Carletta Trains
New Jersey Transit Comet Passenger Cars
For this project I purchased Comet II passenger car shells from Island Model Works. My intention was to use these cars and paint them in a more updated livery which was on the Comet IIM cars. Below are a couple of shots of how the looked when they arrived. As you can see there's a lot of flash and left over molding that had to be cut out from the windows and along the bottom of the cars. It took a lot of patience, but it wasn't too hard to do.


The NJ Transit cars have inside bearing wheels which means the outside of the wheels aren't attached to anything. I purchased several sets of Kato wheels that are used on their Amfleet cars. These trucks have a coupler mounted on them which would hit the steps molded onto the Comet II chasis so I had to cut off the coupler. While I was at it I trimmed the electrical leads since I have no plans on lighting my cars and they would only present a challenge later


Here you can see how I used an NMRA coupler gauge to ensure that the couplers are at the right height. I also had to check the clearance of the coupler to make sure that the coupler wouldn't hit against the floor of the car next to it.


The next step was to check to see if the coupler will clear the platform on the end of the car. The picture on the right shows the platforms as they came. I later rounded the edges so they'd work better in push mode.



Here you can see the fully assembled cars. There are still minor tweaks to me made, but otherwise they're ready for testing.
