# Kit Reviews



## Murv2

*Silver Streak Four-Wheel Caboose WM*

Before we start with the first review I need to answer the question: Why bother evaluating a kit that has been out of production for decades? The answer to that is a story unto itself…
When I was a kid in the ‘60’s my father had a model railroad. He also had five children and found himself without the time to build one, and as mother was a realtor we moved every couple years and he’d have to start again. He had pretty much given up on model railroading when my oldest brother took up the torch and started building railroads. Unfortunately his dreams were larger than his hands and we would end up with massive double-folded waterwings having a mainline that barely worked and a yard that didn’t work before tearing it down to move to another house. I remember one railroad had a major grade (laid out mainly on an 8’ long piece of 2*8) that passed over the back of a toilet. 

At another house the railroad took up half a two-car garage with a car in the other half and needless to say, in Chicago the seasons were very hard on the railroad as the tracks expanded and contracted. Also, any time someone bumped the table that stuck out into the middle of the garage it would ruin the 18” inside curve and the 2-8-8-2 mallet would derail.

I took up model railroading with him, but enjoyed making things more than running trains. I built a General from Tyco, a Pacific from Mantua that jinked and a wharf from Campbell. Then my brother grew up and moved out of the house after getting a job for the Illinois Central. Since he took the railroad with him and I moved on to wargaming he took my railroad stuff with him. 

Now it is 40 years later and I’m facing retirement. I've started model railroading again and plan on building as much of the stuff on the table besides the track as I can (I’m using Kato Unitrack). The layout is a simple loop with a roundhouse and yard in the middle to store the trains I build. Since I started I’ve built another Tyco General and a Mantua camelback Mikado I cadged off Ebay and refurbished the Pacific my brother had saved for 40 years (it runs better now than it ever did). 

When I looked for a caboose to go with the Mikado I wanted something equally challenging. I remembered the old wood and metal kits from before plastic took over the market completely and started looking for them. Lo and behold, here is the Silver Streak Four-Wheel Caboose- Western Maryland 929-179, still unopened in the box (I must confess, I intended to purchase a blank one that I could paint it up for the Lehigh Valley to match the Mikado, but oops. It is missing the cupola and it seemed wrong somehow to paint away the roadline after the car sat in a box for 50 years, waiting for someone to build it.)

On to the review: This kit consists of a wood floor and roof, metal ends, platforms and truck and prepainted and decaled wood sides. All the detail is either metal or wood, except the clear plastic window glass and the plastic wheels with metal axles. The most complicated parts to assemble as designed are the ladders, and frankly all the pictures of WM bobbers I found showed simpler ladders but I planned on building it out of the box and that’s how it came, with the rails extending over the top of the roof. The ladder was stamped out of thin metal and I doubt it’s possible to get it perfectly straight, so mine are both bowed a little, one in and the other out. The hand rails are all pre-bent which is good because otherwise it would be impossible to get them right. There is no interior provided.

Now, the biggest fault with this kit is the end pieces. They both came out of the box warped, badly enough that if you attempted to use them as is there would be a huge gap on the sides and the platforms wouldn’t fit right. The metal looks like lead, the type used to cast toy soldiers but it’s actually pot metal. What that means is the metal doesn’t bend at all. In fact it has tiny cracks in it before you even start working on it and any attempt to change its shape results in pieces breaking off. And you can’t build the kit without the end pieces fitting.

So, at this point you have three choices: You could sweep the whole thing into the trash, cursing yourself for wasting money on a crappy old railroad car kit; you could scratchbuild the end caps out of plastic or wood and cardstock, cursing yourself for wasting money on a crappy old railroad car kit; or you could do what I did, which was curse myself for wasting money on a crappy old railroad car kit then ‘fix’ the end pieces. There are shoulders on the top and bottom of the sides to hold the floor and ceiling, I used a Dremel to make a relief cut in the center, then I laid the piece face down on the table and pushed down gently in the center until it broke in half. Then I glued it back together approximately flat. The cracks don’t generally follow the wood pattern, so when painting I globbed some extra in the cracks to hide them. For the most part it worked.

After that the contest is to finish assembly before the metal breaks up so badly you can’t glue it back together anymore. By the way, except the truck, which is decent metal of some sort or other all the rest of the castings are the same pot metal, and I had to break one of the platforms in half to unwarp it too. 

Speaking of the truck, I replaced the provided wheels with steel, and the caboose seemed to run pretty well, except there’s enough slop sometimes the wheels touched the frame and shorted out the layout. I took it apart and installed plastic wheels provided, it still runs fine. Also, the truck is glued to the bottom of the caboose, meaning you can’t take it apart. It would have been nice if it were screwed in instead.
Other than the pot metal (and by the way, when you have to drill out the holes for the hand rails let your drill do all the work. If you push at all the metal will break on you) assembly of this kit is straightforward for someone with experience, and the instructions extremely well written and illustrated; this is quite a treat after some of the tank kits I assembled for wargaming, where the instructions were written by someone whose English looked like they used Google Translate. The back of the instruction sheet contains individual instructions for six different bobber cabooses all using the same base parts but for different painted sides and a cupola if needed.

The kit also provided decent painting instructions with Floquil paint colors, though without a picture. Fortunately there are conversion charts for now-defunct Floquil colors on the internet, as well as pictures of actual Western Maryland cabooses. (It’s kind of funny to take advantage of a modern convenience like a computer to help build a piece of model railroading history.) The paint actually filled in many of the cracks in the end walls, but there are still noticeable gaps where the sides meet the ends. 

All in all a fun and challenging kit to build. I can’t wait to get another one. I’m afraid though, that if this caboose ever drops to the floor there won’t be enough of the pot metal pieces left to rescue.


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## ebtnut

Nice job getting that antique out of the box. Haven't built a Silver Streak kit in decades. I may still have one stored in a box somewhere, having converted to O/On3 30 or more years ago. Sold a lot of HO back in the day; still have some odds and ends. The various types of "pot metal" used by manufacturers back then were all over the map. Some did have a bit of flex to them. Others, especially Zamac, were susceptible to "Zamac cancer" - any impurities in the metal mix would cause the metal to crumble over time, the time being measured in years. That sounds like what may be the case with your kit.


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## Murv2

*American Model Builders Caboose*

So I mentioned needing a Lehigh Valley caboose to go with the Camelback Mikado and after finishing the bobber I started looking for a proper caboose. All the premade cabooses for Lehigh Valley I could find have the metal cupolas and have a fifties flair to them. I was looking for an early caboose (no automobiles on my layout) and the only example I found online were a couple pictures someone had built in O gauge. 

I decided to scratchbuild one, and went so far as to carve a roof for it. When I was doing some more google searching I found there actually were HO kits for early Lehigh Valley cabooses. So I ordered one and here it is, American Model Builders Inc. Lehigh Valley Wood Cupola Caboose No 878. This is actually the caboose as it was updated later in its life, but I’m not that much a stickler that I wouldn’t use it.

_Incidentally, I took the roof I’d made and built a Civil War boxcar to go with the General train out of the scraps bin. It’s a little wider than it should be and the doors are too thick but otherwise I’m satisfied with it (BTW, nothing says Civil War better than woodbeam trucks)_

There are many amazing things about this kit. First, the box is small. I’m used to old railroad car kits where the box was big enough to fit the completed car, and this development is new to me (OK, not really amazing but interesting). This model has a LOT of parts. Every window is four separate pieces, eight if you include the backing paper (more on that in a minute). Plan on spending some time finishing it. Also, the only metal part is the chimney. The rails are copper wire but not preformed, which is another cool thing: the model comes with a plastic jig to make all the handrails including the curved siderails. This is an amazing tool and one I know I’ll use again. 

I was also amazed at the laser cutting. It makes a very clean cut, so clean the wood looks almost like plastic. It helps that the wood is perfectly flat and even-grained. Also the laser burns the edges of the wood, giving both depth to and hiding the edges of the wood. If that doesn’t please you it can be painted over but I liked the effect so much I left it after one coat. Speaking of, I found it easier to spray paint all the parts while still on the sheets.

The kit is made out of both thick and thin wood, some thin fiberboard pieces, plastic windows and a sheet that looked as thin as paper but felt like it would be hard to tear. Another cool thing is that the thin pieces of wood and paper had adhesive already on the back, under paper. Not having to mess with glue and having an even spread while working on such small parts was really great, though alignment is absolutely critical to the whole model as various pieces have holes that need to line up.

The instructions are also amazing, consisting of 12 pages including an introduction and inventory. Even the engine kits I’ve been building had only four pages. The only question I had was about “Eye bolts” near the end. There was no description of them, none were included in the kit and no explanation of how to make them. I ended up making loops out of wire with a pair of pliers and pinched them tight around another wire. They worked but didn’t look great.

I recommend adding the rails as early in the process as possible. I ended up scratching the windows in the cupola drilling out the holes and the ends would have been easier to work with if the floor weren’t there. 

The only other criticism I have is the ladders; they are interesting to assemble but the fiber is too thin and I’m a little concerned about whether they’ll last normal wear and tear on a layout. Of course, if I hadn’t forgot to add the bead of glue suggested in the instructions they may have been a little stiffer. The end rails are the same material. 

Overall I think this is an awesome kit, and look forward to building more cars from this company sooner or later. I expect this caboose to be chasing a coal train for many years to come.


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## ebtnut

Just be careful. Looks like the front coupler pin is hanging below the railhead height which will cause grief at turnouts. Might need a washer between the front truck and the body bolster.


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## Murv2

*Uhlrich Hopper Car*

I’ve been watching on Ebay for early 20th century Lehigh Valley coal hoppers to extend the coal train and what should come up but The Uhlrich Model Kits STD HOPPER CAR KIT No. SH2 335 LV? Most of the rest of the train is Athearn wood-sided 34’ hoppers so I thought this one would fit in well (it does). So what can I say about this kit? First, it’s old. If you look at the instruction sheets for most model kits there’s a date of some sort somewhere on it and this one has “1-1-55” in the corner. That’s right, this kit is 63 years old. I don’t know about you but I think that is awesome.
So, the box is a standard-sized box such as you’d get RR cars in even to this day, inside are a few little manila paper bags and the dozen parts to the kit are inside them. This kit is all metal. Most parts are made of some sort of casting pewter, not as flexible as lead but more flexible than pot metal. Good news, you won’t need weights. There is plenty of flash to clean off but overall the engineering is pretty good, all the pieces fit except the coupler pocket lids, which needed just a little bit of filing to fit. The three bottom pieces are made out of stamped sheet steel.
The sides are prepainted which is both good and bad. Good because the lettering is all pre-done, and the inside has been painted a grimy black shade that would be perfect if you wanted to leave it unloaded, bad because the brown didn’t match the brown I used for the rest of the kit and I didn’t check but I suspect “410M R-2 BOX CAR RED” is not offered anymore. The shade is just a bit duskier than Scalecoat I Boxcar red. The other bad news is that there was some flash on the sides and of course, if you file it off you need the original color to touch it up.
Assembly is fairly easy, there are two screws but most of the car is pretty much snap-together, believe it or not. There are three ‘rivets’, where the head of a pin is concave and you put it down on a solid surface and hit it with a straight punch to spread out the pin. The coupler pockets use them, I put a drop of crazy glue on top of it. The screws are for the trucks and cut their own threads. Everything fit except one hole that had to be reamed out just a tad. The unloading gates were one of those things that go together hard and fall apart easily, I bent over some tabs that I hope were there to secure them, that did the trick.
The most time spent on this car was waiting for the spray paint to dry before assembly. I would try another Uhlrich kit if the opportunity came up, just for the experience making an all-metal RR car. One other cool note, this car was meant to be used; Uhlrich advertised a coal tipple and emptier in the instructions. Not sure how the doors underneath would work, but it’s a neat idea.


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## Murv2

*Ambroid Coal Hopper*

Do you remember going to the hobby shop when you were a kid and seeing the balsa airplane kits? They always looked so appealing because they were half the price of the plastic kits and they actually flew. I bought one and found out why they were so inexpensive, the kit was a few sheets of balsa wood and a tissue-paper diagram. You were supposed to affix the paper to the balsa somehow and cut out the pieces, then glue the whole thing together and who knew how to cover the wings and fuselage? It was beyond the means of a ten-year old without the handyman gene and a waste of paper-delivery money. Not sure where it ended up, probably trashed in a move. This kit reminded me of that model airplane: The box consists of a bunch of sheets of bass wood and a thin sheet of 11*17 paper that has several diagrams and few instructions. The first thing you have to do is cut out four side pieces in a very specific and fiddly shape. 
But I get ahead of myself: This is half of “Ambroid No. 8, 50th Anniversary Special, 1 Milw Composite Gondola, 1 N & W Hopper Car”, a Norfolk & Western coal hopper made of wood. According to the instructions N&W made 1368 of them during WW1 with the express purpose of using as little metal as possible. I think they succeeded pretty well because the kit doesn’t have much metal either. Other than the brake cylinder, some wire and grab irons the kit is all wood. 
The instructions aren’t the kind of all-inclusive 12-page-step-by-step-cavemen instructions we get in modern kits. They are basically a set of scale diagrams with a few paragraphs giving guidance on what order to perform what and hints for how to finish the most complicated parts. You are expected to make the kit look like the diagrams. Other than a few parts I wish they explained (like the brackets for the brake wheel) I think not including diagrams of both sides and ends was a mistake. I ended up looking at the other hoppers on the layout to get an idea what to include on the blind sides.
Being made before lasers, this car is one of those where all pieces are basic shapes that you have to cut out in precise and interesting ways then glue together without smearing too much glue on them. Fortunately you can lie the wood down on the diagrams and cut it, in fact there are relief lines designed to facilitate just that, I added a few here and there with a pencil. The straight and square pieces were fairly straightforward, the diagonal cuts and odd shapes took some care (and a tolerance for gaps). Gluing the car together square is critical. I didn’t do that but hopefully no one will notice while it tears by at coal train speeds.
After a few days of working during free time here and there I decided I wasn’t going to add a coal load to this car, there was simply too much going on inside to hide it. That raised the problem how to weight the car? I have a few sheets of lead and cut out the diagonal floor pieces out of it and scored it to look like wood. I also cut the end pieces out with the wood going vertical instead of horizontal but oh well, not gonna worry about that now. 
I don’t know about anyone else, but the adage “You are your own worst critic” certainly applies to me. There are many things I did wrong on this model, little things no one else will notice but will draw my eye every time I look at it. Overall though it came out pretty good. Anyway, if you are patient and careful you can make unique car out of this kit. I don’t know if there are any plastic kits for this car and it certainly looks odd lined up against the more common metal cars. I’ll post some pics of it painted when I finish.


