The Cibola Lumber & Mining company

Most passengers on the Cibola travel in this coach. It is used primarily by company employees and blue collar travelers moving between Farmington, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The coach is a RTR AMS Jackson Sharp painted unlettered car.

These are great cars with full interiors. The seats and other details come molded in white styrene painted oxide red. Since I wanted to add figures I dismantled the entire car. This is very easy since AMS uses screws on all the joints. I removed the windows and floor board with the seats.

Painting was done with Krylon enamel sprays for the outside and craft paint brushed on for the interior. Water transfers were were made by me using Testors decal paper. The silver section is the metal sheet behind the wood stove. The black section is the area inside of the toilet and does not need painting.

I debated between frosted or stained glass for the toilet window. I decided on the stained glass but it did not turn out as good as I had hoped, but it is a done deal now. The technique worked very well. To make the leading I placed chart tape and a vinyl “C” on the inside of the window. To finish the preparation I painted the leading in using black enamel paint. For the glass I used red and gray craft-paint being careful to keep them in the correct sections. Once dry the chart tape and letter were removed. The bare spaces were painted with black paint and everything left to dry. Once the walls were painted lettered and weathered; the windows were installed.

The interior work began by removing the seats and sanding the glue spots smooth. The floor and wall stubs were painted black and then dry brushed with three tone brown. The floor boards were drawn on using an ultra-fine point marker. The carpet print was found on-line and printed onto self adhesive vinyl.

I replaced the original stoves with a pair made from wood barrel shapes painted black and dry brushed with some dull silver. Next I painted the seats dark red with silver hand rails. The passengers were attached using upholstery tacks glued into holes in their butts. I wanted to make sure none of the passengers got up and wandered around the car after final assembly.

Check the figures section for details on making and painting these.

The coach roof was modeled completely smooth. For older tar paper roof material, layers of masking tape are often used. I wanted a tin roof so I needed to have visible joints. I decided to try an old wargame model technique for relief lines. I taped off the roof with chart tape and painted the lines on using old school Testors enamel paint. To finish, the roof was painted green. The joint lines showed through perfectly. It occurs to me that if I had sprayed the roof with texture paint first it would make for a good tar-paper version. I will try this on the drover caboose.

With everything painted I reassembled the car. Since I have no track power I removed the wiper pick-ups from the trucks and tucked the wiring inside the toilet. Eventually I will hook up a battery source and LEDs.

ALL ABOARDDDD!!!