Hello all... Documenting my build of an ATSF Horse Express car using Roberto Martari's excellent 'brass' sides-gotta' have a couple of these for my Fast Mail! Since this isn't a 'kit' and requires a lot of surgery, I've been doing a lot of research into how other folks have tackled these kind of bashes...since these are mods done to heavyweight cars, the only real available 'cores' to use are the old Rivarossi/Atlas/ Concor heavyweights...i've been able to find a number of the combines on Ebay for really low prices. The combines work pretty well for these heavyweight baggage express cars-the roof especially-only two vents on one end. Most of the other roofs have different vent arrangements that don't really match up with any of the pics and drawings i have of the cars that Roberto has done nos. 1980-1984. It's much easier to start with a 'blank' roof and add vents, than to have to shave off vents and re-add (also the roof is actually molded from clear plastic-much more brittle than regular styrene-so more care has to be taken when cutting and sanding the roof). I also like the combine roof for the latitudinal stiffeners molded in place. The main surgery needed for this car is the shortening of the car body and roof to match up with the brass side. Some folks hve removed the material from one end, I wanted to remove it from the center, in order to keep the truck/bolster positions in the correct locations relative to the car ends... Here is a pic of the Horse Express sides provided by Roberto... as you can see, it's a pretty inclusive set-down to the unique steps, end doors, with latches and hardware, and the new bottom sill, The doors are provided as seperate pieces to add more dimension plus having the added bonus of being able to model them open (surgery will be required on the door part to do this) The combine also faciltates removing material from the center of the car by having a center panel that is just a wee bit shorter than the length that needs to be removed-allowing a little bit of 'wiggle' room for sanding the cuts true. Here's a close up pic of the panel-it's the one under the 'A' in Santa-the two battery boxes straddle the panel a razor saw, mitre box, and some material to back the interior of the car body...and off we go! Bruce
being somewhat careful not to remove too much material I managed to stay within the panel dimensions making my two cuts... Also, it was necessary to remove an equal amount from the roof, but only on one end (The Horse car roof is staright on the door end)...measuring showed that I could cut right about where the roof starts to curve on the end; a latitudinal stiffener here makes a handy guide. The sides for this car are beautifully thin....just a little sanding of the rivarossi carbody sides (to a mostly flat surface) allows the M&R side to lay flat and not protrude any farther than the original carbody detail. Also, I could cheat a little bit on this one. Since the Horse car (and the rest of the M&R sides I have for the Fast Mail so far) are baggage cars, only a little bit of material needs to be removed from the carbody sides to allow for the baggage doors and their window openings.this llets me keep a lot of material on the carbody sides to help provide more stiffness lost when the carbody was cut. It also allows me to use a good amount of the roof 'glass' unique to the rivarossi cars to act as a structural stiffener. The only material i'm going to remove from the clear 'glass' part of the roof will be from the areas covered by the baggage doors, and the new end. In other words, i'm keeping most of the roof glass intact to give the carbody more longitudinal rigidity. Here are some pics of the modified roof helping me true the two ends... cont....
I also cut the end here.... Now, before completely sanding the center cuts true...I used one of the sides to help me see if more material removal was needed... yep...just a little more needs to be removed.... I'll remove it from the center cuts...not the end here...and, more than likely, completely squaring the center cuts will take care of this extra material... More will need to removed from the roof end but i'll use the final 'trued and glued' body to help me mark that. I want to create the roof overhang that is evident on the door end of these Horse Express cars; the thickness of the roof material and the way the Roberto has etched the end door doesn't allow me to just 'thin' the roof plastic; I've got a method that I'll use after the roof and end is secured permanently. At this point it's just a trial and fit situation until just the right amount of material is removed. Once I'm satisfied with that, I'll add sheet styrene to the floor from the inside and glue the two halves together, using the inserted roof to keep everything true (I'll rubber band it ). i want the new structure to cure completely-It will be subject to a little stress when I sand the sides fairly flush and cut the openings for the baggage doors.... Bruce
Looking forward to see how yours turns out. I built one back in 2006 for a friend and plan on building another one for myself. http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/585/HE011.jpg?9441 http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/585/HE021.jpg
Russell, I saved those pictures to my reference material long ago!...very nice! final squaring and tru-ing of ther joins.... I also cut the window material from the roof that would interfere with the baggage doors...still managed to leave enough material to really add to the final strength of the car.... very gently, and using a circular motion, I sanded the carbody on a flat piece of 150 grit sandpaper...I wanted the plastic sides as flat as I could get them and still retain some structural integrity. Here, the roof is back on the sanded carbody...I can now mark for the baggage door openings and remove the plastic that will be behind the doors. I'll keep the roof on during this process-it will keep the now-thinner sides from distorting when I cut. cont....
