Passengers

The people have to go somewhere. Since the BRAWA cars still need their interior lights installed, I changed my mind and put the first batch of people into the Schienenbus (Maerklin 39987).

That presented two problems:

• First, I couldn't remove the Schienenbus shell. Hmmm, ... sensing a pattern here.
• Second, I have no sitting train driver ("Lokfuehrer") figures that would be appropriate for a diesel powered rail car.

Trailer car with shell removed

After some research, it turns out removing the shell is quite easy:
The floor of the trailer is merely squeezed into the shell and can be taken out with careful wiggling back and forth.
The motor car is a slight bit more involved, since the shell is made from metal and doesn't flex as easily as the trailer car. There are depressions near the axles along the edge of the floor. Insert a screw driver in the depressions and carefully pry the floor from the shell.

In either case, seats and interior lighting are mounted on the floor and populating them with the usual foot and leg amputations on the passengers was accomplished reasonably quickly. I found that after a dozen figures or so I got the hang of it and became quite fast. That's also when I reached the end of the passenger supply.

Seated passengers held in place with Blue-Tac

For the Lokfuehrer I ended up repainting a passenger with a more official looking uniform jacket in the one case, and a grey sweater in the other case.

The control stand pops out from the shell and makes it easy to fit the Lokfuehrer in his chair.

Trailer car put back together

The other Lokfuehrer.

While at it, I followed a photo of a real 798 control stand to paint controls and give the impression there's more than just a blue injection-molded piece of plastic.

Wait ... Two Lokfuehrer? ... Yep. Since the Schienenbus is operating both forward and backwards during operating sessions, I want a driver at a front of the train, which requires that I install two drivers. Let's blissfully ignore the fact that one of them will look out of the rear window...