Don Winter passenger car kits

rmccown-admin · January 30, 2023, 6:05pm

In my stuff, I have had several boxes of parts from Don Winter’s passenger car series, including a BUNCH of extra ‘stuff’ that he was still developing when he passed away. UPS labels on them have 2002 dates. At the time, I built the RPO, but never got around to building the rest. I just dug out the boxes of stuff, and there are three full kits (Baggage, combine, coach), plus what looks like parts for a couple different business cars. They’re not very accurate kits, they’re a bit too tall, but they do look good once built. Let’s see where this adventure takes me.

The RPO

Three complete kits. I may make the baggage car into a milk car.

And a box of extras.

rmccown-admin · January 30, 2023, 9:02pm

First up, let’s do the coach. Unwrapped all the parts (Nov 17, 2002 dates on the newspapers) and started assembling. The basic box is already assembled, but you need to attach a bunch of wood trim and the white metal window frames. Have the bolsters and pseudo-queen posts glued up and drying, and I’ve started filing the flash off the windows.

These were never a craftsman quality kit, more like enough parts to build the model. They were intended to be “operations quality” and not award winners, and, as such, there are a lot of generic parts between all the different models.

PeterT · January 30, 2023, 10:39pm

I acquired one of them many moons ago and refinished it as an EBT combine - not that it looked like any of them, but it was a lot better than the only alternative - Bachmann! And it was Fn3.

I had to reshape the resin roof ends with a sander as they were a bit weird, but it was pretty easy and I used some square styrene to refinish the edges.

Bruce_Chandler · January 30, 2023, 10:59pm

All of this is neat and brings back so many memories. I have some emails from Don, but my first contact with him appears to be December 2003. Last one was in May of 2005.

Lots of things have changed over the years; the best thing is just knowing all of these folks.

JRad · January 30, 2023, 11:28pm

Looks like a great project. I’ve had a hankering for some proper scale coaches for a long time. Opportunity and cash have not aligned yet.

Rick_Marty · January 30, 2023, 11:41pm

Yea, I just built a couple of those last year after they had been laying around from about the same date as yours. Interesting trying to get everything to fit together.

rmccown-admin · January 31, 2023, 9:12pm

Starting to work on the roof. These are the major pieces (cast resin ends, and a bunch of wood). The clerestory boards are generic across all his kits, so you have to cut them to fit, and then gusset them. The second picture shows where I will need to cut and splice.

And a picture Don sent me showing how they go together.

Devon_Sinsley · January 31, 2023, 9:49pm

neat kits for sure. We be fun to see what you come up with and see the string running down the rails

rmccown-admin · February 1, 2023, 6:20pm

Kind of hard to see whats going on here. First, here’s a glue-up of one of the sides of the roof and clerestory windows. Ends need to be trimmed when the glue is dry.

This picture shows the under-window trim (clamped like heck with an aluminum straight edge because its very warped) and the quarter-round at the corners of the car held in place by blue tape until the glue dries.

rich413 · February 1, 2023, 8:20pm

Nice looking ,what are you using for glue?
Richard

rmccown-admin · February 1, 2023, 8:23pm

For the wood I’m fond of regular old yellow carpenter’s glue. For gluing other things I like 5-minute epoxy.

rmccown-admin · February 1, 2023, 10:08pm

Laying out the major roof pieces.

And a close-up shot of the corner, door and under-window detail boards

Bruce_Chandler · February 1, 2023, 10:29pm

Looks great!

Where did this sudden burst of finishing older projects come from?

rmccown-admin · February 1, 2023, 11:01pm

HAH. Too many unfinished projects piling up, because I see some new thing I want to build. I am committed to finishing (or selling/giving away/whatever) EVERY project I have started but that remains unfinished, before I can build anything new. Going pretty good so far.