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When I think of passenger trains my thoughts usually drift to American streamliners of the 1930's-1960's. As such, Amfleet never really caught my fancy, the egg shaped profile borrowed from the Metroliner (PRR/PC/Amtrak) didn't really match the prototypical passenger train in my mind. Then a few years ago one of my friends sketched up a Amfleet car in LDD. That got the gears working in my mind, culminating a little more than a year ago with my setting out to take my stab at them. I found this website of roster shots invaluable for my studies (all reference photos in this post are from that site). I settled on the Amfleet II. From the outside the main distinction between I & II is that Amfleet I has vestibules on both ends and Amfleet II on only one, but Amfleet II also has larger windows. While I was at it, I wanted to make a "modern" train that can still be seen running today. So I went with the current Amtrak paint scheme (Phase VI). The most challenging aspect was to get the right shape to the sides of the cars. Not only are they rounded, but they are widest just below the windows. That took a bit of engineering to get the right shape. Meanwhile, Amtrak's blue is somewhere between regular Lego blue and dark blue, so I went with dark blue. While I could have built clear windows, they would disappear in the dark blue, so I backed the windows with tan to keep them visible in most lighting conditions. I built two coaches and one cafe. The final cars are a little wider than 6 at the widest point and they are 52 studs long. At this point I was in deep, I needed a locomotive to pull the cars. That lead to the P42DC. With my old school bias of streamlined F-7's and E-9's I can't help but think these poor locomotives had their nose cut off. Whatever the history might be, these engines have some difficult angles. There's a bit of clip snot and a lot of black magic behind that nose. Well okay, why stop now? I went on to update my Superliner I design to Superliner II's. The biggest distinction being that Superliner I's did not have transition cars (they relied on the Hi-Level transition cars). Like the Amfleet, they are 6 wide and 52 studs long. All of these cars were designed to handle R40 curves, which require roller bearings to operate satisfactorily at this length. That was easy for the Amfleet design, since the trucks on the prototype cars had an internal frame, the naturally exposed wheels of the roller bearing wheel sets worked well. But for the Superliners, that was a different story. At 6 wide there isn't space to do a brick built solution. So I made up custom truck sides for the Superliners. I rounded out the set with a heritage baggage car visible in several of the shots. Full gallery once moderated
