brickshelf Gallery - Santa Fe Super Chief. But you probably already know about these? Sadly no instructions here too. Lot of other nice stuff there as well btw. 

Yep I looked there too, but the best pics of the dome car leave much to be desired in terms of rebuilding, especially the interior ...

[1963maniac]

There are sveral links here.

There is a link to LDRAW code on Brickshelf: https://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/timgould/Trains/10022mod/observationcar.mpd .

There should be a way to create building instructions from it. It has two submodels.

From my search, Tim Gould's MOC is also involved or at least he made the LDraw files. See: https://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=170074

Edited March 8 by 1963maniac

[Murdoch17]

@Phil B I will warn you those clear macaroni bricks will be hard to obtain. Be ready to spend a lot of money to get this built!

[Phil B]

7 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

@Phil B I will warn you those clear macaroni bricks will be hard to obtain. Be ready to spend a lot of money to get this built!

The Santa Fe train is a rabbit hole that I am already way too far into :)

Currently at $2.5k (but have a lot of extras) for 3 engines (with 9V motors), 2 custom B units, and 8 cars (one of each, plus 2 extra sleepers and soon a dome car).

Here is a post with pics of my train before I added the last 3 cars and an extra engine:
 

Planning to sell off my spare engine (it has a stained windscreen) and all the spares I collected in the process of putting this train together to hopefully get back to a more manageable $2k or below for the full consist. All in LG/DG as well (except for the wheelsets on the B-units at this point).

45 minutes ago, 1963maniac said:

There are sveral links here.

There is a link to LDRAW code on Brickshelf: https://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/timgould/Trains/10022mod/observationcar.mpd .

There should be a way to create building instructions from it. It has two submodels.

I loaded that model - it contains an alternative way to do the curved end of the existing observation car, not the dome car. But thanks for the link.

Edited March 8 by Phil B

[Karle]

Check out Jackie Chandler's Super Chief.  The Rebrickable number is MOC-54251.  The dome car looks very similar.

[Phil B]

30 minutes ago, Karle said:

Check out Jackie Chandler's Super Chief.  The Rebrickable number is MOC-54251.  The dome car looks very similar.

Thanks for that suggestion. However: " As for the train cars, the dome car is based on the work of James Mathis. It features updated grays and modern part usage to improve the overall design." So it is not the original Mathis' design. I want to keep mine original, using the original bricks and the original plans. EBay doesn't seem to have any copies of his instructions for sale either ... This is going to be a challenge for sure :)

[Phil B]

I found the following on the Wayback machine that helps a little - it gives the additional parts needed and an inside picture of the car ... however at a resolution that does not allow for zooming in.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081210110455/http://www.brickbuilttrains.com/domecar.html

From that page:

[Russell844]

I bought these instructions and built this car so long ago. Everything is buried somewhere in storage.

[ivanlan9]

I bought the instructions for his RS-1, which was great fun and an excellent replica in 6-wide.

I also bought his instructions for the El Capitan hi-dome cars, but I've never built them.  I'm sure I don't have the parts to be able to build it now, so I, too, would have to dive down the rabbit-hole to do so.  I suspect I won't.

And while I was sure I'd also bought this dome car, but I find no trace of it.  Sorry, @Phil B!  Looks like your best hope is @Russell844.  Keep us posted!

[Phil B]

Alright, I think I got it. Took some peering into teeny-tiny pictures (as shared here in this channel), but using the full parts list for 10022, plus the extra parts list I got from James Mathis' old website, I managed to put the Dome Car together (at least digitally, waiting for a few extra bricks to arrive from a few BL orders).

Here are some renders for reference - you should be able to figure out how to build this bad boy using them.

[Murdoch17]

That spiral staircase is genius... I never would have thought of that, not in a million years.

It's amazing what people could accomplish back then with such a limited brick palette!

[Phil B]

20 minutes ago, Murdoch17 said:

That spiral staircase is genius... I never would have thought of that, not in a million years.

It's amazing what people could accomplish back then with such a limited brick palette!

It is, isn't it?

Couple of observations as I went through this process:

1. I understand why this didn't become a proper 4th model for 10022. There is quite some weird part usage driven by the limited part availability. E.g. using 2 slope bricks to close up the wall next to the doors, as there aren't enough panels/1x2x2 bricks in the set to fill the wall. This leads me to make the tough choice - stick to the original design and waste $6 dollars on the 2 bricks, or replace them with a 1x2x2 brick in LG (much cheaper).