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## Lemonhawk

I think the Ulrich hopper cars (at least my triple hoppers) have a spring that holds the bottom doors closed and one of those doors has a small tab on it that engages the trip mechanism that is fixed to the middle of the track. Ones I have were bought in the early 60's! I have the trip gizmo somewhere, but it has not yet surfaced.


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## flyboy2610

Nice job on that hopper! I have a wooden boxcar kit I need to build....... one a' these days.


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## Murv2

flyboy2610 said:


> Nice job on that hopper! I have a wooden boxcar kit I need to build....... one a' these days.


I went on Ebay and bought 9 kits containing a total of 11 cars from an estate. They are all wood except one resin and one reefer actually has cardboard sides. There were two Ambroid twofers, otherwise all different manufacturers. One day I'm gonna buy some more buildings to build, until then my railroad looks like a football field. Having too much fun this way...


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## Murv2

The decals didn't come out great, either they are old or I'm stupid but I'll get better. They held together with my abuse better than some modern decals did.


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## flyboy2610

That's not too bad a job! I've done a lot worse! 
I would recommend getting some Micro Sol decal solvent. At this point, don't use Micro Set, that's a different formula and goes on the plastic before the decal. The Micro Sol will soften the decal completely and allow it to 'flow' into the cracks and crevices. Brush it on and then do NOT touch the decal until it is completely dry. If you touch it while the Micro Sol is wet you will ruin the decal, guaranteed!
Once the Micro Sol is completely dry (I'd give it a couple days myself) you can spray the model with a clear coat and that will really help to hide the shiny decal film. Then you can weather the car however you wish, and the decals will be protected.


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## Murv2

*Labelle 1900/1905 passenger cars*

The oldest engine I have is a Mantua Pacific I built as a teen back in the ‘70’s. When I left home for the Navy my brother ended up taking it with him and his railroad. 20 years later I asked him if he had any junker engines I could decorate a wargaming table and he mentioned he still had it. So it spent the next 20 years as an immobile wreck. Now I’m model railroading again and the second thing I did was rescued the engine. The motor has given out and I’m installing a can motor but I wanted an appropriate train to go with it. I found the Labelle Woodworking Company had turn of the 20th century passenger cars and thought those would work well with a high-stepper like the Pacific. Interestingly, it seems most model railroad passenger cars are either wood sides with open vestibules or closed vestibules with metal sides. I’m not an expert on much of anything but these kits looked like just the thing. I bought one first, a 1905 sleeper, built it and was so pleased with the result I bought four more to make a 5-car train. I didn’t notice the sleeper was 75 feet and the other cars 65 feet, so it will be in the middle of the train.
Anyway, about the kits: These are mostly wood kits with a few metal castings to take care of the most complicated pieces. The wood is apparently milled because all the cuts in it are parallel. Not really important but compared to laser cut kits you’ll find much effort was made to compensate for the linear cuts. Also, there is an amount of wood-shaping that needs to be done, there are tanks under the car with rounded ends (I chucked the dowels in a drill and filed the ends round, not perfect but it will do) and especially the ends of the roofs have to be rounded. I used a drill press with a sanding drum on it. I’m sure both could be done by hand but I’m not that patient. Oh yes, one beam on the ends has to be rounded, I used a Dremel after assembly.
The long pieces come out of the box everso slightly warped, but not enough to affect construction and they straighten out when you assemble the kit. All have support from other parts that force them straight after assembly. Not a problem, just might concern you when you open the box. The kit comes with two pages of instructions and diagrams both line drawings of the finished car and a blow-up drawing showing how the pieces fit together. The only parts I had trouble understanding where they went were the doors on the end, after the first car I waited until the sides, ends, bottom and top were assembled before installing the doors. 
There were other parts I did out of order as well to ensure fit, mainly I fitted and assembled the vestibule ends in place after the car was together rather than before. I installed the truss rods while I was building the bottom, but didn’t put the truss rods on the queen posts until I’d tied the rods down tight in order to make the rods straight (found that out after three cars)
The other big thing I did was roughed in an interior. I did this mainly so the people visible from outside could have a place to be glued to, problem is you need weight and there’s no place to put it in a wood car with an interior, so I made the back of the benches out of lead sheet. I couldn’t glue the roof on in case someone got loose, so I glued four wood blocks in the corners of the roof, put it on the rest of the car, drilled pinholes through the side and block then used a cut-off sewing pin with the head painted like the side of the car. The first car came with diaphragms, and I thought they were so cool I ended up buying more from Walthers to fit to the rest of the cars. I had to cut them down to clear the couplers. 
I must admit I spent considerable angst figuring out what color to paint the cars. Not being a gory detail kind of guy I used the simple expedient of googling pictures of B&O passenger cars. I found that the older open-ended cars were solid blue, then I found steel-sided cars with yellow stripes, then yellow stripes and grey windows. Apparently the wooden cars with closed vestibules didn’t last more than about ten years before the wood sides were plated over, so I SWAGed it and painted them solid blue. No doubt the nitpickers will have a field day with them.
The windows were clear plastic for the main windows, with dark green for the little windows in the side and roof for all the cars but the combination car which had cloudy plastic sheet. I bought trucks from Walthers and had to cut some of the frame off the underside to get the cars to sit low enough to look right. 
So in summary, these are complicated kits but make good passenger cars not available otherwise.


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## J.Albert1949

That's a beautiful job of building and painting on the cars, and the revived engine looks good, too.

Jes' wonderin', could you give us some of your impressions overall regarding the Kato track?
Which switches you liked the best, etc.?


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## Murv2

J.Albert1949 said:


> That's a beautiful job of building and painting on the cars, and the revived engine looks good, too.
> 
> Jes' wonderin', could you give us some of your impressions overall regarding the Kato track?
> Which switches you liked the best, etc.?


Works really well, my biggest problems have been with small engines stalling on the frogs. If there is only one contact on the engine or the contacts are close together the engines will stall on all the switches except the remote switches. Probably not a problem with diesels but all mine are steam. I've been able to do anything I want with it except I had to make a couple 3/8" jumpers where the track was just a touch too short and I made a connecting set with Bachmann track for the turntable.
The plastic is softer than Bachmann track and as a result it runs more quietly and flexes a bit.


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## Murv2

Here is the Ambroid coal car with the other car in the kit, a Milwaukee Road gondola with the decals still wet. Other than minor issues with the decals (they didn't match the pictures) and one set of brackets poorly designed it is more of the same. I've soaked the decals with microsol a couple times and they won't lay down. Next I'm going to try a mixture of water and Elmer's clear glue, maybe it will fill in between the decal and surface. Part of the problem might be that I didn't seal the wood before painting it.


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## Murv2

*Main Line Models Reefer*

I hadn’t heard of Main Line Models before this, so I googled it and found out there is a talent agency in Pennsylvania by that name. I looked a bit further down and found a company that makes display models for railroads, their website says they’ve been in business for 50 years so I suspect this is the more likely company, though it seems they’ve moved on from hobby kits.
This kit is “40’ Reefer S.F. Grand Canyon HR-17”. It is reminiscent of Silver Streak kits in that the kit contains silk screened sides and strips of wood to make the rest. Apparently they designed this kit so they could use the same sides for 34’, 40’ and 50’ cars simply by putting in extra lengths of center sections.
The first thing that struck me when I opened the box was that the wood wasn’t bass wood. The age ring pattern was quite clear and it smelled faintly of pine. Whatever this wood was it had two negatives: first the grain is loose enough that if you push your blade through it the wrong way it will split rather than cut, so use a sharp knife and let the tip do the cutting. Second the dark wood is shinier after painting then the light wood, making the grain obvious especially on the roof. The pieces weren’t cut with the same accuracy and precision as more modern kits and some pieces were either thicker or wider than others. Also the blade marks still showed on some of the wood.
Now on to the instructions. I found five different undercarriages and two different roofs in the instructions, so first you have to figure out which undercarriage the kit provided pieces for. It also gave instructions for both ladders and separate rungs, all making life interesting, mine had ladders. They apparently changed some of the pieces after they drew up the instruction sheet and included a second page with additional guidance. 
Fit was a real issue with this model. This is a typical wood freight car where there are blocks of wood that go inside the ends that all other pieces are attached to, but these blocks did not line up perfectly with the roof and base and if you look closely at the ends you can see the result, gaps and seams only hidden by the black paint they are covered with. Other pieces have similar problems, I had to take 1/8 inch off the ends of the center sill to make the car sit low enough to fit the couplers properly and look right, and the center pieces on the sides had to be shimmed to match the ends. Kind of pointless to complain now about the problems with a 50+ year old kit (not sure how old it really is), but if you decide to start building these try fitting all the pieces together, perhaps with rubber bands before gluing. 
The car had silk screened sides which I’m fond of because that means no decals for me to screw up, but the text isn’t as crisp as a modern decal would be. Still, for someone with eyes like mine it isn’t that big an impact. This car had the Santa Fe route map on one side and that looks pretty cool. I looked on the internet at pictures of other cars and found only a few that had brown on the ends and top so I painted this one black, looks pretty sharp and just in time for Halloween.
So in summary this kit is workmanlike but not spectacular, and well worth the 3.95 price hand written on the box. I don’t think I’d pay modern kit prices for it.


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## J.Albert1949

Great job on the Santa Fe reefer...!


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## ebtnut

The original Main Line Models was around in the late '50's into maybe the early '70's when the owner passed away. They were typical "craftsman" kits from that era, where there was often some assumption by the manufacturers that you had some familiarity with the prototype and how to go about building these types of kits. I have one I built that was a special commerative kit for the Mid Eastern Region back in the '60's. They also made some kits in On3. Don't recall if they did any standard gauge O scale models.


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## Murv2

*Silver Streak Freight Car*

This is another Silver Streak kit, #292 40’ double door boxcar D & RGW, but unlike the Western Maryland bobber caboose this was from Ye Olde Huff-N-Puff. Not sure what the relationship was between the two companies but the box is different. This car is a double door box car. I thought that was cool because my dad had a green one from the New York Central. This one has wooden sides and doors unlike his, and it says ‘Automobile’, I wonder if they used boxcars to ship autos back in the day. According to the side the prototype was manufactured in 1927 so they may have been small enough to fit.
This car came with painted and silkscreened sides and end block, top and bottom construction like the Santa Fe reefer but unlike the reefer this car was made out of basswood and the silk screen was legible. It also had enough cast pieces that you didn’t need to weight it. The castings were actual casting lead and not pot metal so you could bend them when you needed to. In a few pieces the lead didn’t completely fill the mold so the detail was incomplete in the corner of the piece. The instructions were nicely illustrated but there were a couple places where measurements weren’t included nor scale drawings and you were left guessing just where some detail went.
Construction is straight forward, with enough detail in the bottom to be interesting and the pieces went together easily enough. The wood was good except there were two pieces that the instructions said were 1/16” square but the pieces in the kit were 1/16” by 1/8”. I figured they knew what they were doing and used them only to find out the sill hung down below the sides of the car, oh well. BTW if you follow the instructions to the letter putting together the undercarriage you’ll find the airline goes through the center sills but under the bolsters and you’ll need to assemble them out of order if you want to make everything fit together.
The sides were Floquil Boxcar Red and after raiding the nearest hobby big box I compared several colors and found Vallejo 70.846 Mahogany was the closest so that is what color the ends and top are. I leave you to decide if it matches. After examining the doors I decided to glue them together shut, both for alignment and because the lead sills and tight tracks combined to make the doors slide poorly. 
So, another neat boxcar out of wood and metal. My only problem is there is a bracket on the bottom of the car the truck is rubbing against, have to move that sooner or later.


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## MatroxD

Hmmnn.. Interesting. I'm pretty new to the "hobby" trains, and I didn't know, until stumbling across your thread, that there are "car" kits.. I think I would love to try one or two(to begin with), as yours are inspiring..

What brands, in your opinion, make good beginner kits, that, run well in the end, look good(your detail I simply cannot replicate), and then, honestly, as I know the skill level increases with experience,are fairly easy to assemble?

Thanks, and great thread! Subscribed! 

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


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## J.Albert1949

Murv wrote:
_"I wonder if they used boxcars to ship autos back in the day. According to the side the prototype was manufactured in 1927 so they may have been small enough to fit."_

Yes, shipping autos in boxcars was "the standard practice" until someone thought up the idea of "auto racks".

The autos were usually "jacked up" at an angle (45 degrees or so?) so that more could be fit inside.

Looks like the double doors were necessary to create a wider opening to aid in getting the autos inside...


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## ebtnut

Ye Olde HuffnPuff took over the Quality Craft kit line sometime in the '70's IIRC. The Quality Craft kits were better than the older Main Line kits. I have an HOn3 EBT caboose kit from this line that built up very well, better than the contemporary La Belle kit. But, you need to know what you are doing. As the instructions describe the assembly, you will too late discover that with the body assembled and the cupola installed, you can't install the window glass. 

As MatroxD notes, craftsman hobbies like model airplanes and trains are moving quickly away from kits toward RTR (or RTF). For now there still seems to be a market for plastic car kits, which is good, and La Belle has been reincarnated with some nice wood kits.


