Dan’s been in touch with his Santa Fe passenger cars and as usual, some more good tips:

“For this post I will concentrate mostly on details and how to use leftovers.

Another look at the finished layout of the Mainline Railroad.

Here is an old 1960’s Athearn Santa Fe passenger car. It is now the “Streamliner Diner” near the engine house at the main yard.

Towns have to have a place to eat. Here is another old passenger car that was picked up at a train show and it was in rough shape.

The covered hopper became a salt company’s distribution center. The car was in a junk pile with missing trucks and couplers.

I have mentioned using furnace filter material as hedges or weed patches. Here are two photos of a fairly firm filter material.

The photo shows the size to show how dense this one was. I wanted to have a well defined manicured top for this hedge. This provided a “natural” view block to hid the fact that there is no street between the trains and the city.

I sprayed the filter with a quick spray of brownish paint. If any ground foam misses a place it looks like stems. The I sprayed glue over the filter and sprinkled ground foam for foliage. There is a smaller hedge in front of the taller one and is using a larger size ground foam. This just adds depth.

Here I used a leftover industrial window as a grate to prevent large debris entering the drain and then into the river.

Here is a smaller window to do the same thing.

Here is the outlet from the larger grate in photo #8. That kitty litter as rip rap to prevent erosion.

This photo was used in the first post. The houses were in a box of old junk. They had been removed from various layouts, again at a train show. I cleaned them up and fixed them as best as possible. (They would be about 2 to 2 and half feet away.)

They were painted to match each other because they had bee the “company” houses for the coal mine. The one different one was a supervisor’s house I guess. They are now gentrified and have individual ownership.

The layout has an old time western town and museum. This is the yard office and water tower. Tower is a new kit and the office is an old time passenger car. This was recovered and repurposed.

The museum is made up of old equipment. Some in good condition ans some waiting for the museum workers to get them fixed up.

I hope you find some ideas in this post.

SantaFeDan”

A big thanks to Dan for sharing his Santa Fe passenger car pics.

If you missed part 1 of this layout, it’s here: HO scale mainline.

That’s all for this time folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS More HO scale train layouts here if that’s your thing.

Need buildings for your layout? Have a look at the Silly Discount bundle.