Hey guys, Been kinda quiet around here for modern freightcar equipment builds. I’ve been quietly working on this one and am getting close to begin the painting process. I unfortunately had a health set-back recently. But am begining to feel better or at least well enough to get back into working on some models. Not sure when I’ll risk trying to paint it but soon hopefully. Anyway here’s a few close-up shots of her…enjoy!
Brian,
Looks great and hope you get to feeling better soon.
It’s never good to be under the weather. But even more so at Christmas.
Ralph
Sweet! Did you cast your own car ends? (I cheated and ordered some!)
Wow, that’s some great looking work! I’d sure be interested in some construction details.
Whoa, that’s a lot of work!
Great model.
Beautiful… 
Though not my LS modeling era, I really like the big modern cars. More details, please!
Yes , as nice as your work is, if you don’t mind showing the build in progress pics they would be appreciated. I’d like to see the detail parts builds too.
Thanks guys,
As for my health set back…I had an unfortunate accident at home and literally fell flat on my face, breaking my upper jaw. 2 weeks ago I underwent 6 hours of surgery to break and relocate my upper jaw and have it wired shut to the lower jaw. What I didn’t know was they put in a plastic backing piece behind my teeth (and roof of my mouth) which means I really can’t breath thru my mouth. I have to use a syringe to get everything to the opening in the very back of my mouth. I’m 2 weeks in and have another 4 weeks till they remove the wires but I’ll still have the steel bands and at that point will go to rubber bands where the wires were…a couple weeks of that then they say I’ll have everything removed. That’s all assuming that all goes well (I’m hoping cuz I don’t think I can go thru this again).
I’ve been working on getting together some of the pictures I took while building this car and I’ll try to put something together for you guys.
Ouch!
Sorry to hear that, sounds most painful! Heal quickly!
You know, the pain was nothing, the biggest thing post surgery was trying to breathe the first 24 hours. So much pooled blood in the sinus cavities and no way to breathe thru my very swollen mouth…coughing and sneezing are a real experience…I don’t even want to think about barfing. But now that all that anxiety is gone, I’m gonna miss Christmas meals and sweets…I told Margaret she’ll have to make me Christmas cookies in February.
Mark V…what kind of car ends did you buy? And where?
Alright, let get started. I find I really enjoy the research when there is some available. I sifted thru many books, magazines and websites as well as some of my own DT&I documents. From that I did what I always do, draw up a plan for the car I want to build. In this case I’m building a Pullman Standard early version 86’ HyCube boxcar. It was nice to have a drawing to use as a starting point for my drawing (I found one in Mainline Modeler magazine…I’m still mourning the loss of that magazine). So, after drawing it up I then do a bit of engineering on the drawing establishing construction plans and convert it to standard commercial styrene sizes. Here’s an end view section showing how I laid out the construction. Most of the shell is made out of 1/8" ABS plastic. Solvent welded together
I knew I had the ends already done since I made the master pattern and mold when I built my P-S PS1 40’ mini hycube boxcar. Actually it was a kitbash of 2 USA Trains 40’ boxcar ends stacked to match the prototype. When I made that pattern I actually made it match the 86’ car since doing the 40’ mini meant just removing the upper most dart type rib (resin really sands and files very easily). The doors I knew I wanted to only make once since they would take a lot of work to make look good so I came up with my approach to how I build them into the model. I then made the pattern and cast them up. Here’s my plan for the doors, note I made the doors with a backing plate that gets glued to the inside of the boxcar sides.
The real doors are recessed into the door opening just like the plan shows. That’s something I learned while drawing and photographing the real cars for reference. That’s another part of the research I enjoyed. I found out that one of the real DT&I cars was still running in captive service just south of Columbus, OH and I was lucky enough to correspond with a couple of people one of whom happens to substitue engineer on the train that hauls that car daily. He let me know the schedule and I was able to get a LOT of great close up shots for detail of the real genuine P-S car I am building…how cool. OK, side bar story aside, here’s a picture of the pattern just before I cast it (I still had a couple rivets to put on after this picture). Most of the black rivets you see are actually Archer fine transfer resin rivet decals. They found a way to put resin blobs onto waterslide decal sheets. Archer has a website if your interested. (Micro-Mark is marketing thier own version) These rivets are ‘O’ scale bridge rivets.