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## Murv2

MatroxD said:


> Hmmnn.. Interesting. I'm pretty new to the "hobby" trains, and I didn't know, until stumbling across your thread, that there are "car" kits.. I think I would love to try one or two(to begin with), as yours are inspiring..
> 
> What brands, in your opinion, make good beginner kits, that, run well in the end, look good(your detail I simply cannot replicate), and then, honestly, as I know the skill level increases with experience,are fairly easy to assemble?
> 
> Thanks, and great thread! Subscribed!
> 
> Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


These kits I've reviewed are for the most part made of wood and metal. There are also kits made of plastic (Tichy for example), Resin (Funaro & Camerlengo) and all metal (Uhlrich, or brass kits). These are different from for example Athearn where the car is pretty much snap together. 

For a wood and metal kit my initial recommendation would be a Silver Streak kit. The Caveat is to read the first review (for the bobber caboose) after reading the DRGW review above. The kits made with lead will be fairly simple to complete, but if you get one with warped pot metal good luck. As mentioned Silver Streak changed hands and quality could be better or worse. 
The Mainline kits go together the same way as does a company called A-C Model company but both appear lesser quality. All these kits feature prepainted and lettered sides so you only have to paint the ends, top and bottom to finish them.
If you have any familiarity with wood working and can handle a pin vice and exacto blade without hurting yourself you can assemble these kits. a Dremel is a plus. I use spray paint a great deal from cans, though you can paint by hand too. I use Goo from Walthers as glue, it will hold just about anything together but it stinks.

If you have a mind to make a fairly simple metal kit then look for the Uhlrich kits. They have few pieces but are well detailed and feature prepainted and decaled sides. Brass kits require a different skill, one I haven't tried yet.
I've never made a Tichy kit but suspect they go together like the hundreds of plastic tanks I've built. Resin is different to handle and I wouldn't recommend it for a first kit, though there are some pretty interesting things out there in resin (like B&O wagon top cars, very cool).

If you get really excited about building your own rolling stock you can pick up engine kits. I've built a half dozen and it's even more fun than the railroad cars.

I've added a pic of what one of the simpler kits looks like out of the box. Basically you glue together the top and bottom to end blocks then detail everything.


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## MatroxD

Hmmnn interesting.. Thank you.. I will try some that you have suggested. I'm pretty good with dremel, and other tools (rc heli, airplane and car guy for the majority of my life), so I am screen grabbing a few names you mentioned. 

And you know, it's funny that you mentioned them, but I was wondering about locomotive kits. That will be the next step. I looked at my local online shops site and I believe that they have a few kits. I will start with a caboose (as that is what I am in need of atm),and slowly work my way to engines..

Thank you though for sharing this and giving advice.. I look forward to more of your kit builds. 

I am also going to check out the sites of the companies that you suggested, to see what I could order. And the font thing is, the kits that I saw locally, are like half the price of the ready to run models. So as long as the quality is good, I could replace or amend my whole car yard.. 

This is long, but thanks much again! I apologize if I derailed your thread.. 


Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


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## Old_Hobo

Unassembled kits have always been cheaper than RTR models.....RTR models start as kits to begin with, so someone has to put those together, and they don't do it for free....


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## Murv2

MatroxD said:


> Hmmnn interesting.. Thank you.. I will try some that you have suggested. I'm pretty good with dremel, and other tools (rc heli, airplane and car guy for the majority of my life), so I am screen grabbing a few names you mentioned.
> 
> And you know, it's funny that you mentioned them, but I was wondering about locomotive kits. That will be the next step. I looked at my local online shops site and I believe that they have a few kits. I will start with a caboose (as that is what I am in need of atm),and slowly work my way to engines..
> 
> Thank you though for sharing this and giving advice.. I look forward to more of your kit builds.
> 
> I am also going to check out the sites of the companies that you suggested, to see what I could order. And the font thing is, the kits that I saw locally, are like half the price of the ready to run models. So as long as the quality is good, I could replace or amend my whole car yard..
> 
> This is long, but thanks much again! I apologize if I derailed your thread..
> 
> 
> Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


Happy I can help. While l’m mainly writing these reviews to amuse myself it’s a bonus if it inspires anyone. As far as engines go, I bought all my kits off eBay. Tyco, mantua and Roundhouse were the big steam producers and as far as I know they’re all out of business now, but you can always find them online. If you’re big on engine performance plan on remotoring them with can motors, the old motors are not too smooth even new. Best of luck.


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## Old_Hobo

Mantua and Roundhouse are still in business, although Roundhouse (owned by Athearn now) doesn't make kits anymore....


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## MatroxD

Old_Hobo said:


> Unassembled kits have always been cheaper than RTR models.....RTR models start as kits to begin with, so someone has to put those together, and they don't do it for free....


Not gonna derail(lol, nice pun) this great thread, but that's funny you mention that, because in the rc industry, it's just the opposite. RTR models have made things much cheaper. And it honestly may not be just the RTR status, but a lot of rc has to do, and it's status today is with heavy microchip/computer advancements. Plus, they are larger in physical size (most of the time).

But, yes, even with the large RTR or ARF status that things are today, they are tremendously cheaper than they used to be.. Even when hand assembled(especially sub assemblies), and I'm speaking specifically about helicopters and airplanes, as I know the brands I fly, when parts are assembled by the factory, they are indeed hand assembled, thread locked, and inspected, things have gone just the opposite of what your mentioning..

It was quite a shock actually when I got back into trains, as far as the cost. Comparatively speaking that is.. 

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


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## MatroxD

It's funny that you mention re motoring them. I have an N locomotive that I believe the motor is shorted. I'm debating on buying another motor, or just leaving the annoying thing to sit as static. It is the first locomotive I've ever fully taken apart, as I was afraid to do so.

But I do love the building process, and then end result of setting your hand work, going from pieces to a moving object. So I'm sure I will end up building cars and locomotives.. Lol, now that you have opened up my eyes and mind to them.. Thanks!  And yes, you, and your thread have been a tremendous help and inspiration.. Wife may not like it though.. Lmao!


Murv2 said:


> Happy I can help. While l’m mainly writing these reviews to amuse myself it’s a bonus if it inspires anyone. As far as engines go, I bought all my kits off eBay. Tyco, mantua and Roundhouse were the big steam producers and as far as I know they’re all out of business now, but you can always find them online. If you’re big on engine performance plan on remotoring them with can motors, the old motors are not too smooth even new. Best of luck.


Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


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## Old_Hobo

MatroxD said:


> Not gonna derail(lol, nice pun) this great thread, but that's funny you mention that, because in the rc industry, it's just the opposite. RTR models have made things much cheaper. And it honestly may not be just the RTR status, but a lot of rc has to do, and it's status today is with heavy microchip/computer advancements. Plus, they are larger in physical size (most of the time).
> 
> But, yes, even with the large RTR or ARF status that things are today, they are tremendously cheaper than they used to be.. Even when hand assembled(especially sub assemblies), and I'm speaking specifically about helicopters and airplanes, as I know the brands I fly, when parts are assembled by the factory, they are indeed hand assembled, thread locked, and inspected, things have gone just the opposite of what your mentioning..


But the RC companies offset the assembly cost by selling more units....when they crash and explode.....:laugh:


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## MatroxD

Old_Hobo said:


> But the RC companies offset the assembly cost by selling more units....when they crash and explode.....


Ha! It takes a lot to "re kit" a model these days(I mean a tremendous impact)! I haven't actually seen a re kit, in person or either video (with the exception of course of a turbine jet) in what, a good early 2000's.. Simulators I won't say brought a complete end to, but certainly massively(good high 90's perctentile range) decreased the crash factor.. And then, those things are built like tanks now.. Very over engineered.. Funny comment nonetheless though..... 

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


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## Murv2

*Funaro and Camerlengo Boxcar*

Resin is a fairly new building material for hobbies (at least, compared to plastic, wood and lead), and its advantage is not obvious to a simple observer: In order to manufacture a plastic model there is a great deal of upfront cost producing the molds, but the price per unit is low. Thus plastic is great if you are going to make hundreds of thousands of something but a poor choice if you are going to make only a few hundred. With resin the cost of making the molds is low (they are poured rubber of some sort) but the unit production cost is higher. In this way resin is similar to metal but resin is a cheaper material than modelling lead (which is actually a combination of tin and antimony). The end result is that resin is a good choice for making limited runs of rare types of cars.
This kit is one of those: Funaro and Camerlengo ‘3701/3702 Great Northern 40’ wood truss rod boxcar with steel center sill hopper doors and decals.’ According to the history blurb the Great Northern was beholden to lumber companies for their business and built all-wood cars long after other railroads switched to steel frames to support their customers. Later they reinforced the frame with steel center sills and this car is one of those. They bought 15,000 of them. Apparently there was at least one of these cars in service until 1959. The version with hopper doors is even weirder and I decided to build that one though I have no idea what it would be used for. There are eight truss rods, not four so these cars could carry some heavy stuff.
So back to resin: resin is in many ways similar to plastic. It takes detail just as well, though usually there is one side without detail. Resin’s flexibility can be varied based on the formula, the resin in this kit is a little softer than plastic. The downside to resin is that it flexes a bit, but doesn’t warn you when you reach the limit like plastic (which turns white) or metal (which goes brittle). Thus if you bend a piece even just a little it may be OK or it may suddenly snap on you. The thinner the piece the more fragile it is, so most structural resin pieces are thicker than any other material. Resin takes power tools well, unlike plastic it doesn’t melt easily and I had no trouble in that regard. I’ve read that resin dust is unhealthy for you, so if you do any significant sanding you should wear a mask.
On wargaming resin models I was able to bend them by soaking in warm water first but this one didn’t have any pieces warranting that. The only pieces that were otherwise compromised were the queen posts, there were three out of sixteen broken off. Fortunately there were queen posts for both versions and I salvaged the broken one from the other set. This kit is mostly resin, with a few plastic pieces for the brake system, some metal rod for pipes, fishing line for the truss rods and copper staples for the grab irons (all 36 of them). I ended up adding two ounces of lead weight to bring it up to the 4.25 recommended for a 40 foot car.
The instructions consist of much written guidance, some good pictures and few diagrams. You are expected to know what the various parts of a railroad car are called and look at the diagram and pictures carefully, at one point it said “Look at the diagram to see where the holes are drilled, but I never saw anywhere it showed the holes. It would have been really nice to see more diagrams and part descriptions because there were a whole bunch of spare parts in the box, although I’m not sure if they were in there when the kit was sold as it had already been opened. I never identified some of the parts, couldn’t recognize them based on the drawings and pictures of the finished kit. 
Normal wood model box cars kits have a basic frame made of the top and bottom and two wooden blocks that go at the ends. Everything else is hung onto this frame, the sides and ends are merely decoration, not structural. This kit is different in that the end is the structural piece and the bottom sits inside the sides and ends. Even before starting construction I decided there needed to be some support for the corners so I cut four corner posts out of 3/8” bass wood and made them tall enough to hold the bottom up. I was also worried about weight so I drilled four holes in the corners of the bottom and screwed the bottom in instead of gluing. Turns out this won’t work for the hopper bottom kit as the door latches are connected to the sides of the car.
I hope you like to drill. Just about every piece has a hole drilled into it at one point or another and most of the holes are the teeny tiny bits. I bent my drill bit trying to use a pin vise and ended up shuttling back to the work table numerous times to drill holes with a Dremel. I put a straight pin in the pin vise and pushed a dimple into the piece where the hole went so the drill bit didn’t skip around and miss the right spot. Some of the pieces are so small I broke them with the pin much less the drill bit. 
The doors are molded to the body so this isn’t an open door kind of kit. While the grab irons are numerous, most of your time will be spent working on the bottom. Between the truss rods, hopper doors and brake system it’s pretty busy under there. I was worried about the truss rods causing problems with the fragile queen posts and while one of the posts leaned over while tensioning the fishing line nothing broke. I recommend making a rough calculation how long you need the fishing line and cut off the excess, it looks like there’s twice as much as you need and it is so curly you spend as much time working out the snarl as threading the rods. 
The decals on this kit are the best I’ve seen so far. It is one of those print it yourself sheets, so you have to cut the paper to fit the decal, but it goes on well and easily, isn’t so fragile you tear it and with some Micro Sol it hugs the complicated surface of the car when dry (horizontal alignment is difficult on wood-sided cars so make sure you’ve got it lined up right when you slide it off). The black dot behind the goat is a separate decal.
A couple other random notes: First, don’t use the spray paint can lid as a painting stand on a windy day. Second, the hopper door latches are the most complicated and ornery assembly on the whole kit. Third, the steps on the end are easily broken so if you don’t mind them not being there I recommend leaving them off. 
So overall not a kit for the faint of heart, but if you are patient and careful you’ll end up with a railroad car few modelers will have on their layout. I’ve include a pic of the pieces coming out of the box in case you are interested, and one of the bottom before painting.


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## J.Albert1949

Murv wrote:
_"The version with hopper doors is even weirder and I decided to build that one though I have no idea what it would be used for."_

Probably for "grain service", as boxcars were used for much grain-hauling before covered hoppers purposely-designed for the job came into use in the 60's...


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## Lemonhawk

Is it really a hopper door on top, or just the walkway to the ladder?


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## Murv2

Lemonhawk said:


> Is it really a hopper door on top, or just the walkway to the ladder?


The hopper doors are on the bottom. The pictures in the instructions show a normal roof, so it can't be loaded from the top. I've been thinking about it, and I think they would block the side doors about halfway up with some kind of gate, use a chute directed inside the doorway to fill the car partway, then close the full doors to keep out the rain. They would open the doors on the bottom to empty it and use shovels or brooms to push the rest over once the grain stops falling. Maybe someone else knows better than that.


