What I did was cut the 3 sliders off the bottom of the chutes, and measured where the 4 chutes would go and marked the centerlines. Next I glued four squares of 1/32" plastic cut about 1/4" square on the bottom where the hatches go. On top of those I glued 4 more square pieces that are smaller. Next I got the dremel out and freehanded the grinding till they looked like this: I made a part representing the hatch slider and glued that over the bottom. Working on the top I used a dremel Gyros thin circular saw blade to slice off the 6 hatches from the top piece, then sanded smooth. I glued 4 hatches on, directly above the chutes. Takes about 2 hours.
so the mods are to the chutes and hatches! you didn't add a section to lengthen the car? i thought you had spliced in a section, and was wondering where you made the cuts and additions. thanks for the info. dave f.
The 4 bay cars are 41' inside length and 52' long, so these 3 bay cars match up very close. I did it the easy way. no splicing. I also lowered the cars by about .060" by cutting out the ends decks, and gluing in a new deck from .020" plastic, then cutting down the bolster .060", and I superglued in 12 BB's to weight the cars at 10 grams. Now I can pull a long string of cars around a 195mm radius turn without clothslining the train. All this means is that I now have to chop all my cylindrical hoppers, and I have about 20 of them so far:
in looking at your wheels i see you swapped out the black for the brown. they look good. it got me to thinking, i wish MTL would make silver colored plastic wheels. they would easy to paint on the inside (brown/rust/black) but still have that silver/metal look on the tire where it rolls on the rails. i think such a wheel would be a really nice addition. more prototypical, even if the silver ended up being aluminum colored it would still be an improvement. dave f.
CN Lifesaver Hopper Hello Gang, Heres my effort at a CN Lifesaver Hopper using a Full Throttle 3 Bay Hopper and decals from Tim. My next project will be to change the 3 bay car to a 4 bay car like Robert has accomplished. Great Stuff. Bob
Beautiful work, Bob. :thumbs_up: I guess you found some more Z inspiration?? Thanks for sharing, and keep up the great work!!
Decal question. At one point, someone, John maybe, had posted links to some other sources of decals, including Wisconsin Southern and some other shortlines. With talk of undecorated cars coming up again, I wanted to find this, but now I can't locate it. Anyone remember where this was? Thanks, Randy
Randy, there was one more z scale decal manufacturer, but I dont remember the name. Chris used their decals on one of his cars. Chriss
Yup, I did see that in the old posting as well. I'll have to get some, but I'm bummed that I missed out on the WS F7 decals. I waned those in addition to rolling stock decals. thanks, Randy