More story to follow…
Amazing brian! Excellent modelling! Will watctch this thread continue.
As usual outstanding!
Brian, to answer your question…I bought some cast ends for 1:20.3 cars from our very own proprietor Bob McCown! Sorry, I know it’s not your scale.
Not adding insult to injury but I thought “Oh god, what would I eat on Christmas”? Then I remembered my favorite holiday dish is custard! You can have that!
Amazing work. I’m going to leave and burn my workbench now…
OK, next installment. Here’s a shot of my first cast door part.
This is A.K.A. the cast that cleans out the mold and exposes where you need to concentrate your efforts when pouring them. A few of the resin rivets remained in the mold and are part of this casting. I also found out where air bubbles are likely to be a problem - as you can see in this part so now I use a little brush in the trouble spots when I cast each piece and that pretty much took care of that problem. Just for giggles I shot this part with Krylon aluminum spray to see how cool they’ll look painted. Here’s a shot of the body flipped over showing the basic box construction.
I cut the inner bulkheads to the height that the lower sill piece would register against them, that way no measuring to make sure they would parallel the side sheets. The lower sill pieces are one per side whereas the side sheets are 2 per side, as the doors interupt them in the middle. Cutting all the black ABS plastic sheets is done on a table saw as that is the most reliable way to make panels of the same size. I rip all the inner bulkheads at the same time which makes it easy to keep the box square and parallel. Then use the table saw and fence to cut all the bulkheads to the same height so the floor will have a group of even surfaces to rest on. Refer to my end view plan to understand what I’m saying. Here’s a closer shot near the doors
As well planned as I try, improvising along the way does happen. Notice I had to notch the lower sill pieces to clear the door casting. Notice also the bulkheads between the doors are narrower than the bulkheads between the sides. I built the box with the side bulkheads first, then I shaved (on the table saw) the bulkheads between the doors til they fit nice and snug. They are CA (superglue) glued to the resin door backsides. Let me go backwards a second. Once I had the side pieces cut I scribed the weld lines on them, then to make one complete side I first glued the 2 side pieces to the doors using a straight edge to keep them all inline at the top surface. The bulkhead width then was determined by the end castings width. I played with a piece on the table saw till the sides were just a bit under the overall width of the end castings. At that point I stood the sides on thier top surfaces (another great use for a table saw is to use it as a surface plate to assemble on) and solvent welded some of the bulkheads to the sides. With them all on the table saw top it keeps the top of the sides and bulkheads flush so when I attach the top I know I have a solid and flat surface. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of any of the above process. Once the sides are glued together with the bulkheads I then CA glued the ends to the sides. Now it was time to cut and fit the roof. I left it a little long at each end knowing once the top was on I could file it down flush to the ends. Here’s what that stage looked like
At the same time you rip the bulkheads to width it’s good to rip the floor to the same width, and then when I went to fit it all together I shaved just a bit more off the side of the floor and it fits like a glove. The bulkheads are great because when you have the floor off they make nice handles to carry the body around when you work on it. I’ll use them when I paint the body also. That’s enough typing for tonight…I’ll continue tomorrow.
…:)…
I had to edit to remove FOWL language …Excellent!!!
Brian, that is a great job. I want to build several 53’ and 65’ mill gons. They have boxcar type ends on them. Is it possible to purchase several boxcar ends to use? Thanks.
Ron
First,
Thanks to everyone for the compliments!
Ron, I’m not sure what you’re asking. I don’t know of any gondolas that use Pullman-Standard type ends, some use the improved drednaught style ends, and that looks quite different that the P-S ends. The AristoCraft boxcars have the drednaught style ends, have you thought about buying a cheap junker boxcar and cutting the ends off of it?
hmmmm, it wiped out both entries…