a finalt 'test' fit of the brass side shows that everything is just how I want it... notice that I left the carbody about 3 millimeters longer than the actual brass side; I wanted to preserve the carbody's corner moldings(?). while the brass car side ends at the pre-drilled holes for the end grab rail....good period photos show that the grab rail was located at least 1 foot inboard of the actual end of the car; a corner reinforcing panel/member is very evident. I wanted this (and future ATSF heavyweight builds ) to show this... And here is the only reference pic i have of sample of the actual class of Horse express modelled by Roberto... To me, the biggest visual difference between this class, and the others ( I believe there were three seperate builds/classes of these cars by Santa Fe...not super sure of this), are the double parrallel rows of vertical rivets, the other ATSF classes seem to have single vertical rows of rivets... This is a good pic and shows a lot of details peculiar to this car, including the water tank and battery box on this sdie of the car...i have no clue if the other side is a mirror image as concerns the underframe details... Thanks for looking, Bruce
Mucho thanks, Bruce/ Arbomambo for sharing these. I think I will copy this on my computer to use when I do the build. I bought one of these, and look forward to building it someday. I will have to imagineer a racetrack somewhere on my resort island seaport, and run this car on my #5/ #6 in race season. And I am looking forward to the M&R heavyweight coaches.
Bruce, you're generally correct: Roberto's sides represent the horse express cars converted in 1951 and 1953 from 78'-5" coaches and chair cars. The ten earlier (1930) horse express cars were purpose-built and had single rows of vertical rivets and no horizontal rivet belt. They were also a bit longer, at 82'-2". If you study the rivet pattern on Roberto's car, you can see where the windows were blanked out. There was a third series of dour horse cars, also converted from chair cars, in 1962 /63. These cars, while similar, 367-370, had tapered side sills at each end.... Too new for us anyway. Hope this helps, Regards, Otto K. This is a good pic and shows a lot of details peculiar to this car, including the water tank and battery box on this sdie of the car...i have no clue if the other side is a mirror image as concerns the underframe details... Thanks for looking, Bruce[/QUOTE]
Reading my last post I realized I could have made it clearer: as i understand it, the original 1930 cars had the typical Santa Fe sill going to the ends, while the chair car rebuilts had the tapered ends where the steps had been... Otto
Thanks Otto...apparently 4 'runs' of this type of car, including the original builds from 19(?)... Roberto's, accurately per this photo, has the tapered sill, like you said...These were apparently the 1953 'chair car' rebuilds... And...I just had a big 'DOH' moment... the info I have says these were all painted 'origianlly' in green, then some, later, in dark gray with light gray lettering...some sources saying that when some cars(?) were built and/or re-equipped with roller bearing trucks, they were painted gray....but no definite info as to 'which' cars received roller bearings, or whether ALL the roller bearing cars were painted/repainted in gray, etc...just that there seems to be some connection between roller bearing cars and the gray scheme... Some cars lasted into the 60's in the green scheme...so did they get roller bearings and were never painted gray, or did they never get roller bearings?...Geez.. YET!...I just realized that the above picture shows that this car HAS roller bearings!...and it's quite possible that it's in the gray scheme (pretty hard to tell in this B&W photo...this is no 1984, and is of the class that is Roberto's model....I'd love to know when this photo was taken. Bruce
So...in the final stretch of car modification in advance of attatching the sides...pretty much downhill from here... after the initial first cut into the bodyshell...this series of cuts gave me the most 'trepidation'...cutting out the baggage door openings would test the precautions I made to keep the re-attatched carbody integral and strong.... I layed the corresponding brass car side on each side and marked the door openings with a fine point sharpie... The seperat brass doors have a lip that allows gluing or soldering to the brass side, so the openings were going to have to be cut a little larger than the marks here...about 1/8 inch on either side.... I grabbed the finest blade saw and 'went to it'....being very careful to not torque the bodyshell while sawing straight down to the bottom frame... after making the two vertical cuts needed for each door opening, I gently scribed across the bottom of the plastic, then, just as gently, snapped the plastic piece off.... these two pics show the results...actually quite a bit of original side has been removed, and precious little is left!...when I do one of the new Heavyweight chair cars, I'm really going to 'sweat'...the baggage cars won't near as much original material removed.... cont....
