Metra Car

In August of 2004 I moved in to an apartment just down the street from BNSF's rail line that rolls through the Chicago suburbs, and have since then have generally used Metra whenever I wanted to go in to the city itself. This, coupled with the fact that I see them go past almost every day on the way too or from work, inspired me to build a Lego-sized Metra car. Here it is!

	Here's a (somewhat crooked) shot of what a real Metra car looks like. It's a pretty typical commuter light rail car with two levels of seats inside and shiny corrugated metal on the outside.
	The side view of my version of a Metra car. It was built mostly out of pieces from a couple of Santa Fe car sets. My version has a few obvious inaccuracies - the windows should be oval, the doors should be wider (and double), and the car should be longer. Ha! If you want accuracy, you should be looking for a real model train site! My version makes use of typical-to-Lego selective compressionism, and I think it translates pretty well on this model to make a cute little car.
	Here you can see how I borrowed many of the design elements from the Santa Fe cars for this one. The wheel trucks are the same, the lengthened car is the same, the car-end doors are the same, etc. Building this fairly simple model just requires one full Santa Fe set and a pile of extra pieces. The real limiting factor is the number of windows required. With its double-decker design, the Metra car requires 24 windows. The most either of the Santa Fe sets has is 20, so you still have to scrounge up a few more to get a full car built.