Thanks. This car is a little more challenging than my usual car side project. Getting the bend right at the blunt end was a little tedious.
Finished up a Burlington Express Box Car. I made a rubber mold and this is the first casting. I'll be offering the castings for sale in a few days through my web site. http://skytopmodels.com
Bill, that's great... So what railroads other than the Burlington would have had his particular iteration? Regards, Otto K.
I think Burlington was the only road that did these conversions from the troop kitchen cars...most of the express box/express reefer conversions from troop cars involved the troop sleepers...not 100% sure, though... Bruce
on my workbench... Fast Mail conversions occupy all of it... getting down to the 'nitty gritty' before I start any more...addressing initial mistakes and re-doing parts I found unsatisfactory adding drip rails to all cars adding clestory window representations with styrene adding vents and ladder grabs to roofs (I won't repaint the roofs until I get the prototypical 3 stanchion ladder grabs for the curved part of the roofs) cleaning decal glue residue and flat coating adding diaphragms to all adding more underframe detail to area that will be visible from just under rail height Basically finishing these cars to a higher degree and actually 'finishing' them! Thanks for looking, Bruce
I clipped the tabs off the windows for the business car and glued them to the inside of the car side. I was planning on using a thin film for glassing. I doubt the Kato 10-6 windows will fit the MR Sides very well. If they do line up perfectly with the openings in the etched sides, they would probably protrude out the car side too much.
Hi, Ok, here's what's currently on my workbench: So why --- this? Well, I somehow stumbled into building a slightly downscaled version of the "Lake District Ry" from Kalmbach's "101 Trackplans". This has a lake of sorts in the middle of the layout (who would have guessed), and I need some industries for that. But what? Milk, or Oranges/Peaches, on the land part, and fishing on the lake would be an option (another one would be to use the lake as a lumber mill pond and have a lumber mill next to it --- but I think I'll rather skip the mill pond and have a tiny sawmill to the left of the layout, next to that single spur there. Although having a small water and coaling tower there would be nice too...). But this is a really tiny lake, so any fishing boat would look way out of scale. What should I do? And then I remembered the stationary fishing nets along the river Po in Italy, and figured something like this might do. So something like this or, more likely, this http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiara-sibona/2457125884/sizes/m/in/photostream/ is the look I'm after. And here's the result: Not too bad for a first try. Now, I wonder if anything like this could conceivably have been seen along the shore of any 1900s lake in the US. Not likely, I guess, but I'll just claim that the proprietor brought the idea over from his native Italy... Sven PS: wonder how to influence the relative scale of the images. Sigh!
Blunt End Sleeper Project I decided to add a drum head. I milled out the etched end and mounted some opaque white plastic behind the hole. I glued a white LED to the inside and applied the drum head decal from the Micro Scale Sunset Limited sheet. Small red LEDs for marker lights. Still have to get a mars light circuit from Jim Hinds.
Thanks folks. While I am on a roll I decided to start work on a car to replace the one I have for the other end of the train. The original car was bashed from an old Atlas Rivarossi RPO/Baggage with Bachmann full dome trucks. For the new one I am using a Con Cor Budd car for a core and M&R etched sides. I have some Kato El Capitan diner trucks on order for the new car. The finished car should be a much more accurate representation of the prototype.
Russell, Love it... Being from New Orleans and growing up all along Hwy 90 in Louisiana and Texas, the Sunset Limited is near and dear to me! Sure would be a nice one for Kato to do! off of the workbench for pics...truck weathering left and I'd like to add security bars to the rider car and 1849 (gotta figure out how to get ahold of some spares from M&R sides!) continued...
