Oh great Dave, are we going to get in some bidding wars for these now?? Lol...
My first serious remark is that this Kato smoothside coach is around 5ish scale feet longer than your typical P70. But we're in Foob Land...
I had looked into a few options over the past couple of months as to how I was going to modify the roof ends. I did consider ordering these roof ends and doing similar modifications to both the arch of the car body end and the roof end piece:
https://mpscalemodels.com/products/t-p-mp-balloon-roof-ends-walthers-6-pair-n-scale However, I went with what I had on hand, which was several MTL clerestory roofs from my other coaches. But it is something to consider.
I cut the roofs off at about this point in the photo below. I want to say it was about 5 or 6 mm from the roof end where I made the cut. I may need to invest in a better tool to cut these than a hobby knife, perhaps some kind of small saw. Any suggestions on one would be appreciated. My cuts were rough and required a lot of filing to smooth the edges down and ultimately affected the overall length. I also cut the bottom "aligner" off the MTL roof ends so they could sit flat on the Kato car body.
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Here are 2 pictures of the roof end sitting on top of the car body, for height reference.
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Now the ends of the MTL heavyweights, where the car body meets the roof, have two different designs. One is a pediment, which you can see on most of the sleepers and parlors; the other is a curved end, as in the case of the coaches and D78's. The curved end is what we are dealing with here with these MTL roof pieces.
To modify the ends of the Kato car body to align properly with the MTL roof's arch end, I would suggest using a mechanical pencil to draw a line on the car body end where the MTL roof meets it. Essentially a small arch. Above the line is where you'll trim the Kato roof end. This is a bit tough to get accurate because of the angle of the pencil, so err on the side of caution when trimming the kato roof end and file/sand to properly align. Otherwise you'll be left with gaps between the car body and the roof that I'll have to fill in eventually. The other note is that the MTL roof end is not square, so there is either an overhang on the center if the ends are flush, or the corners of the car body show past the roof if the center is flush. I went with the latter and filed down the corners of the car body further.
Also of note, there is a hole in the car body for the top of the diaphragm to clip into place. You may need to just remove the top clip on the diaphragm and glue the diaphragm back into place when you are finished because the hole will get in the way of trimming the car end to match the MTL roof.
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To alter the MTL roof ends to match the stock Kato roof, I essentially filed down the MTL roof down until I got "fairly close" to the height of the Kato roof's arch. Once I cut the ends off of the Kato roof to allow the MTL roof ends to fit, I secured the MTL ends to the Kato roof by gluing pieces of styrene underneath, as well as gluing the ends together. At this point, I filed some more and added putty to fill in rough patches and gaps, let it dry, then filed and sanded it close to smooth... The gluing together and puttying was where I thought that I had completely screwed this up and nearly gave up; full disclosure! I used Tamiya spray for the matte black.
I don't have any other photos of my build at this point and I won't be home for another 3 weeks due to work, but I can send more closeups of the car ends at that point if you need them. They are *not* perfect lol.
After removing the Kato truck mounted couplers, I added a Keystone Details KD-0032 P70 Replacement Step underneath the coach door and installed MTL Medium Shank body mount couplers (I'm okay with the increased spacing if it saves me a headache through tight radii). These steps really gave it the look of a P70 so highly recommend putting in steps! I glued the diaphragms back into place (since they couldn't snap back into place because of the cutting I did). I also added a roof vent on top of the car at one end (I may add another later).
I found Jerry Britton's article about P70s extremely helpful in deciding on how to proceed. I'll call this a P70kR or P70gsR. Decals for car numbers need to go above the trucks for the 1950s and I'll get around to this later.
https://jbritton.pennsyrr.com/index.php/tpm/68-the-p70-in-the-pennsy-coach-fleetThe Kato trucks will likely be changed out to Keystone Details 2DP5 trucks. I thought for a while that the 2D7P2 trucks were similar to the Kato Broadway Limited set trucks; I was mistaken. The 2D7P2 trucks were the PRR's 2DP5 design that were built under contract for the PRR by Commonwealth. So that will have to happen here soon. I will have to figure out car height versus trucks versus bolsters eventually, to make this happen.
Overall a very satisfactory build and I'm looking forward to doing my second one when I get home.