2. James used some of the remaining bricks as additional filler - e.g. in his model there is a wall next to the restroom that used 2 slope 45 1x2 bricks on top of each other - I found no purpose for them, plus they block part of a window, so I left them out.

3. I did have to take quite some creative liberty on the parts of the interior that were not easily visible in the miniscule pictures that are left of this set on the internet. Would love to at some point compare my design with the official design.

[zephyr1934]

It seems like three ideas collided in the Santa Fe dome car. In 2004 James and another builder came up with their own versions of a dome and had a friendly meet at BrickFest PDX

Jame's page and teunisdavey's page of the same event

Then in 2005 I wandered on the scene with my own dome car design that then inspired James to build another dome, this one had two versions and the instructions for v2 is still on line. Only problem is that it uses VERY rare windscreens for the dome.

 

 

[Phil B]

19 minutes ago, zephyr1934 said:

It seems like three ideas collided in the Santa Fe dome car. In 2004 James and another builder came up with their own versions of a dome and had a friendly meet at BrickFest PDX

Jame's page and teunisdavey's page of the same event

Then in 2005 I wandered on the scene with my own dome car design that then inspired James to build another dome, this one had two versions and the instructions for v2 is still on line. Only problem is that it uses VERY rare windscreens for the dome.

 

 

Love the little bit of history here, including first-hand perspective! I hadn't seen teunisdavey's pictures before, but had seen the other two designs. 

[1963maniac]

When you go to: James to build another dome, Then " V2", then "Instructions": there is an MPD file there. That is an LDraw code list for instructions. How does a person get that code into MLCAD or LDview, LDcad, Stud.io? Copy/Paste doesn't work for MLCAD.

[zephyr1934]

1 hour ago, 1963maniac said:

When you go to: James to build another dome, Then " V2", then "Instructions": there is an MPD file there. That is an LDraw code list for instructions. How does a person get that code into MLCAD or LDview, LDcad, Stud.io? Copy/Paste doesn't work for MLCAD.

You have to save it as a text file then change the extension to .mpd and then the LDraw software SHOULD recognize it as being readable. If not, right click on the icon and choose "open with".

I suspect the content is just the source of the .png files in the brickshelf gallery

[1963maniac]

1 hour ago, zephyr1934 said:

You have to save it as a text file then change the extension to .mpd and then the LDraw software SHOULD recognize it as being readable. If not, right click on the icon and choose "open with".

I suspect the content is just the source of the .png files in the brickshelf gallery

Thank you! I was able to open it finally, but it already had an MPD extension on the file name. MLCAD recognised it as a txt file, said "open anyway?" Since nothing else was working, I went with it. It opened! Who knew? It seems the "txt" file extension was not visible (or apparent).

[Phil B]

And done ....

Reconstructed James Mathis' 10022 Dome Car MOD by Phil B, on Flickr

Here is my full consist in action, consisting of A+B+B+A+10025 Baggage+10025 Mail+10022 Sleeper+10022 Dining+10022 Dome MOC+10022 Sleeper+10022 Sleeper+10022 Observation. Click on the image to play the video:

Custom Santa Fe (10020+10022+10025) by Phil B, on Flickr

Train can be powered with 9V (motors under both A units) or with 2 Powered Up train motors and a Powered Up hub in one of the B-units. Powered Up solution is using PyBricks and @Lok24's controller code.

Edited March 22 by Phil B

[zephyr1934]

Very nice to see a long string of Santa Fe. Just one suggestion- swap the car numbers around, there really was a Santa Fe dome with the number 503 that is found on the sticker set

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

What a very respectable job @Phil B!

I would also like to have my own version (I have an idea for a variant) but these wagons cost 10 times more than their original cost...I will keep my convoy with the 5 standard wagons.

Thanks for sharing the beautiful photos of the of the internal details.

Edited March 23 by LEGO Train 12 Volts

[Phil B]

14 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

Very nice to see a long string of Santa Fe. Just one suggestion- swap the car numbers around, there really was a Santa Fe dome with the number 503 that is found on the sticker set

I did not know that! Will do this.

The nice thing is that there are 6 different numbers provided on the sticker sheet, but two of them (66 and 606) can be reversed to make two more car numbers (99 and 909). No idea of the realism of that, but it works for me :).

Edited March 23 by Phil B