Happy Weekend!! Boy this past week has been packed, no time to do much "fun" stuff. Here's my weekend project: An F7/Baggage Car hybred. I'm trying to focus on making up an MOW Train to station up at the spur at Tunnel 13. I was thinking about cutting up a Marklin Passenger Car, but didn't want to sacrafice a unit from my SP Sliver and Red fleet. Going through my scrap box I found a couple of short shot F7 B unit and realized, there was a hard way to get what I wanted!. The sane guy would cut the ends and the roof and insert a new side our of styrene, but I wanted to give this method a try. I think it works well. I cut the ends off so I could place the windows where the doors would be, squared off the cuts and used two 1/8" square strips of styrene to shore up the weld. Once I had the bottoms sanded flush I was able to push the two ends together using a block of steel as a guide on one side. This insured that the whole thing would be straight. I used gap filling super glue to bond and fill from there on out. To sand down the sides I altered my desk top a bit, I work on a sheet of Acrylic, and converted that. I took my razor saw and cut notches out so I could slide the car over sheet and have a flat spot to sand against. You could do the same thing with a "L" shaped piece of Aluminum clamped to your table and cut just long enough to fit inside the car. I sand with 180 sandpaper attached to small steel blocks to get a smooth straight surface. Superglue was used to fill the gaps and windows...same was done with the roof. Next, cut out doors, some primer and continued fine sanding. I now switched to a nail sander I swiped from my 14 year old (I'm dead when she sees this) As for the underside, I glued plates under the two ends and will afix a bolster to those. The center is left off so I can prime and paint, and then put the doors in. I have a drop in piece for the center that I am working on now. Enough for this morning, it's off to Breakfast with Loren and then back on this. More later Cheers Joe MTL
Joe, I like! Did you see the June issue of MR? There is a baggage car made from a F40PH on pg. 44. Any chance to talk the brass at MT into a set of heavyweights in Z?:teeth:
Insanity is setting in. Leave time to work ! Looks great. Sort of a prototype for those new upcoming smooth sides uh?
Boy, if you you were making an E-unit, that's a great start! Hmmm, E's to go with the F's maybe? Hint, hint! :teeth:
E Unit Hint Hint, already working on one!! You can also make a Faux FP7 by grafting the front of an A unit to a B Unit, some sanding and detailing and fit it on a GP-35 Chassis. Now you'll be a few scale feet short on the wheel base, but it doesn't look all that bad really...in application it will look much different than an F7 and who's going to measure the wheel base? This is a shot of the top of both engines, you can see the extra 4' I started this many months ago, and haven't gotten around to doing much more with it. I did the same thing to get a rough of a E8/9 as well and if you're not afraid of sanding and adding new detail, it's an easy do...you can use the chassis from the AZL SD40-2 and switch back and forth depending on what you are pulling...just a thought Cheers Joe
