July 16, 2016 Modifying a Kitbashed SP ¾ Dome Lounge Car

I've about beat my Kitbashed SP ¾ Dome/Lounge to pieces but I keep finding either errors in my Kitbash or a better way do doing things, this time it's a little bit of both.  I finished this car last summer and about a month ago I decided to reverse the direction of the car.  I never cared for the lounge in the forward section of the car.

To change direction of travel the dome area seating has to be reversed, so that was one thing that needed to be done.  Next to stay close to protocol the tables need to be revised too.  3600 had full tables with the lounge forward.  3601/3604 didn't have food service in the car so the tables are small round serving tables for drinks only.  The lounge is in the trailing end of 3601/3604. 

While I had the car in for a major overhaul I decided to have a go at the interior lighting.  I haven't been happy with the lighting since I cut over from incandescent to LED lighting so I will address that too.

This is a before picture of SP3600 with the dome seating facing the lounge.

This picture shows the Dome seating reversed with tables.

Here I started placing passengers before I discovered the tables needed changing.

This shows the finished interior with round tables and 39 hand painted passengers.

Next is the new LED lighting.  The first LED lighting had hot spots and I really didn't like that.  My fix was to use more LEDs at lower current to end up with even lighting.  To accomplish that I built a light fixture with 9 wide angle warm white LEDs.

I individually balanced the LEDs, the two on the far left are set to illuminate a portion of the lounge, the next one much dimmer and illuminates the last two seats in the dome area.  The next two are over the upper deck lounge area and a bit brighter, the rest are low level lighting over the dome seats.

There are two more over the bar in the lounge balanced to the same level as the two above the tables.

The total current of all 11 LEDs is 860 micro-amps or .86ma at 4 volts.

With the improved lighting I need to do a bit more detail work on the lounge walls, they look kinda drab with the new lighting.

I really like the way the lighting turned out and I much prefer the lounge trailing the dome area.