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## Murv2

*Ambroid Center Flow Hopper*

This box was part of a lot of 11 cars I bought off Ebay, and I had two reservations about completing it: First, my railroad is steam only, not even any automobiles on it and while this car isn’t new anymore it definitely looks like it was produced in the post-steam era. Second I have a basic philosophical problem with making the model of an all-steel car designed to haul plastic out of wood. I know it sounds stupid, but it just doesn’t seem right. In the end the desire not to waste the 7-ish dollars I paid for the car overruled my reservations and I went ahead and built one. We’ll see if the other ever gets built.
This is ‘Ambroid No. 3 Second Series Special “1 of 5,000” two-in-one ACF Center Flow Hopper Car’. It is a two-car kit of an early version of the common modern hoppers made with rounded sides, model CF-3500. According to the blurb provided this kit was produced only three years after the prototypes went into production and on the internet it says center flow hoppers were introduced in the 1960’s, so who knows how many were actually produced before they started sloping the ends as is typical for modern cars? I was also able to find a few pictures of this particular model in a search. 
Everything I said about the previous Ambroid kit applies here: This is an extremely complicated model made out of a bunch of strips of basswood. Much of the expectation is you just follow along with the diagrams. That said there were a few unique features in this kit. Most obvious is that there are curves. The tank made out of two big chunks of basswood cut round. There’s a hole in the middle and if you don’t want to look through the entire car I recommend plugging it with something. On the prototypes I assume there is an angled plate inside the holes but the holes are open in the diagrams. The curves make alignment critical and measuring from the centerline is vital to keep everything symmetric. The end supports are soft lead and probably bent wrong so keep that in mind too.
On the other hand the big chunk of wood in the middle of the kit makes a nice solid foundation to hang everything else on. This kit doesn’t need any extra weight. Unfortunately most of the rest of the prototype is made of angle iron, which translates in the kit to 3/64” angled basswood. It strikes me as being particularly fragile and I hope it never takes a dive to the floor because the ends will probably be crushed. If I had more gumption I would have replaced some of the most exposed pieces with brass but like I said, I was hesitant to build the kit at all, much less spend more money on it. By the way, I got the catwalks to appear level by gluing them in place then turning the whole car over and lying it upside down then pushing all the pieces flat against the table top. After the glue set the catwalks were flat. 
So that’s pretty much it, the kit is challenging to build but if 60’s covered hoppers fit on your layout this is an uncommon version that will attract some attention anyway. Now to ‘cleanse my pallette’ with something more appropriate for the steam era. I’ll post photos of the finished model when the painting and decals are done.


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## Old_Hobo

Don't know how uncommon that car is/was, Atlas produced it in plastic with the following description:



> Introduced in 1961 by ACF® to haul sand, clay, salt, grain and bulk plastics, this Cylindrical Hopper was the first commercially successful tank-type covered hopper car design. A few of the more than 4,000 cars of this type built through 1966 can still be seen in service today across the United States.


https://www.modeltrainforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=470266&stc=1&d=1540956574


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## ebtnut

One thing to keep in mind when building older wood craftsman kits - consider using some sanding sealer (obtainable where model airplane kits are sold) to apply to the wood. Make take 2 or 3 applications, with sanding in between, to smooth out the surface and make it more like metal.


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## Murv2

Here are the pictures of the final product. The decals yellowed a bit with age, and I added a few details I didn't notice before on the diagram. I had to file the coupler pockets narrower so the trucks had enough play for the layout, and I decided not to include the corner rungs for the same reason. 
BTW, thanks for the hint on sanding sealer. I'd been looking at the local hardware store and all I could find was paint sealer in gallon buckets. This car looks like it was made of wood and the paint didn't cover so great because of it. OTOH, the yellowed decals aren't quite as noticeable as they'd be on a consistent shade of white. 
After running it around the layout a few times I found it is really top heavy. Number 4 turns at the front of the train pull it right over, though more gracefully than a flat sided box car. Gotta be the lead catwalks.
Overall I must confess I'm a bit disappointed by this kit. The fact that you can buy it RTR takes some of the fun out of it (thanks for raining on my parade), and the car is just plain ugly. Oh well, as Bad Santa says "They can't all be winners."

(P.S. I know I said no diesels on my layout, but a family friend picked up a box of random stuff at a yard sale and there were three of the buggers in there. Two still run and the BL-2 is kinda cute in a puppy dog way. Anyway, jury is still out on their fate.)


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## Old_Hobo

> the car is just plain ugly. Oh well, as Bad Santa says "They can't all be winners."


I have found that the car builders always chose utility over looks....it's not a fashion show.....hwell:


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## Murv2

*A-C Refrigerator Car*

This is the A-C Model Company of Chicago Ill kit “RB-1 S.L.R.X. 38 FT. REFRIGERATOR CAR 27 TON”. It has to be the oldest kit I’ve ever seen. A quick google of the name didn’t bring up anything but air conditioning companies so I assume they are no longer in business. The small parts were in a manila envelope, along with a separate air hose kit that consisted of a length of wire and plastic stub. You were supposed to pull the rubber off the copper wire and stick it on the plastic stub then glue it to the car. Interesting, but the Kadee couplers had that bit of wire that looks alot like air hoses so I didn’t use it. There was rust on the steel parts.
Anyway, if I had one word to describe this kit it would be “crude”. The sides and end facades are made of cardboard, with all the side detail printed on and the wood slats embossed. Some of the detail is cut out of cardboard as well. The brake cylinder is a turned piece of steel and the couplers provided were one-piece cast from lead. The instructions included using ‘bank pins’ to hold some pieces together, we’d call them brads now. The grab irons were all staples, even the ones on the corners of the roof (I drilled the holes wrong for them so they look oddly bent). Nicely though, they provided three different sizes. The catwalk was missing, but if you didn’t have a spare like I did you could easily make one out of the cardboard provided. 
This kit follows typical wood boxcar kit construction, with the frame made of the top and bottom glued to two wood blocks at the ends, the aforementioned cardboard end facades covering them up. The end blocks were a smidge too wide. The end bolsters were actually nice castings, but I had to modify them for Kadee couplers as this is a working car. The fishplates underneath were nice castings as well, too bad the rest of the underside was pretty barren. The wire provided was just a bit too short. The brake wheel is a piece of pressed tin rather than cast metal, so it looks right one way but inverted the other.
Oddly enough this type of car didn’t have ice hatches on it. It is mentioned both in the instructions and on the cardboard sheet, so I suspect the model company was worried about complaints. Maybe beer cars didn’t need ice? I painted the top and ends boxcar red and the bottom black as recommended. The sides are an antique white color with the text nicely printed and legible. Anyway, a presentable car made of interesting materials and plenty of opportunity for super detailing if that is your bent. (There is a picture of the unassembled kit in a previous post).


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## Murv2

*Gloorcraft Caboose*

Either through sheer masochism or because I didn’t want to waste the money spent on trucks I started working on the second Ambroid center flow hopper car. I was mostly finished when I realized I didn’t have the ladders needed to finish it, so had to put it aside while I waited for them from mail order. In the meantime I pulled out “Gloorcraft Models AT&SF Wood Sheathed Caboose Kit 328” and set to work. There is a date 2/85 on the instructions so that gives an age to the kit. A quick look around the internet didn’t show any current activity for the company, but a quick check on ebay revealed wood car kits for HO and O and buildings for HO, O and N scale.
First, the instructions: these are wonderful. The kit comes with two 11*17” sheets, one with bulleted instructions and another with full size diagrams in various stages of construction. I didn’t have any problems figuring out what the parts were because the diagrams were carefully labelled. The bullets even included check boxes so you can mark your progress if you have that bent.
This kit is about the same level of difficulty as Ambroid kits. The woodwork isn’t so hard and there are castings for the complicated pieces but the rails must all be handmade out of wire. Fortunately I had a bending jig for most of them but don’t look at the end rails too closely, they aren’t really even. The windows and door openings have to be cut out of the siding, and I found the door castings didn’t match the size in the instructions, so one of them has an extra sill. There’s no way to hide imprecise cuts for these features.
There were no window panes. Fortunately the trucks came in a clear plastic package that was easy enough to chop up with a pair of scissors, but I ended up painting the shell and cupola before assembly because it is impractical to leave the car open until after painting, it isn’t designed for that so you need to put the window panes in before completing basic assembly of the shell and that means painting early or getting paint on the windows. One hint I got from a plastic modeler is to put wax on the clear plastic when using CA as it prevents fogging up. Also any additional weight needed must go in before basic assembly. I ended up adding 1.7 ounces to weight the car to match the NMRA recommendation.
There was a lot of fitting for this kit. You see time and again in the instructions “Then sand to fit”. Not a criticism, and handy at times as the roof is curved but not something I’ve seen that often in other kits. The underside detail is sufficient but between the tool box and brake reservoir there isn’t much visible under there, good thing because I put the air line in backwards and a bunch of other stuff didn’t fit right as a result. If I didn’t admit it here no one would ever know…
Anyway, the instructions say to paint the caboose “Scalecoat #12 Tuscan Red”, and I was querulous that there weren’t any highlights like a black roof or yellow grab irons but it looks like Santa Fe liked their cabooses simple way back when so solid brown it is. The decals were the modern type and because the sides are not smooth I used glosscote, Microsol and flatcoat. There are only six decals on this car, though the sheet had additional numbers in case you wanted to change it. I still haven’t mastered decals and these didn’t end up filling in the crevasses as I’d hoped, still need to figure that one out.
So, there you have it, another interesting kit, this one only thirty years old. If the chance comes up to get another cheap Gloorcraft kit I’ll certainly snap it up.


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## Murv2

*Silver Streak Tank Car*

One of the things I am doing assembling these kits is trying to find the oldest kits that I can. It’s more of an idle fancy than anything else, but interesting in its own way and for those of a historical bent it is hard to avoid seeing how far back in time you can go. 
I thought I’d really struck a hit with this latest car “Silver Streak 8000 Gallon Single Dome Tank Car SS 601”. There is a date on the (actually very nice) instructions of 9/9/49, making this possibly the oldest kit I’ve assembled so far (excepting the AC reefer which didn’t have a date on it). The tank wrapper has a build date of 4/30 so that dates the prototype too.
Unfortunately, this car suffered horribly from Zamac cancer. As previously mentioned, impurities in Zamac alloy cause long-term warping, cracking and breaking and this has left the car frame broken into 20 pieces, all warped beyond any rescue. 
So I do not recommend the Silver Streak tank car kit because the years have not been good to vital structural elements. See the picture if you want the full horror. Thus ends the review.
But what to do with the kit? As I examined it I realized the tank parts were basically intact. The end caps and dome are Zamac and have some minor cracking but because they are round and thick they didn’t break apart or warp like the frame, a little fill and filing and they won’t be perfect but will do. 
The body of the tank is a cylinder of wood and it may have shrank a bit (I wrapped a sheet of cardstock around it to fatten it up) but nothing wrong there and the side cardboard was bent in half, leaving a crease on the top but otherwise intact. The rest of the tank is made of other types of metal. The trucks are actually good enough for a modern car.
So I started looking at the diagrams and broken pieces of the base frame and decided I could reproduce it with reasonable accuracy from wood and plastic. Starting with a beam going the length of the car, then saddles for the tank, then other pieces as needed. What I finished with isn’t beautiful but will serve well enough. 
My biggest problem is that I couldn’t reproduce the tread pattern on the walkways or the hundreds of individual rivets. I ended up creating the tread pattern on powerpoint with a black rectangle and grey lines, then printed it out, cut it out and glued it to the plastic frame. The rivets were drawn on from a tiny silver marker. The rivets look cartoony but the treads came out pretty good. 
During final assembly I found the tank has a bit of a list sitting on the frame. I may try to manhandle it to straighten it up a bit but I may just live with it. In addition the straps don’t fit well around the rail posts. I’m not super happy with the final result but it was good practice.
So, in the end not a complete waste of money. I have also picked up old wood and metal kits from both Athearn and Walthers, neither with instructions, stay tuned for reviews of those. Hopefully these instructions will give me enough to help with the Athearn kit which is another Texaco tanker.


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## ebtnut

One suggestion on rivets. An outfit called Archer makes decal rivets. They apply like a decal but the rivets are formed from the ink to have scale texture. They come in several sizes/scales and patterns. If you want real HO antiquity, look for an H. Owen kit. They began being produced before WWII. Early post-war Mantua kits came with either brass or wood bodies and embossed cardstock sides pre-painted and embossed as necessary.


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## Murv2

ebtnut said:


> One suggestion on rivets. An outfit called Archer makes decal rivets. They apply like a decal but the rivets are formed from the ink to have scale texture. They come in several sizes/scales and patterns. If you want real HO antiquity, look for an H. Owen kit. They began being produced before WWII. Early post-war Mantua kits came with either brass or wood bodies and embossed cardstock sides pre-painted and embossed as necessary.


Thanks for the hint, rivet decals on order. I'll keep an eye out for H. Owen kits on ebay...


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## Murv2

I've had a short delay of progress waiting for mail order to catch up to production. I finished the other Ambroid hopper yesterday and overall I'd say I learned a bit from the first one. The cracks where the flanges attach to the body were filled in with green stuff and sanding sealer used on the body. Because this car is grey and not white the decal discoloration is not as noticeable and I added the end steps on this car. I don't think the catwalks came out as well but otherwise a better effort overall.
The next kit is assembled but I'm waiting for the paint to arrive. The one I really want to work on has warped sides and my first try soaking and clamping resulted in them warping even worse instead of better, so I'm going to leave them in the vice for a week this time, then I can really get started.


