Narrow gauge rider gon

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi guys,
As mentioned in my 40’ Pullman boxcar post, I am concurrently building a D&RGW rider gon for the Silverton Train. The rider gons were built in the early 1960’s from standard gauge Pullman boxcars. The pic that inspired this project is here, shown in Denver freshly built:

To simulate the slightly smaller narrow gauge trucks in 1:29 scale, I bought a pair of 1:32 scale MTH freight trucks. A Kadee 970 is on the left, while the MTH truck is on the right:

I re-gauged the MTH trucks to a scale 3’ in 1:29 scale and gave them a few coats of paint:

The trucks are now under the car and it has been set aside for a bit while I finish some other projects:

Cheers,
Matt

[PeterT]

@Matt_Hutson

I re-gauged the MTH trucks to a scale 3’ in 1:29 scale and gave them a few coats of paint:

Matt, nice job but I got lost somewhere. I guess the full size model was to 1/29th scale, so your narrow gauge version is to 29n3 ? Also known as 1.25" gauge, which I think is O gauge?

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi Peter,
Sorry, yes I guess you could call it 29n3. It is 1:29 scale on 3’ gauge trucks…not that I actually have any 3’ gauge track.

Matt

[John_Bouck]

Interesting!
I was hoping Accucraft would add one to their Silverton set, but it never happened (yet).
I have a K 27 and a five car set, but it seems to be missing those cars when I run it.
I’ll definitely follow this build.
I thought about using a high side gondola and build my own, but that didn’t happen.

[freddy (Fred Mills)]

LGB produced a reasonable model of the cars resembling those gondolas, in 3 foot gauge. Having ridden on them while on the Silverton train; they look very much like them…but of course LGB is supposedly 1:22.5 scale… It seems they have just recently made another run of them.
The Archbar trucks can easily be replaced with other makes of Bettendorf ones. LGB originally put their passenger trucks on them.

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi guys,
The company I work for declared today a powder day. To all y’all that don’t live near a ski area, that’s any day in which it snows 6" or more. Since I haven’t skied in about 40 years, I took the opportunity to get rolling on this project again.
Does anybody remember my standard gauge idler flatcar project from last year? I had to make sure the narrow gauge rider gon would couple up to the idler flat with the coupler in the narrow gauge position. To do so I built a short piece of three rail track - the idler flat is on the left and the rider gon is on the right:

I spent most of the day cutting tiny pieces of Plastuct Z-channel and other shapes, then gluing them onto the car. The grabirons, coupler pocket and ladder are from Precision Scale; the coupler is from Burl Rice. The stirrup steps were bent from K&S 1/32"x 1/16" flat bar. In the background you can see the prototype picture that’s guiding this build:

Cheers,
Matt

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi guys,
Today I was finally able to get back to this project. I’ve added about seven miles of Plastruct Z channel and the car body is now done. The air brake hoses are from Burl Rice; the brakewheel is from Precision Scale, and the walkway ramps were made from Plastruct HO scale diamond plate:

This morning I primed the car body:

I had earlier scribed the basswood to simulate individual boards just like I did in February for my Pullman boxcar. What I failed to account for is that on this car the insides of the walls would be visible. Oh well, live and learn. The car was painted with Krylon Old Equipment Yellow. This color was not my first choice, but apparently Krylon no longer makes Caterpillar Yellow:

I have been unable to find evidence that the car I am modeling had seats in its original configuration, so I left them out.
Now I need to make the railings around the top of the car using K&S 3/64" brass rod. Then lettering and numbering and I’ll be finished.
Cheers,
Matt

[Matt_Hutson]

Hi guys,
The car body has gotten its final coats of paint. Yesterday I began lettering. Other than the “flying” Rio Grande (from an O scale set from CDS), the lettering is being done one letter or number at a time. The lettering is dry transfers from Woodland Scenics:

Cheers,
Matt

[Cliff_Jennings]

Gorgeous work, Matt.

[Devon_Sinsley]

That came out great.

[Devon_Sinsley]

@Matt_Hutson

Sorry, yes I guess you could call it 29n3. It is 1:29 scale on 3’ gauge trucks…not that I actually have any 3’ gauge track.

Is the plan to do some 29n3 trackage? Because that is a rather interesting take on things. Since so much of the standard gauge stuff is 1:29 and 1:20.3 looks huge against it. So its interesting to see it go a different direction. And as long as one is hand laying track there is no reason not to go this route.

[Matt_Hutson]

Thanks guys. No, I do not intend to build any 3’ gauge 1:29 scale track. This project developed out of my 40’ Pullman boxcar project - the Grande modified some of those into pipe gondolas in the 1950’s, then further modified them into the rider gons. Sometime over the winter I came across the pic at the beginning of this post and thought, “Hey! I could do that.” I figure I will just chain it to a flatcar as an interesting load. To this day, the rider gons on the Durango & Silverton are these cars.

Cheers,
Matt

[Matt_Hutson]

Okay, this thing is basically done.Over the weekend I made railings out of K&S 3/64" brass rod. It’s all reistance soldered together and uses K&S 3/32" round brass tube at the splices. See the proyotype pic at the start of this thread for comparison:

Cheers,
Matt