I purchased two Bachmann Big Hauler tank cars to rebuild. I will say here that the Bachmann cars are no way as nice as the LGB and USA Train cars are to rebuild and remodel, they fit poorly and there plastic parts do not have the quality that other manufactures do. Well so much for that and on to the rebuild, I used the Bachmann tank cars with metal wheels and metal hand rails, don’t get the cars with the plastic handrails for sure, they all break and do not repair very well. I think the cars with the metal parts were probably the first run cars offered by Bachmann, but not sure on that. One car the Texas Refinery car was left pretty much stock with very few upgrades, just body repairs to the fit and finish, the T&P Water Car was a total redue, the car was changed to a frameless tank car and the underbody frame parts were from a USA Trains Box Car, the deck was covered over with Plastic diamond plate to cover up the wood deck, plus other modifications to match the original car. I used water slide decal paper and made the decals on the printer, I will say the process worked perfect, way better then I thought it would. The cars were painted in Rustoleum X2 paints, I’m more then pleased with the results as in the past I’ve always used my airbrush for model painting. Thanks for looking, trainman
Nice work. I think it was the later releases with metal railings. I have some here somewhere if you need extra.
If you know how to spray paint, and your project is not too large, you can get excellent results from rattle cans. ALWAYS read the instructions regarding re-coat times. Some Rustoleum paints will crinkle up badly if you wait too long between coats.
I have professional spray equipment at work, and an air brush at home. I’ll often opt for rattle cans as it’s so much faster and no clean-up.
This was a really cool example of how a few modifications can really make stock equipment of underwhelming quality something special. Thanks for sharing!
Eric