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## Murv2

*JV Models Flatcar*

This is “JV Models 9205 40 ft. Flatcar (Truss Rod) with Trucks, Undecorated”, one of several car kits I’ve purchased recently that didn’t have any instructions in the box. Fortunately flat cars aren’t too complicated and using my usual lazy MO I looked up flatcar construction on the internet and found a nice article describing how to scratch build a 19th century flatcar. A check of the parts included in this kit showed that I could easily use the article as a guideline to build this one.
This model includes a flat sheet of bass wood the size of the car. Support beams, brake system, truss rods, trucks and couplers are all attached below it and the deck is attached above. There were thin pieces for the sides to hide the seam between the sheet and the beam but none for the ends so I cadged some out of the scrap box. The wood for this kit is all cut to length, though most pieces had beards that needed to be trimmed off the ends. It also included some really nice plastic hardware for the brake system and stake pockets. 
For the truss rods some of that green bendy rod is included. I find it great for oddly shaped pieces like the brakeline but for truss rods that tend to get pushed on by my fat fingers piano wire would be better, or thread which is what I ended up using. No turnbuckles provided. The deck is made up of a bazillion individual boards. I glued them in about an inch at a time then feathered the center 15 or so to prevent a noticeable gap. 
There were Tichy trucks in there, with plastic wheels that will soon be replaced with metal. Overall weight of the completed kit was 0.6 oz including trucks and Kadee couplers, so the load will have to include cannon balls or somesuch. I painted the bottom with Scalecoat roof brown, then glued on the deck and stained it with black and brown water-based paint greatly thinned. The car came as undecorated so no decals included, I’ll have to think about that.
I’ve been having issues with kits lately, most involving some kind of mail order to resolve, it was nice that this one went together in a couple days without any. This kit is still in production.


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## MatroxD

Nice looking flat car. I'm still enjoying(and learning from) your reviews very much.. 

Sent from my Note 8


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## ebtnut

A lot of modelers building truss rod cars use monofiliment fishing line for the rods. Since it is essentially clear, when you thread the pre-painted turnbuckles on you mask them for final painting and it looks clear between the ends. With some pre-planning about holes drilled through the beams you can use one length of fish line to do all four rods.


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## Murv2

ebtnut said:


> A lot of modelers building truss rod cars use monofiliment fishing line for the rods. Since it is essentially clear, when you thread the pre-painted turnbuckles on you mask them for final painting and it looks clear between the ends. With some pre-planning about holes drilled through the beams you can use one length of fish line to do all four rods.


You are right, I even had some fishing line left over from another project, but I knew where the thread was and didn't think of it.


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## Murv2

*Bev-Bel Boxcar*

This is the last car of 11 wood and metal kits I got in a single lot on Ebay. I saved this one for last because I intend to keep my railroad during the steam era and a Railbox-style car simply won’t fit so I thought I might just leave it in the ‘To Do’ box for a few years until the guilt wore off then sell it, but I also enjoy building the rest of these cars and I already bought trucks so I went ahead. 
This is the “McCloud River R.R. 50’ Railbox-Style Box Car”. Bev-Bel has apparently been around since the ‘50’s, but the instructions mention Quality Craft Models. I looked them up and apparently they stopped making HO kits in 1980 and since the decals have a build date of ’77 I expect that brackets the date the kit was designed.
I remember building a Railbox car in my youth, it may have been this same kit. I also remember not priming the car and when I painted it yellow it looked terrible. Then I joined the Navy and I’m sure the car ended up in the trash, in fact I don’t think I ever added trucks. Anyway this kit is finished.
The instructions are very nice. Good scale drawings with brief but comprehensive numbered paragraphs giving step by step guidance. Of course, box cars aren’t that complicated anyway. Most of the diagrams are so you can put the decals in the right places, there are side views for eight different railroads I never heard of. Mine is the McCloud River Railroad Company, a logging railroad in California that apparently went into business leasing cars. The instructions include a list of the Scalecoat colors needed to paint the car for each railroad. 
The kit itself goes together well if you have a bit of experience. I thought it odd that the pipes underneath all hang under the frame, on older cars they are above the frame, and the thinner pipes are prone to bending across the ribs (replacing the weak green wire with piano wire would fix that). Otherwise the most complicated part of the kit are the corner steps, they all have to be bent out of a piece of flat wire and will take a bit of practice to make them even (mine aren’t, but hopefully no one will look too close).
I added 1.7 oz to bring the car up to the 5 oz recommended by NMRA. I left the center open to do so but didn’t realize there were center wall pieces under the door and had to fill in a bit where there was a slight gap. 
The car is an interesting combination of colors, and looking at the instructions you can have one any color of the rainbow if you pick the right railroad. Only decals for the one railroad though. I was struck by the fact that there are no flat planes on the whole car, so all the bigger decals have to go across supporting ribs. 
Unfortunately, when I tried to add the decals provided they shredded completely when I put them in water. Not sure what was going on there but now I’m out of luck unless I can find an alternative. I think the decals are missing an additional coat of something that holds the print together, but have no idea what that coat would be (varnish?).
A month later and I made do with a combination of Microscale Decals and the name and bear printed on decal paper. BTW, I have four extra sets so if anyone wants one let me know. Overall the car looks OK finished, but I know I could do better. I don’t plan on building anymore though, I’m still shooting for a steam layout, sort of.


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## Murv2

*Megow’s Boxcar*

About 15 years ago while I was a wargamer and not model railroader I built a B&O wagontop boxcar out of resin as a favor to my brother. I always thought they were pretty neat and mentioned it to my son so for Christmas he surprised me with a double whammy, “Megow’s Models Baltimore & Ohio Steel Box Car Kit No. 024”. Not only is it a wagontop, it’s a wood kit from 1939! The whole thing just reeks of age, the wood is that deep tan that only comes from time, the instructions are aged paper printed in red and it makes extensive use of cardboard and paper. My usual search on the internet indicated that Megow’s built plane, ship and train models starting in the early 1930’s, and apparently they were the first to make HO train cars kits (but don’t quote me on that). I think my search for the oldest HO kit is nearing its end.
I’ve mentioned in previous articles that the normal way to build a wood boxcar model is with endblocks glued to roof and floor forming the structure, then the sides tacked on. This kit uses the sides, roof and floor as the structure and the ends are simply thin cardboard. The floor in the (excellent) diagram is about 1/2” thick, but in the kit it’s only 3/16” or so, so I glued blocks to the base to support the whole frame. That didn’t stop me from making the whole thing slightly slaunch-wise. Also, the four structure pieces weren’t all the same length requiring sanding to make them fit right. Once those were glued together I gave thought to weight and added 1.75 oz to bring it up to NMRA standards. Usually I just put all the pieces on a kitchen scale and see what it comes out to (don’t tell the wife).
Next I spent some time making the curve around the roof edge even. The sides were wider than the groove on the top so they stuck out a bit and I ended up using green putty to fill in the gap and sanded it smooth and even. Also, the ends were sanded after gluing in place to ensure they were flat with the sides, important since the paper covering the sides also hid the edges of the ends. The printed ends and doors had rivet lines printed on them out of a darker shiny color, the pictures show that detail. The paper has rivets embossed in it, a nice touch.
I received this kit already opened so can’t report if all pieces were included but there weren’t any grab irons or brake system, though the reservoir part underneath was there as a turned piece of wood. The underside is otherwise completely barren except than one hunk of wood for the center sill so I roughed in a bit with scraps. It mentions making other parts out of included cardboard, so I expect there might have been an extra sheet or maybe they just expected us to cut up the one cardboard sheet provided. 
The instructions make great use of the piece of cardboard. The ribs are supposed to be cut out of it and glued along both sides, all 11 of them. Unfortunately the cardboard isn’t solid, it’s like two pieces of paper with some mulch in between. That’s OK for big bulky pieces like the ends and doors but the ribs are only 1/32” wide and started exfoliating even as I was gluing them on. Not sure what is the right word for “Pressing on with dogged determination in the face of sheer stupidity” but rather than starting the ribs over with a piece of nice cardstock sitting within 2’ of me on the work table I just kept gluing the cardboard ribs together as they fell apart. Many ended up twisted and uneven. Overall I’d say the ribs are the most disappointing part of this car. After some paint I’m hoping they hold together.
Speaking of paint, there are no recommendations in the instructions for paint which wouldn’t help anyway since the cardboard pieces are darker than the paper sides. I ended up using Vallejo Mahogany brown, which is too dark for the sides but just about spot on for the other pieces. After painting the sides I decided the brown was too extreme compared to the paper sides so I took the Mrs. to the local hobby superstore with the kit and we looked through their paint selection until we found a closer color (Chocolate Brown if you must know). The paper ended up being too short so there is a brown strip across the bottom of the car as well. I decided not to repaint the cardboard pieces because that’s the way the kit came, better or worse.
After all that disappointment I decided to put the wheels and trucks on. I find that doing so gives me a sense of accomplishment because I can get a sense of what the finished product will look like, and seeing it run around the track shows you are getting close. After drilling the screw holes for the trucks and repairing the catwalk and ribs damaged when trying to rubber band the car to a miter box for support I put it on the track. It seemed tall but an ordinary freight car was the same height. Maybe the fact that there isn’t a sharp corner at the roofline makes it appear taller? Anyway, after that it was a simple matter of making a dozen grabirons including four angled ones, cadging a brake system from the junk box and making some door hardware out of wire. 
Halfway through construction I was convinced this kit was even more disappointing than the tank car. After all, I had no expectations for the other after I opened the box and saw Zamac cancer, but this one looked like it would come out nice until I got halfway through working on it. Now that it is finished I can only quote the old adage “A good coat of paint hides many sins.” That said, If I get another chance at a Megow’s kit I’ll take it, just to find out if this one is an anomaly.


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## ebtnut

Congrats on 1) finding an old Megow kit, and 2) getting it built. It certainly illustrates how far we've come in model design and production. I don't think I've laid eyes on a Megow kit in decades. Trying to model those arch ribs on any of the B&O wagontops (caboose, covered hopper, boxcar) was a real pain. Finally in recent years got decent resin and injection-molded models. One of the toughest of the Ambroid "One of 5000" kits was the vinegar tank car. Even as an experienced craftsman kit builder it was a rough go.


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## Murv2

ebtnut said:


> Congrats on 1) finding an old Megow kit, and 2) getting it built. It certainly illustrates how far we've come in model design and production. I don't think I've laid eyes on a Megow kit in decades. Trying to model those arch ribs on any of the B&O wagontops (caboose, covered hopper, boxcar) was a real pain. Finally in recent years got decent resin and injection-molded models. One of the toughest of the Ambroid "One of 5000" kits was the vinegar tank car. Even as an experienced craftsman kit builder it was a rough go.


Thanks for that, I'm seriously Jonesing for one of the wagontop covered hoppers. I wish they made a caboose kit too, I'm finishing up converting the only B&O GP-18 and would like a bay window caboose to go with it.


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## Murv2

*Kurtz Kraft Boxcar*

The only reason I bought this car was because I’d never seen a model railroad car kit in a plastic bag before. It turns out it is a plastic kit “Kurtz Kraft PS-1 40’ Boxcar Kit”. My google-fu says the company made these cars starting in the 50’s. This one has a $1.00 price tag printed on the instructions. 
While it isn’t quite as easy to assemble as the Athearn kits that can be finished with a screwdriver, this kit falls pretty low on the plastic model difficulty scale. Most of the detail is on only one side of the plastic. The grab irons are so delicate several broke before being removed from the tree. The hardest part of assembly is getting the sides and ends even to glue the roof on after everything else is finished. Oh yeah, the coupler pockets aren’t designed for modern couplers, I ended up cutting them off and installing Kadee housings. 
This car is in a rather bright shade of red-brown, but repainting it isn’t an option if you want to keep the stenciled on railroad info. After a coat of flat finish I’ll live with the color. At first the car felt a bit big to me but next to a modern Bachmann car they are the same size. Anyway, a quick but fun project.


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## Chops

:appl: Beautifully done Old School. Thanks for posting.


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## Stan D

Great thread. I've never seen kits of this level. But truthfully, I've never looked. My experience is with the aforementioned Athearn style kits. I picked up 2 Athearn and 2 E&C kits at a thrift store over a year ago, and finally got around to building(?) them a couple weeks ago. Not a whole lot of detail, but I'm happy. There were 2 of these. I did have to add the Kadees.


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## Murv2

Thanks guys, I'm really enjoying putting these together. I plan on focusing on buildings next, a board-flat layout doesn't really compliment the cars.


