Did not get a lot done this week! Here is a Bowser N5 Cabosse that I painted for the Penn Central as I did not have very many (only one) PC Caboose. Painted with some Foquil Paint where I mixed Jade Green with some Dark Green so as to come close to PC Green paint,then decaled with Champ Decals. This was the original scheme for PC Cabooses which was changed pretty quickly to just Penn Central and the car number. Last weekend I took a pair of Scaletrains SD40-2's along with a train of various IPD boxcars with me to run at the club. Have a great weekend! Rick Jesionowski
I used the end railings from the Gold Medal dress-up kit for the MP bay window caboose to deal with the clunky stock end railings. I bought this C-C bay window to which someone had added a cupola about one year past at a show. The character of my non-historic railroad demands wood cabooses on arch bar trucks, despite its era being mid-1950s. This, however, was too unusual to pass. It was painted plain red/unlettered when I bought it and had the stock end railings/ladders as well as the roof walk. The stock smoke jack was pushed down to the roof. The Gold Medal kit contains enough to do two cabooses. If I could adapt the end railings to a B-mann bobber, what was stopping me from adapting the whole kit to a C-C, despite the kit's being for a MP? The stock end railings actually were alright but the ladder side railings were clunky. The roof walk was not bad, but the one in the kit seems better. The marker lamps are from a Kato mikado detail parts bag. The stock end railings/ladders were affixed to a plate that covered the slot for the coupler and spring, so at least the plate had to be retained. I used a Xuron sprue cutter to clip off the whole business from the plate. I then affixed the Gold Medal end railing to the edge of the plate. The letters and numbers are Micro Scale. The safety slogans are from a generic caboose decal set that Rail Graphics sold before he went out of business. The glazing is Micro Kristall Klear. Perhaps the back story could be that the Management of the S.C. & N. finally listened to the complaints of the crews about the rough ride of both the bobber cabooses and the two truck cabooses on arch bar trucks.
Nice job on the caboose. I am guessing that either you could not find any more in the factory-issued PC paint, or, if you could, they would appear on the "More e-1bay Humour" topic on this very forum. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, so you got out the decals, paint and everything else and did your own. I had to do similar when I decided that I wanted another pair of WM FA-2s. Thank you for the photograph. I actually went and looked up these things. It appears that they were War Emergency construction; Sedalia, 1943. MoPac built them on the steel frames of old wood box cars. The cabooses also were wood-sided. MoPac did rebuild some of them into transfer cabooses in the early to mid 1960s. According to Spookshow, the C-C bay window is based on an SP model, fifty of which ACF constructed for the SP in the late 1940s. I suppose that I could say that someone misread the construction work order and the shops built fifty-five. SP did not want the production over run, so ACF offered them for sale at cost to a few short lines. SC&N bought one but Management thought that it needed a cupola, so Short Creek Shops added one and counterweighted the chassis. Still, happy to know that there was a similar prototype for it. I can not recall ever having seen a bay window/cupola caboose in either N or HO.
I very seldom purchase prepainted or RTR cars unless I know I cannot find decals for the cars I want. I did not even bother to look for a PC painted caboose, I looked for an undecorated kit that I could paint and decal, also found that this was a paint scheme only used on a few cars before the PC standardized on the prevalent PC paint scheme. I mixed my own paint as I cannot get Scalecoat II yet and I did not want to use Scalecoat I on a plastic car. I had used up the last of my Floquil PC green which according to Jim Six was the most accurate PC Green paint. I will not use Tru-Color paints as they do not spray properly and the paint goes bad due their use of plastic bottles. Rick Jesionowski
Greetings all. So I had a complete knee replacement surgery on 18 February. And Friday, 28 February I went to the Ogden train show. That's where I bought the Death Star 48 foot trailer... But I have had an item on the work bench for a LONG TIME. That's this Athearn Blue Box SPSF GO38-2. Still need to add the numbers to the number boards, couplers, plow, MU hoses, lights and so on... Also need to find a place where I can get bridge rectifiers fairly cheap... Have a good weekend!