Fitting the roof let's me breathe a little better...everything fits perfectly, and having that roof as a structural member makes a big difference- a very strong assembly as it stands now.... and again, another test fit of the side shows everything is ready for the gluing stage.... The 'hard' work is done (I'm glad it's over-but I've also proved to myself that I'm not beyond the major surgery needed to really make these beautiful sides shine...I'll be tackling MANY of these kind of projects now!) More to come and Thanks for looking, Bruce
Nice work Bruce. I sent you some more pics and diagrams. As to the grey scheme, the Painting and Lettering Guide says "in 1953 the Santa Fe began repainting some of its modernized air-conditioned chair cars in dark gray..... Many other cars were subsequently repainted in a similar scheme." My guess is that the horse cars didn't get the gray scheme until much later, and even then, just some... Have fun, Otto
Got the pics, Otto!...love those Erie builts!!!!!! before work this evening, I glued the sides, after first glueing each door into it's proper opening... glueing the brass sides to the body was actually a non-event...having the 'sanded-flat' body shell gave the brass sides the maximum amount of gluable surface area. I used Gorilla brand super glue...which is FAST becoming a favorite of mine...unlike any other CA I've ever used...doesn't seem to fog..gives a hair more time to get things aligned before curing...seems to have an 'elasticity' to it that I've never encountered in a CA before...creates a very strong bond...just like the other Gorilla Glues... I used a cotton Q-tip to smear a full, but thin, coat of glue over the entire surface area...then gently, working from one edge, walked the brass side into position; I had already test fit a number of times, so I knew how to align the side on one end to get it square along the entire length. Encountered no problems at all.... then removed the tapered bottom sill and glued that to the channel below the side....the plastic channel, that I took pains to leave in place, creates a very positive gluing surface, as well as reinforcing the very thin tapered sill. After everything is secure I'll trim the plastic channel where it protrudes from the brass one... just left to trim the roof edge to line up EXACTLY with the body end...then attatch the unique door end... still need to clean up and add a smooth finish to the underframe centerbeam, fill in the floor, add weight, re-address a new truck attatchment system (the roof will be permanently attatched so I can't use the antiquated Rivarossi weight/bolster attatchments I'll add the unique overhanging roof 'lip' to the door end, then add details, paint and decal... Thanks for looking, Bruce
Added a 'sub floor' to provide more reinforcement and glueing surface for the new underframe details... in this pic you can see the undeframe which was removed in order to remove the molded-in details prior to cutting the frame... then used a later 'ConCor' truck bolster screw to re-tap the bolster openings on this older 'Atlas' body...now I can attatch and remove the trucks without using the bizarre bolster retaining nut/weight 'thingy' on the original Rivarossi car.... Temporarily have it up on the Rivarossi trucks (which I like) to make sure everything is 'lined up' and 'true'... It's really looking the part.... as the pics show, I did some slight trimming of the original sill at the new overlayed 'tapered' ends...still some trimming left to do there and on the bottom of the sill overlay (removing the excess protruding plastic channel) The door end of the roof is now square with the end of the car so the flat brass end can be glued once I'm satisfied that I won't need to remove the roof anymore... Going to check all the glue seams, add some weight....then close 'er up (glue the roof and flat door end. Thanks for looking, Bruce
Good morning on this gorgeous SUNNY Day...the azaleas are out early here in the deep south and we seemed to have dodged the storms (my thoughts are with those to the north) over a cup of coffee, I attatched the door end of the Horse car, which gave me both a 'doh' moment and an unexpected bonus. The 'DOH' came after securing the door in place with Gorilla Brand glue...then realizing I had failed to first glue the smaller personnel door in place! (these, along with the baggage doors, can only be glued from the inside)...the solution to this dilemna presented itself with the unexpected bonus part of the situstion. I had always planned on permanently securing the roof on this one...I had planned for it from the start, thinking the roof would be needed as strength because of the mods to the body core...in fact, I had origiannly planned on having the roof permanently glued before attatching the end. However, with test fit, sand, test fit, sand, etc...and reinforcing the car floor, it was obvious that the car core itself was still pretty strong...after the sides were glued, it was even stronger..and, after test fitting the end, i realized the roof could still remain removable!...the fit was THAT good! Great news indeed...another bonus that I hadn't figured on was the way the end is designed, or at least how it fits for me... whether it is intentional on Roberto's part, or just a happy coincidence (I'm thinking it is an intended design, considering the quality of these products), if fit and glued properly, the top contour of the end piece forms the latitudinal roof rib/stiffener previously 'lost' during the roof cutting/trimming process; and with the very close fit achieved with careful trimming and fitting, there is no obvious seam. YIPPEE! (I can now fabricate and glue the roof lip/overhang directly to the brass end and, after painting, all will appear to be part of one long integral roof. So, because of the roof removal, I was able to still insert and glue the personnel door from the inside. Here are pics of the door end, showing the fit...there are some very nice detail parts included for this door...I'll attatch them later this evening, along with the steps/stirrups. I have not figured, yet, how I'm tackling the underframe detail needed for this car...two LARGE water tanks, centrally located, and this series of car seems to have wooden tool (or battery ) boxes which will need to be fabricated... some pics... and, then, just to compare the heavyweights I've built/modified so far for the Fast Mail.... Thanks for looking, Bruce