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## Murv2

*Walthers Boxcar*

Ever since I started working on these kits I’ve been trying to get older and older models. When I saw a Walthers kit on Ebay that wasn’t made of plastic I knew it was old and so I picked it up. The box was original, one of those mass-produced boxes with only a stamp “BOX 6805” unique to the kit. Unfortunately there were no instructions and an email reply from Walthers told me, based on the address on the box the kit was packaged between 1937 and 1958. (BTW, I am very pleased with Walthers communication, they respond quickly and have gone out of their way a couple times with my cockamamie requests.) This puts it newer than the Megow’s boxcar but older than everything else.
The kit itself is a combination of crude and well-engineered. It contains a dozen tiny wood screws, cast ends instead of wood blocks and paper braces for the roof. I think it wasn’t designed with modern glues available and anything that wouldn’t hold with Elmers was screwed or nailed together. The sides were some kind of thin plywood that unfortunately were left in the paper envelope over the top of the roof and after 70-odd years ended up warped. I tried soaking and flattening them only to find them warped worse, so I had to take advantage of modern glues to keep them flat. After painting they warped a bit but not much I can do about it at this point.
As I mentioned there were no instructions so the first order of business was to figure out what car the kit was intended to represent. Right out of the box I noticed the sides were made of horizontal boards rather than vertical, that had to be a clue. I thought perhaps it was a milk car but the pictures I’d seen of them made them look more like passenger cars than freight cars. Then I found pictures of outside-braced boxcars. The decals had NYC and Michigan Central on them so a quick google of NYC outside braced boxcars brought up some pictures that convinced me that was it.
If it was an outside-braced boxcar the braces were missing, but there were scads of of paper braces, basically 1/8” strip with a lip pressed into the center. Initially I thought these were only for the roof, but after using 13 I still had a bunch left and so suspect they were intended for the sides too. These pieces look pretty crude and I don’t see how they would look right on the sides so I went to the hobby shop and purchased some proper angle iron. I read on the Walther’s website that during WW2 they ran out of supplies, perhaps the paper was a compromise keeping them in business while resources were spent building military hardware. I did use the paper for the roof and while it isn’t my preferred material I think it looks OK there. I think the angle iron I bought was too big, hopefully no one will look too close.
The prototype car has wooden ends, which I’d expect to see on a turn of the 20th century car, but the doors look like midcentury and the brake wheel is on the end, not the top. Also the bottom has a solid beam instead of truss rods or a fish plate. And ladders instead of grab irons. I’m nothing like an expert on RR cars but maybe this was an older car that was updated? Or maybe limited hobby supplies in WW2 created some compromises.
All the lead parts on this car serve to weight it pretty well, I only added a quarter ounce to bring it up to NMRA standards. I glued the lead sheet that serves as weight to the ends to brace the floor. The ends have two forks at the top to screw the roof to, then one tab with a screw hole on the bottom and as a result the floor wobbles just a bit (really it’s pretty ingenious; the screws for the roof go in from the bottom and are offset from the bottom tab so you can get a screwdriver in there. Then the bottom screws in from the bottom too). The original car had brads that I suspect were intended to nail the sides to the roof and floor, that would brace the bottom but the heads of the brads would show so I glued it with Walthers Goo instead. 
Bottom details were a bit sparse with just four lead bolsters, a brake tank and a central beam. I ended up googling “Boxcar underside” and that gave me enough to rough it out with a few beams and pipes made of scraps. Based on the pictures I should have swapped the center beam for two separate beams with a gap between and scored the floor for individual boards. I ended up using underset shank couplers and filing a bit on the tab to make the couplers the right height.
For grab irons there were plenty of staples, plus four long narrow staples for the end steps. The ladders provided were stamped copper and in addition to being warped around the flats they were warped laterally also, in a way you really couldn’t fix (I tried and bent them worse). The curve was less noticeable when the ladders were cut and I tried to hide the bend along the edge of the car. I think the brake wheel is actually part of a clothing snap, odd but easily replaced if it offends you.
Decals seem to be a problem on older kits. This kit came with four sheets in an envelope. Two were company logos for NYC, Michigan Central and four others I didn’t recognize, plus two with all the generic mumbo jumbo found on railroad cars. I’m not sure if they were crappy to start with or if they didn’t age well but the logos were unusable and the others hardly usable. I ended up buying a set from another decal company (K4?) and these worked really well, too well actually because I had to cut them small to change the alignment (they were for a flatsided boxcar) and they curled under really easily. Wonderful decals though.
Anyway, an interesting experience and a well-made kit whose main problem is that it is 70 years old. I’ll build another if I can find one.


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## Murv2

*Red Ball Rotary Snowplow*

This is the review of ‘Red Ball Kit No. 162; Rotary Snowplow and Tender’. Actually it’s only the snowplow, I don’t know where the tender went. This was another Christmas gift from my son, who was taken with pictures of the snowplow in Skagway Alaska. 
I did a little research online and it appears that about 140 Leslie steam rotary snowplows were built of a similar pattern to this one, half by Leslie, half by Alco and a few in other shops. Electricity eventually replaced steam and there are a few rotary snowplows still in reserve, most at the Donner Pass. There are maybe a half-dozen steam rotaries still in museums but only the White Pass and Yukon plow still works (but not the one we photographed.) None of this should be considered authoritative, maybe some of our more train-smart members can set me straight. This plow may be based on the Long Island plow, the only one lacking windows in the front. Red Ball was founded in 1939 and made car kits with cardboard sides for the most part. Not sure when they stopped.
Anyway, unlike most of the kits I’ve worked on this one has more metal than wood in it. The roof and floor are wood, sides, front and back are lead. The front is taken up by a massive casting of the blade and housing. The blade is held with a length of brass tube that passes through a block of wood. There’s no boiler in the kit, and considering the number of windows you can see into it might be worthwhile to put something in there. The inside is visible through the rear too, though the tender blocks the view partially. 
I must add here that I think rotary snowplows are not particularly attractive pieces of equipment. Other than being impressed by the massive fan blades and seeing how cool they look in action, the truck arrangement is ungainly and the underside pretty barren (yes I know, they weren’t built for looks). 
Assembly is not as straightforward as most kits. You glue the front block to the top and bottom and use an unglued spacer on the back, because the rear casting is glued to the back of everything else and it remains open. Then glue in the sides, take the spacer out and glue on the back and fan. The hardest part of the kit is the supports for the cutter wings. These stick out on either side of the fan and there are tiny tabs for the braces that you have to drill a hole through, tabs that I ruined in several cases and ended up drilling a hole through the main piece to hold the brace. 
The instructions are fairly well written, but the only illustration is a ¾ view picture of the finished kit. Diagrams would have been nice. There are many grab irons and steps, staples were provided that (naturally) didn’t fit the holes in the sides (it was nice to have the holes present, I drilled them out with a pin vice much more easily than if I had to start from scratch). There were several other handholds that had to be bent from wire and I had more or less success with those. 
What color to paint the plow was the subject of some concern on my part. The internet didn’t provide much enlightenment as most photos were of the few still existing or of current plows that had been converted to electric long ago. Finally I decided to paint mine black with a red fan and housing, a decision partly made because the plastic tender shell I bought to replace the missing tender was black and decaled for the Union Pacific. Actually it’s a nice piece, with wire grabirons and decouplers. I spent more on shipping than on the shell itself. Anyway, I decided to put a random number on the plow. If anyone has more information on what UP plows looked like at the turn of the 20th century I’d be interested in finding out.
The picture in the kit shows Fox trucks and as soon as they arrive from the mail they’ll replace the temporary trucks on the plow right now.
I can’t imagine running a snow plow on a model railroad very often, so I bought a spare switch and put a spur across from the train station to store the plow on. It will probably be there for a long time. Maybe I’ll lengthen the spur a bit and add an 0-8-0 switcher to the consist, once I get it running. This kit gets my thumbs up, but I’ll keep an eye out for a more conventional Red Ball kit, apparently they were fond of cardboard as well.


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## J.Albert1949

Great job on the snowplow!

_Off-topic:_
I see you use Kato Unitrack.
Do you use any of the *manual* #4 turnouts?
If so, have you encountered any problems with them not moving into the "reverse" position?


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## Andreash

You have a entertaining way of writing. Your first post was funny (ie the bit about cursing the kit)....nice build, and a great way to save something from the past..cheers


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## Murv2

J.Albert1949 said:


> Great job on the snowplow!
> 
> _Off-topic:_
> I see you use Kato Unitrack.
> Do you use any of the *manual* #4 turnouts?
> If so, have you encountered any problems with them not moving into the "reverse" position?


The only problem I've had with the number 4's is that the crossover is plastic and my engines with shorter electrical pickups stall crossing them. I have had a couple #6's that don't switch when you switch them and you have to push the frog over by hand, but that is because the table isn't level and the switch bends a bit. If I were smarter I'd figure out how to shim the switches so they worked. Hope that answered your question...


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## Murv2

*Tyco and Mantua Steam Locomotive Kits*

I haven’t posted the last ten days because I’ve been working on a Christmas present, The General Grant. It’s actually a Tyco General kit with a bunch of new parts made with 3D printers by Shapeways. This is the third General kit I’ve built, the first when I was a teen, the second when I started model railroading again. It’s the fifth steam engine kit I’ve built in the last couple years, here are the other four together. The camelback is actually a Mantua but the manufacturer differences are trivial (Mantua and Tyco were two different companies started by the same person).
Anyway, a review of old steam locomotive kits: Tyco includes a picture of all the parts in their kits on the box so you can see just what you are getting into. The metal they use is not soft casting lead easily bent and holds detail well, I don’t recall getting any miscast pieces. It could be Zamac but if so none of the kits I’ve gotten exhibited the cracking and warping associated with Zamac cancer. There is a great deal of flash on the pieces but some careful work with a sharp knife and file cleans them up quickly. There are a few brass, steel and plastic pieces as well. I don’t recall missing any pieces.
The instructions run to two or three pages, with decent explanations, blow-up drawings and a parts list useful for identifying screws. I’ve never had any issues understanding the instructions. Assembly is pretty straight forward using screws for the most part. The screws are self-tapping which seems to do the job. The only part requiring any finesse are the rivets that hold the running gear together. Tap too light and it falls apart, too hard and the pieces won’t rotate freely. A flat, stable work surface is mandatory. 
The motor used on these kits was designed some time around WW2 and performs as well as you’d expect from 70 year old technology. Most serious railroaders will want to replace it with a can motor, I’ve been trying to do that with several engines and so far failed miserably. The engines may or may not run well, I’ve got a couple that run fine in reverse but not forward, still working on that one. For couplers you’ll have to be creative with Kadee’s offerings. The front coupler pockets are extremely narrow and I ended up taking a plastic Bachman coupler, crushing the round screw hole to oblong with pliers and screwing it in. It works, but isn’t pretty and I’m not sure how robust it will be.
The engines take paint well, and according to reports are based on Reading locomotives found near Mantua’s New Jersey facility. The camelback I have is a Mikado and only the Lehigh Valley Railroad had camelback Mikados. The General is based on the actual locomotive currently in a museum in Georgia, but in truth it isn’t THE GENERAL from the famous chase, it is the General after an 1870 rebuild. I have a hare-brained scheme to take the spare boiler and reconfigure it to match the Civil War General, then purchase (another) Tyco kit to finish the engine in its original configuration. 
Anyway, if you enjoy building your own equipment these old kits are fun, and if you have the handyman gene and can replace the drive train with a can motor I’m sure they can be made to perform as well as modern engines. Roundhouse made locomotive kits too, eventually I hope to get a Shay from them, and sooner or later will tackle a mallet, maybe a Penn 4-4-4-4…


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## Murv2

*Conversion Tyco General to General Grant*

I haven’t posted any reviews the last couple months because I’ve been working on a conversion of the Tyco General kit to the General Grant, an engine used on the City Point line by the US Military Railroad in the Civil War. I have a particular fondness for really early steam locomotives, and as I’ve read that at one point 85% of the locomotives on US railroads were Americans, it seems logical for me to have more than just the General.
There are several pictures of the General Grant available because the photographer helped paint the engine, with lots of garish decoration including a portrait of the general on the tender. Other than the slight difference in drivers (66” vs 60”) the modelers did a spectacular job converting the General to a different engine. They self-published their conversion process in a book available on Lulu.com with the unique parts available 3-d printed from Shapeways.com .
So on to the review: My first comment is that these men were skilled and determined modelers who went out of their way to make the engines look just like the pictures. I must confess that I do not have their level of skill or determination. In some cases I decided for practical or aesthetic reasons not to follow the book, for example I am using knuckle couplers on almost all of my trains because link-and-pin are impractical (except the Bachmann John Bull train, I converted them to link-and-pin because the horn hook coupler springs were making the cars crab and I don’t switch cars on that train) so making the link on the cow catcher was pointless. I also decided not to change the pilot truck wheels to solid disks because I’m fond of spokes, but in retrospect I should have gone to the effort.
Other decisions I made during the production process to accommodate my lesser skills. For example, instead of making the crossheads and guides I modified the Tyco set for use with this engine; my soldering skills simply aren’t up to that task. Also because of the spectacular failures I’ve had with can motor conversions I kept the original motor and drive train.
Anyway, on to the actual process: The instructions are clear, incredibly well illustrated and easy to follow. The Shapeways parts are excellent. The plastic (called frosted ultra-detail or FUD) is better than model plastic (I haven’t found it melting after drilling) and other than a few places where the piece is complicated it presents a smooth surface. The printing lines are sometimes visible but could be sanded of if you have that bent. One thing they made which is fantastic is a replacement retainer plate (goes under the drivers to hold them in place) that is brass, twice as thick and helps resolve the weight issue with the Tyco kit. I plan on purchasing another for the General I already have. The other brass pieces are great too, including a canted cylinder unit that an early engine builder should find useful in other kits.
I don’t know about other modelers but sometimes, halfway through a project I’ll get stuck. The completion of a particular step, one that will completely screw up the model if you don’t do it right and you have no idea how to do it right, puts you back on your heels and you stop working for fear of ruining the entire model. I got to that step with the crossheads and guides, specifically attaching them to the cylinders. I wanted to make a slot in the cylinders like the Tyco kit but couldn’t get the drill bits to work and knew they’d skip around anyway. I think it took two weeks before I got going again. 
I ended up cutting a groove in the cylinder with a cutting disk and (after failing to solder them) simply glued the crosshead guides in place. The Tabs on the back end of the guides broke off when I bent them to realign with the new configuration but I glued some flat wire across the back of the guide and that did the trick. Then some grinding on the crosshead support until the drive rod didn’t rub and Bob’s your uncle. A test run showed the engine worked, after that it was a steady pull to completion. 
One really neat feature this conversion offered was the spark arrester on the smoke stack. It was pretty complicated to build, and required some hunting to find the fine mesh (I ended up taking apart a faucet aerator) but the end result is a nice touch on the top of the stack.
This engine is not your typical black of later steam. There is apparently some disagreement on what color “Russian Blue” really is, so you can paint it whatever shade of metallic gray you like. Based on my experience with steam engines in the Navy and guns I suspect that the term was used to describe “Black Rust” which occurs when iron oxidizes at high temperature. It is a bluish black, but still very dark. It also makes sense that it would develop on the sides of boilers and is desirable because it prevents further rusting after a thin layer is formed. I tried to follow the pictures in the book but my boiler ended up a little darker than theirs. 
Anyway, an extremely challenging conversion and I’m just happy to have an engine that actually runs at the end. If you are looking for that sort of project (and have an endless supply of patience) I highly recommend it. They also published a book on building the Yonah (one of the engines used in the Great Locomotive Chase), but it is not a conversion and after adding up the cost of the parts I decided to pass.


