Still More Just Plug Retrofits

Here's another building that I finished and detailed over 30 years ago, a Design Preservation Models B Moore Catalog Showroom but just installed the Just Plug lighting this past week. Again, I had to disassemble this partly to install the light diffusing window film:

Moving a bit to the right, this shot shows the effect of lighted buildings from the rear:

And here you can see the progress of JustPlug installs along Adams St, the next block south of Lake St. The West Printing building is a City Classics Grant St building. I can date the original kit construction from before 1989, because I copied the paint scheme from a building in Watsonville, CA that was destroyed in an earthquake that year.

The building to the right of West Printing is a Magnuson Models Wise Supply kit that I painted following the paint scheme of the Katy Building in Dallas. I still need to examine it to see if it's a potential candidate for a Just Plug install.

Not long ago I saw a post on Facebook where another modeler called the Just Plug system the best ever advance in model structure lighting, and said it was in some ways "addictive", because with each building you install it in, you want to do more. I completely agree. In my case, it brings decades-old kits to life.

While the overall cost isn't cheap for a whole layout, the components are typically in the $10-20 range, among the less expensive items you can pick up on a visit to the local train store, and you buy them in installments over a pretty long period. I would put the cost of installing a single stick-on LED in a building like these, including the cost of a port in a light hub, the LED, part of a light diffusing window film kit, and an extension cable if needed, at under $20, less than what an entry-level freight car can cost.

More Progress With Just Plug Lighting

The Just Plug building retrofit project is moving east down Lake St in Zenith. The latest building to be completed is a City Classics Penn Avenue Tile-Front Building that I originally built almost 30 years ago. Because it's so tall and narrow, I wasn't able to install a stick-on LED in the ceiling or light diffusing window film behind the windows without disassembling it. I used an X-Acto blade to pry the corners apart and attached the window film with CA. I find CA works better than the little adhesive blobs they provide in the window film kit.

Unfortunately, the building to the left, a Lytler & Lytler D D Badger Iron Front that's a few years older than the City Classics, doesn't lend itself to such a simple refit and won't be retrofitted. That kit was just the components for the front facade of the building and was designed to take a stack of Roundhouse "Victoria Square" brick buildings to fill out the rest of the model. There's no good way to get back inside to add lighting.

The empty space to the right of the City Classics holds another building that's been taken off the layout for retrofit. Beyond that is another Lytler & Lytler kit, their Lizard Head Hardware.

This one turns out to be one of the few building kits I've assembled that I didn't paint the interior walls black before I built it. You can see the light bleeding through the bricks on the first story. I will need to fix this. I can only light the first story, because I built the kit with an interior floor between the first and second stories, and it would probably damage the kit to try to disassmble it.

For the same reason, if I light the Hotel St George at all, it'll also just be the first story. This was a Magnuson Victoria Falls Hotel, a urethane kit that had become extremely brittle by the time I built it. I don't want to tempt fate doing much work on this one.

I'm pretty enthusiastic about the Just Plug system. You can install lighting in existing buildings with a modular system at fairly reasonable cost, and the results are really visible.

AHM-Roco ThermIce Car

I was always vaugely aware of an AHM product from the 1960s, a ThermIce plugdoor style car made by Roco in Austria. Like many of the colorful schemes on AHM cars of the period, I wasn't sure if it was prototypical. But I recently got the Green Frog video Fallen Flags of the Northeast, which has a great deal of footage taken mostly on the Pennsylvania, New Haven, Boston and Maine, and Central Vermont about 1962, which is the time and region where I started serious railfanning.

One short scene bowled me over: it was a New Haven freight passing through Cedar Hill yard with the camera lingering on a ThermIce plug door car. It was perfect evidence that the AHM car had a prototype, and it was in fact part of the rail environment I started railfanning in. I looked on eBay and found one pretty inexpensively, at least for eBay. I think Roco did a pretty good job with it, and remember, this model is 60 years old.

I did what I normally do with AHM cars, which is toss the trucks with their horn-hook couplers and pizza cutter wheels. I found a pair of AAR style trucks in my scrap box and added Kadee wheels. I filled the truck mounting holes with plastic sprue, drilled them #50, and attached the trucks with 2-56 screws. I mounted Kadee 148 couplers in the Kadee boxes and attached them to the floor with 2-56 screws as well. I would have added weight, but the previous owner had glued the floor to the body. I also painted the bare black plastic roofwalk silver.

I haven't been able to find a prototype photo of such a car anywhere outside of the Green Frog video. The view on the video isn't clear enough to give many details on the car outside of its general type and the paint scheme.

I was able to find TICX cars in the July 1968 Official Railway Equipment Register under National Car Company. There were two series, 8900 to 8920 and 8921 to 8941. Both are listed as type LRC, for which I haven't been able to find an identifier other than "L", which is a general type for a specially equipped car. The "R" probably also means it is some type of refrigerator. All were basically 40-foot cars, and the video indicates they had external plug dioors, but what was inside those doors is anyone's guess.

ThermIce was a subsidiary of Publicker Chemical, which was headquartered in Philadelphia, and the car is stenciled "When empty return to Pennsylvania RR So Phi terminal yards Philadelphia, PA". The presence of the car running through New Haven suggests it supplied customers in Boston, but beyond that, I know little.

A number of AHM products are salvageable for use on contemporary layouts. This is certainly one of them. I wish there was an easy way to rescue their Krauss-Maffei diesel!

DPM Town House Block With New Just Plug Lighting

I assembled a set of three DPM town houses maybe 35 years ago -- you can see them in the center of the photo below, taken on my current layout's first incarnation at a former home. They're actually in just about the same place on the benchwork now as they were then.

At the time, I installed incandescent bulbs in at least two of them and even had a scratchbuilt interior in one of them. Over the years, I upgraded the models, most recently by adding a Roomettes interior with Just Plug LEDs to another. I finally got around to installing Just Plug LEDs in all three and Woodland Scenics light diffusing window film where no interior detail was visible. Here's the current status:

The photos have some glitches, like the radio repair shop sign out of alignment in the first photo just above, but this is in the context of taking photos to check my work. I'm generally happy with how this project is turning out, and I'm going to continue addinng Just Plug lights to the rest of the city.