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## Magic

I'll tell you what, that may have been a very involved project but it came out
outstanding. Looking very nice indeed.

Great workmanship. Well beyond my pay grade.

Magic


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## ebtnut

Really nice work! Captures the style and flavor of those mid-19th Century rolling works of art. I never quite got why so many locos from that era used slanted cylinders. Even the modern repro for Steam into History in Pennsylvania has slightly tilted cylinders.


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## Old_Hobo

Well, if you are going to make a reproduction of something, it makes sense to make it look and operate like the original did....or am I missing something? hwell:


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## Lemonhawk

Whoa, too much glitz, would put all my loco to shame! Impressive, you actually used the plastic body from Shapeways! All the filigree on the tender and the subtle colors, really make this jewel!


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## Dennis461

The Genersl did not have tilted cylinders, did it?


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## Old_Hobo

Google says.....no, it didn't....

https://www.modeltrainforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=491642&stc=1&d=1554781207


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## Murv2

Does this help?


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## Murv2

*Athearn Box Car*

Having finished tweaking the General Grant so it will run I thought I’d clear my palette with a simple kit before starting work on the next complicated project, the Campbell coal tower. So I pulled out an old boxcar kit and set to work.
Athearn is famous for their ‘Blue box’ cars, made of plastic and screwed together in about five minutes. However, this kit is in a plain yellow box and predates plastic: # 202400, ‘Simplified Economy Kit 40’6” HO Gauge Boxcar’. The instructions on this car have a signature and date on one of the diagrams: J.J. Munson 3.3.49. Athearn started working in HO in 1948 but according to Wikipedia they acquired the Globe Models line so this kit might have originated with them instead. 
Anyway this kit is the first tinclad I’ve assembled. The top, sides, doors and ends are all stamped sheet metal. Even the frame is assembled from stamped metal. Top and sides are tin, ends brass. The sides were painted as well. There was a fair amount of rust on many pieces, but other than wire brushing the rust off the roof I just painted over it. After all, Boxcar red is rust-colored anyway.
The Instructions are easy to follow, well-illustrated (by Mr. Munson) and relatively simple. They cover two sides of a single piece of paper. No plastic in this kit, everything is either wood or stamped sheet metal with a few castings for the brake system.
The first dilemma I had working on this kit was how to paint it. The sides are pre-painted and stenciled but nothing else so you either assemble it then carefully paint everything without touching the sides or paint everything you can first then carefully touch up after assembly. The second option seemed better so that’s what I did. It would have been easier if I had the same manufacturer’s color of boxcar red in both spray paint and brush but I didn’t and was too impatient to order a jar of Scalecoat so after assembling I ended up hand painting over the stuff I’d spray-painted anyway. 
This kit starts with the typical wooden frame, top bottom and ends. The bottom detail is assembled from pressed sheet metal bolsters and center sill notched together and screwed to the wooden bottom with a brass nut that doubles as the coupler socket. I think it ended up sitting a little far from the bottom and I had to open up some of the notches to make it fit better. I found gluing the two-piece center bolsters together before final assembly reduced the number of parts moving on their own and gave better support to the frame while screwing it together.
Assembly of the sheet metal cladding over the wood frame is a little tricky: The end and top cladding are cupped so they wrap around the sides and the top is supposed to wrap around the ends too but the tabs holding the smaller pieces make the sides bulge a bit (also, wood is not a precision material) and that means you have to ‘encourage’ the pieces to go together properly. I ended up gluing in one piece at a time after squeezing it on then rubber banding the whole thing together. The overlaps did tend to hold together after they popped in place.
The sill steps were the biggest problem fitting the car together. First of all, they are nice pieces, made out of bent brass and feel pretty sturdy compared to plastic cars where half the sill steps have broken off before you get the car on the track. They are inserted between the wooden frame and the sides and cause the sides to bulge, making it harder to fit the rest together. I recommend notching the bottom wood before adding the sill steps so they lie flush and don’t cause the sides to bulge. I ended up beating on them through the side with a punch, not the best solution but after the glue is set what other option is there?
As with many older kits there were parts missing, in this case the W bar that goes between the side and top and one small roof walk leading to the ladder. I cobbled these together with scrap wood and cardstock (which promptly swelled when painted). Couplers were not provided and the illustrations didn’t show them, even the drawing of the completed kit. Trucks were provided and aside from a little rust they look to still work. They included a spring that goes between the screw and the pocket, what for I have no idea… No brake piping was provided under the car and I didn’t include the airline on the end after half the wire provided flew off into the dark corner of the basement when I cut it with a snipper. 
So there you have it, a fun and serviceable boxcar kit made before plastics took over the hobby entirely. I hope to build another, next time with fewer mistakes (and maybe brake piping underneath).


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## Murv2

*Update*

I've been working hard on the Coal tower, but it's a pretty substantial kit and I'll probably be still a few more weeks. I haven't run into any technical challenges yet but the sheer number of parts means it will take some time to finish. In the meantime I've picked up one Varney and two Strombecker boxcar kits, the kind with cardboard sides. Here's a couple pics of the coal tower


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## Murv2

*Campbell Coal Tower*

So I’ve been building railroad cars and engines for a couple years now, and have a decent sized track to run them on but the table otherwise looks like a football field. My plan is to fill it up with home built wooden kit buildings and to that end I have precisely one, a water tower. The next thing an engine needs besides water is power, and on steam trains that means a coal tower. I went looking for a wood coal tower kit and ended up picking up the “Campbell Scale Models HO-HON3 Coaling Station #357-1095” off Ebay. Now this is an old kit: The diagram has a 9/65 date on it and the instructions 10/65 but Campbell still advertises them so you can buy them new if you wish. I wouldn’t be surprised if Campbell updated their kit in the last 50 years.
First comment, Holy cow there a lot of parts! They come in a half-dozen wax paper bags (see previous post) but still, keeping track of what piece is what is hard, especially because most are similarly-sized beams. According to the instructions this model tower was used in two places by the D&RGW (at Durango and Chama) and slight differences between the two were covered.
Back to the beginning, how does a coal tower work? Behind the building there is a pit with tracks over it. The coal car dumps its load into the pit and because it’s angled towards the building the coal leans against two gates in the wall. On the other side of the wall is one of two coal buckets, opening the gate fills the bucket with coal then the hoist lifts it to the top of the coal pocket where it tips over and dumps its load into the pocket. The other bucket moves opposite so when one is at the top the other is at the bottom ready to load. The coal pocket is tilted towards the front of the building and when an engine needs coal it comes out the chute in the front.
That’s all there is to it. The station has four basic components, from bottom to top the coal pit, hoist house (where the machinery is), coal pocket and loft house, where the pulleys for the buckets reside. 
This kit is as already mentioned wood, mostly basswood beams of various sizes. The thicker slabs for the sides of the buildings and pits is some other kind of wood that is as finely grained as basswood but has more obvious age rings and even some sap that leeched out of the wood over the years and stuck a couple pieces together. Steel sheet is simulated with cardstock, roof underlayment with cardboard and the cedar shakes with a nice roll of perforated paper that has the glue needed on the back, just wet it and stick it on (the roofs are prone to warping). One tree of plastic parts (pulleys and bolts), a little wire and chain, that’s it.
The instructions are on two sides of a 14*20” sheet, plus diagrams on one side of another sheet the same size. They are fairly comprehensive and complete, though you are expected to look at the diagrams and install the cosmetic parts not specifically mentioned. One annoyance is that they refer to the wood alternating in both scale and actual size, requiring conversion. Other manufactures used color coding effectively to separate the wood. I wish they’d include a black and white ¾ view or picture of the back of the building that would have made it much easier to figure out what’s going on back there as there are so many beams going hither and yon the diagrams are hard to interpret sometimes. 
I didn’t build the building faithfully. My train is on folding banquet tables and using Unitrack so I can break it down and reconfigure it or pack it away when needed. That means cutting a hole in the table for the coal pit isn’t an option. Elevating the tower with a sheet of insulation and cutting a hole through that isn’t really practical either (I’d have to elevate the entire layout 2”) so the only real option is to leave out the details in the pit. I made a base out of ¼” plywood, cut the pit out and put the top ¼” of all the pit sides in it, then cut out a piece of cardboard and painted it black to tape across the bottom. For the track I took a piece of 9” Unitrack, cut the center 6” of ballast plastic out and glued it across the pit, with the remaining ballast pieces glued to the sides including the joiners. 
I had a lot of trouble getting all the beams lined up properly (not the kit’s problem though, me just clumsy). Campbell recommends pinning or gluing the frame to the diagram then taking it off after assembled but the beams didn’t line up precisely at the ends and I had to shim some of them to get the frame tight. Oddly, instead of building the sides and gluing the frame around them you build the frame and glue the sides inside. The other way may have been easier but I followed the instructions and a good coat of paint hides many sins. BTW, painting everything before assembly then touching up the cuts and glue marks will make for a better finished product, even spray paint can’t get in some of the nooks and crannies.
I found the lift system to be the most difficult part technically (though the breaker grate bars were the most numerous pieces, after I glued the I-beams in the pit before drilling holes through them and assembling the grate. Then I ended up with six little grates to assemble rather than one big one, whoops). Some support beams and pulleys ended up askew and the lift cables bump into a couple beams, but I’m not going to take it apart now. The cardstock buckets didn’t end up square because I couldn’t identify the wooden block provided as a form to glue them around, or maybe it was missing. One of the foot-long bucket guide rails was missing as well. This is a common theme with old kits, no doubt a previous owner misplaced it or it fell out of the box at some point. I’m used to replacing or jury rigging missing parts.
Anyway, it turns out to be a fun kit to build and took over a month, but well worth it. I still need to add people, rig the track running to yard and buy another switch, but it looks pretty good opposite the water tower. Next I’m thinking either granary or putting together the planned roundhouse that will have to be scratch built after wiring the turntable with a rotary switch, but first at least one more train car, or maybe an engine…


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## wvgca

the car previously shown turned out very nice, except maybe the brake wheel, seems a little heavy ...
Were they actually cast that way or is the 'prototype' slightly lighter ?


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## Stumpy

Coaling tower looks great.


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## Andreash

Nice build, it’s a interesting way to build, with the timber structure first. I remember Campbell kits from the 70’s, I always thought they were good value, and there instruction sheets were well done...cheers


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## Murv2

wvgca said:


> the car previously shown turned out very nice, except maybe the brake wheel, seems a little heavy ...
> Were they actually cast that way or is the 'prototype' slightly lighter ?


Unknown. That was the way it came in the kit. The C&EI boxcar a couple pages earlier has a similar wheel, same approximate size but not filled in as much. If you want ugly, the Walthers boxcar brake wheel is half a clothing snap.


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## wvgca

Murv2 said:


> Unknown. That was the way it came in the kit.



thanks for the info, appreciate it


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## Murv2

*Funaro and Camerlengo Caboose*

I recently refurbished a damaged GP-18 a friend got for me from a yard sale (https://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=177766 ) and decided I needed a caboose to go with it. My father had one of the Athearn Bay window cabooses in the blue and gold paint scheme and I always thought it looked sharp but I also really like wagon top cars as a unique B&O item so thought a wagon top caboose would be fun to build. Wagon tops were originally in red with green trim which is a neat scheme that doesn’t match the engine so I did a little ‘research’ (looked it up on google images) and found the railroad painted wagon tops in the desired scheme in the 60’s.
Now, track-ready HO scale wagon top cabooses are fairly common and easy to find in any paint scheme, but the whole point of my railroading is to build things so, a trip onto Ebay found “B&O I-12 Caboose” made by Funaro and Camerlengo for Pro Custom Hobbies. I’d already built an F&C kit, the Great Northern boxcar (look back a few pages for the review) and I was impressed, so I figured this kit would be equally fun to build. I’m not sure whether this kit was made earlier or later than the other, but their quality either improved or devolved badly; I had numerous issues with it that I didn’t have with the boxcar.
The resin used for this kit was a little more brittle than the other, tan instead of white and worse, had bubbles that rendered some of the smaller parts incomplete. Also, resin is poured into an open mold and as a result there is a layer of flash on top of all the parts that has to be removed. For the boxcar this layer was even thinner than paper and easily cut off without any change in the part dimensions. The layer on this kit was up to 1/32” thick and uneven in many places (don’t look too close at the catwalk from the side, it bulges in the middle). 
I ended up sanding many parts thinner and can’t imagine getting the thin air release valves off the thicker layer of flash; fortunately they were removed from I-12s in the 60’s so I didn’t use it. The brake wheels look terrible, the back is flat and I had to drill out the gaps between the spokes but the holes weren’t even. Because of the thick layer of flash the fit between the ends and sides is very poor, don’t look too close at mine (“A good coat of paint hides many ills.”). It’s a shame because the details that were molded in were nice, like the rivets and metal grating of the catwalks. Also I had to drill out several of the windows. 
The bottom parts were resin and came out very poorly, they were in half and after sanding off the flash the seams didn’t align well. I really wish there was a diagram showing their placement and the piping underneath, I had to guess where the brake parts went and didn’t pipe the kit at all (not that that matters, no one can see under there anyway). Also, I replaced the corner support material with plastic angle iron, that’s what it looked like in the pictures on google. All the grab irons had to be bent out of soft green wire and the holes drilled out.
I had to give considerable thought to order of assembly. The problem is that painting both dark blue and bright yellow onto the same car is problematic. Grey is a better primer for dark blue but white is a better primer for yellow. Then if you get the blue where the yellow goes it will bleed through the yellow paint and look bad, so you need to mask the yellow carefully but that’s really hard on a kit that has such lumpy bits as this one. Also the bottom is black, I recommend painting that before any assembly as black is easy to touch up but hard to undo once you get it where you don’t want it. I ended up painting up yellow then blue, then painted over the blue that went to the wrong places with white then yellow as touch-up.
Also, you have to add the windows somehow but the caboose isn’t designed to be taken apart so you have to paint it partially assembled and hope for the best. I ended up making the ends and bottom one piece and the shell as another, once painted I added windows, assembled the bottom and top then made the handrails that stick above the car. (I added rods to the roof and base go in the angle of the corner pieces and serve as alignment and support.)
For decals there is a full set of late I-12 caboose decals available from Mount Vernon Shops, four different schema including after the B&O was absorbed by the Chessie system. I chose the earliest because although the second scheme would have matched the engine better (yellow letters and striping), the ends on that car were blue and I wanted them yellow.
Anyway, a frustrating kit because so much time was spent working the thick layer of flash. Worse, this was supposed to be a fairly easy kit to build between larger projects, but turned out to take far too much attention. In the end I’ll have to treat F&C kits like Silver Streak and check the contents of the box before purchasing the kit. There are simply too many more entertaining ways to spend your free time than impatiently sanding unwanted material off tiny parts.


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## Murv2

*Main Line Express Reefer*

I hadn't heard of express reefers before, then I ended up with two from a couple random lots of car kits off ebay. It seems there are some things that were just as time sensitive as passenger traffic and tacking those things (like strawberries and blood) to a passenger train was a convenient way to get them to their destination quickly. Passenger trains had different standards than freight so express reefers had to be set up different from regular reefers and presented a unique appearance, in this case a 50' car with wooden sides and ends, passenger trucks and an arched roof.
I reviewed a Main Line reefer previously and this kit appears to be contemporaneous. Everything I said about that kit applies to this one. The car is the same shade of orange as the other one, but In this case I think it's to match the rest of the cars on Milwaukee Road's Hiawatha train rather than because orange was a popular color for reefers.
Anyway, a fun kit to build if mildly frustrating. Too bad I don't have an appropriate train to stick it in.


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## Murv2

*Mantua Tank Car*

Before I start the formal review I want to comment that a recurring theme in these reviews is missing parts in the kits. Either the part got lost some time ago as the kit was moved around, opened, examined, inventoried etc., or the part was missing in the first place. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that someone opened the kit, did an inventory, noted the missing part and put the kit on the shelf until they could contact the manufacturer to replace it then forgot about it. I’m used to finding missing parts and have no problem replacing small parts with modern equivalents or assembling my own replacements out of wood or cardstock. But in this case…
Before plastic tank cars were sold model railroad cars used a tube or cylinder of some kind for the tank. The tubes were usually sheet metal (tin or steel) and the cylinders were wood. A wrapper was provided made of paper or thin cardstock with all the text and logos printed on it. The fancier ones even had rivets embossed on them. The wrapper was missing from this kit. Back then your only choice would be to write the manufacturer, in fact this kit’s instruction sheet even included a form to send back requesting missing parts. 
Obviously I couldn’t do that but thanks to modern technology (Google and PowerPoint) I was able to find an example of a tank car and recreate the wrapper. After printing it out (and running my printer out of black ink) I sprayed it with Dullcoat as a preservative. (BTW, if you do this I would plan on printing out more than one copy, for me mistakes are the norm rather than the exception.) Anyway, it came out pretty good other than I think the tank car I found may have been bigger than my kit because some of the text ended up under the tank bolsters. 
Also before I start I must apologize, I forgot to take a picture of the parts in the box. I have a similar Athearn kit I haven’t assembled yet, between that and the train wreck of a Texaco car I’ve already reviewed that should give you an idea of what the parts look like.
On to the review of the ‘Mantua “Perfection” Tank Car Kit, Complete Dry Kit with Automatic Couplers’. Now, the ‘dry’ part is a bit of an exaggeration as you have to glue the wrapper to the shell but other than that it can be assembled without glue though I don’t recommend it. The automatic couplers are the old hook-and-loop type, completely useless for modern railroading. The box says “All Metal Tank Car Fair Trade Price $2.95”, seems pretty fair to me.
The tube is a piece of sheet metal bent into a cylinder but open at the bottom, with a hole for the dome and eight more little holes for the handrails and platforms. Most pieces of the kit are held in place by bending them in place or with screws. First step is to glue the wrapper to the tank. Then you have to clear the holes. They recommend fishing around gently with a pin but I cut a pin in half and poked through the holes from the inside using a pair of needle nose pliers to hold the pin. Then I drilled out the holes from the outside with the appropriate sized bit and cut out the dome hole with an Exacto.
The handrails are held in place with cotter pins you make out of flat wire (conveniently cut to size) and collars. The ends of the pin go into the hole and are splayed out to hold it in place. The dome is held in place with a long screw and brass rod as spacer, the only way I could get it in was from the bottom of the tube. The tank end caps have a hole in the bottom for a screw and the instructions say there’s a special tap in the kit to thread them but I think the screws and tap were missing. I ended up using 2mm brass machine screws instead.

The rest of the kit is pretty straightforward, the trucks provided have brass wheels and pot metal frames. They don’t roll like modern trucks but seem to track pretty well. There are two screws provided with collars (instead of having pins on the frame) that work perfectly with these trucks. 
The biggest problem I had was with couplers. The ones provided were probably cutting edge way back when but are no good now. There isn’t enough room for normal Kadee housings, so I cut down the end sill and drilled a hole for screws. Then I created my own personal nightmare. You see, I broke my tap on another project (the broken part is forever planted in a tender truck) and so instead of patiently waiting for the hobby shop to open and buying a replacement tap I tried to use a screw to tap the hole instead. It worked on one side (though the screw head is completely buggered) but the screw sheared off in the other hole.
I ended up ruining two drill bits and three grinding wheels trying to remove the broken screw, then in a fit of frustration used a punch to knock out the last little bit. Oddly enough, the hole still holds a screw(!) I had to use the couplers with the low head to get them lined up right but it least they work. Then it was just a coat of black paint and all is right with the world again.
I may have saved some trouble if I’d worked the couplers before I assembled the rest of the kit, but getting the height right is always an issue and usually you can’t figure out coupler height until the car is mostly built.
In spite of all the craziness that went into assembly I recommend this kit if you can find it. I look forward to finding more Mantua’s products in the future. If you don’t know how to use PowerPoint I recommend it, very useful for making decals and cardstock or paper decorated siding.


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## flyboy2610

Nice job, Murv! I've always liked those older smaller tank cars.


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## J.Albert1949

Looks great.
You make it _"look easy"...!_


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## Andreash

Excellent work....cheers


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## Dennis461

*MDC Roundhouse Old Time 2-8-0 HO scale*

MDC Roundhouse Old Time 2-8-0 HO scale.
Cleaned flash off of major parts.
Had to straighten the chassis which had a slight bow. Used heat and gentle pressure.

Starting to find the model is missing some screw holes (during assembly)

No place on tender to attach wire from loco.
And no mention of it in the instructions.
I've already drilled and tapped a hole so I could test run this.
The top of the tender is also missing the headlight and marker light holes.

I will need to disassemble and re-check worm gear alignment and add 'glass' to the cab.

Also, I am trying to determine how to get wires to the non-working headlight for some small LED's. If I can find very thin wire in my junk box, I may run wiring on top/side of boiler.


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## Murv2

If the tender frame is metal the kits I built attach to the drawbar screw.


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## Dennis461

Murv2 said:


> If the tender frame is metal the kits I built attach to the drawbar screw.


Not this particular model. There is no bushing or shouldered screw for the drawbar.


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## Murv2

Your instructions show the electric lead is supposed to go on the forward right side of the tender frame. It looks like the frame is supposed to be metal. Also, is it possible you've got the frame backwards, front to back? Nothing suggests it but that's one possibility. Also, maybe that's not the original tender frame. I really like the color of the engine.


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## Dennis461

Murv2 said:


> Your instructions show the electric lead is supposed to go on the forward right side of the tender frame. It looks like the frame is supposed to be metal. Also, is it possible you've got the frame backwards, front to back? Nothing suggests it but that's one possibility. Also, maybe that's not the original tender frame. I really like the color of the engine.


Zinc frame, one piece with integral large weight shaped to match tender plastic shell, so cannot put it on backwards. Also, rectangular coupler pocket at rear. 

Another problem is the stack. The model is designed to have interchangeable stacks, you can use the funnel, the diamond, or two versions of straight. This is done by having a 'pin' glued into firebox hole, then slip any of the four stacks onto the pin. Problem is , only one stack fits onto the pin, the other three need to be drilled larger.

Boiler color might also be a problem as the detail parts are black plastic, so something is going to have to be painted.

Progress has slowed since I have to kitbash or scratch build a crosshead


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## Murv2

*Gloorcraft Grain Elevator*

I’ve mentioned before how my layout looks like a football field (but without the stripes), and so I’m building buildings between cars and engines to fill it in. The grain elevator is a natural building to have on a flat railroad table, practically every small town in the Great Plains was built around one. I’m still aiming for steam and no automobiles on my layout so a wooden elevator seemed the obvious choice. I found that Campbell and AMB have wood grain elevators but cruising on ebay I found a Gloorcraft kit. My last building was a Campbell kit and I’ve built a Gloorcraft caboose so I thought that would be a good choice. So here is the ‘Gloor Craft Models Midwestern Grain Elevator Kit 417’.
First comment: I can’t believe how big a structure came out of such a small box. I left a switching engine in one of the pictures to give you an idea just how large this thing ends up being, but of course most of it is empty space inside. The slabsided walls are made from chips of bass wood about 2”*5”, pieced together to make the height needed. This leaves noticeable seams (enhanced by using stain instead of paint, see below) but otherwise the box would have to be even bigger. The instructions say this kit was modelled on a real grain elevator located in Bowling Green OH, and boasts it is still in operation. I checked Google Maps and while there is still a grain company there, they are using round steel silos instead of wood so the old elevator was torn down in the last 30 years. Kinda sad in a way.
The kit comes with three 11*17 sheets, one with 1 ½ pages of instructions and four black and white pictures (of the N scale kit) and the other two with blueprint-style drawings complete with drawing numbers, dates (1986) and approved by S.R. Gloor. The building is broken down into five sections (upper and lower elevator, warehouse, large and small lean-to) and wood for each is in a separate bag with a slip of colored paper stapled to it that coincides with the instructions. 
The sides are basswood, roofs are cardboard and ‘tar paper’ appears to be black construction paper (not that I’m complaining). A bag of lead castings and clear plastic sheet for the windows rounds out the kit. Door hardware for the big sliding doors would have been nice. Oh yeah, there’s a bag full of 1/16” and 3/16” strips used in constructing all sections. 
I decided early on that gluing the side pieces edge-on was going to create major problems with alignment and strength so I cut up a piece of cardstock into ½” strips and used it to support the back of the boards. I also made little strips for the window corners. I also put a diagonal piece at the bottom of the elevator, it just seemed prudent to keep it from wobbling out of square.
Windows are an issue here. The instructions are to cut a rectangular hole out of the wall and glue the window into it. This was the same as the caboose and it leaves absolutely no room for mistakes. If your window hole isn’t rectangular, you don’t measure perfectly or the knife wanders at all you end up with a noticeable gap around the edge of the window. Having inset casings on the window castings (like the door does) would solve the problem, even small ones but I guess Mr. Gloor was enough of a craftsman that he didn’t need them. 
The boxes were framed on the inside with 3/16” basswood, which did the job I guess but I would have preferred ¼” for more stability and a better chance of 90ᵒ angles in the corners. It didn’t need to be basswood either, once the building is assembled no one would see it. The buildings were all glued together by the walls which didn’t seem wise to me but once the glue set it didn’t matter. 
The instructions said to stain the boards with Driftwood. I went to the hardware store and got a small can but it doesn’t look like real driftwood to me which is usually grey. Maybe they meant wet driftwood; not an unpleasant color though. I have mixed feelings about staining models like this. The grain pattern on the wood has to be tight enough that it doesn’t extend across individual boards, a larger pattern overwhelms the side and draws attention to the fact that it isn’t a bunch of separate boards (for example, see the knot on the warehouse wall). But if the basswood doesn’t have a larger grain pattern stain gives the wood a more varied appearance than paint does and honestly I haven’t figured out how to make painted wood on a model look like aged paint on a real building; I’ll leave that to the guys who get photographed in the magazines. 
The signs were provided in one of the diagrams, I copied them onto cardstock. I had thoughts of either doing something in color (like the Dekalb Corn logo) or maybe a funny name (what’s a good pun that goes with ‘grain’?) but decided to leave it the way it came. The photos show the kit as it came out of the box, with a base from garage wood. I ordered some fences, wagons, cobbled together an outhouse and plan on putting an open-air workshop in one corner to give the building some character. I’ll take a picture when I’m finished (but don’t expect much, scenery isn’t a natural skill for me).
So that’s the review. It was an interesting kit and I would build more from Gloorcraft if I have the chance. A quick search on the innertube didn’t reveal any current activity so I assume the company isn’t in business anymore but will pick more Gloorcraft kits up if chance avails.


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## Dennis461

Well I managed to glue the air compressors on upside down. I may cut them off and reverse. Trying to hide headlight wires without drilling through the boiler.

CA glue made a mess of the paint. I'm also having trouble matching the color for detail parts and may need to repaint.


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## Murv2

*Silver Streak Combination Caboose*

I swore off Silver Streak after the first caboose turned out to have serious issues with Zamac cancer, but of course then I bought a lot of car kits off epay and didn’t look too closely at them. Thus I ended up with “929-131 Combine Caboose CB&Q, less trucks and couplers”. This is apparently a car railroads could substitute for a regular caboose that lets them take on a few passengers and light freight on lines with less passenger traffic than would warrant a full car. 
Everything I said about the WM bobber is true about this caboose as well. I had to glue one of the ends together, the end platforms were extremely fragile and one of the stacks needed extensive filler because of Zamac cancer. Not all pieces had it though, the cupola, queen posts and one stack were clean castings.
One thing I did like about this car is the truss rods. They are prebent pieces of wire, thick enough to hold up to gentle finger pressure (like when you pick the car up) and the turnbuckles were glued on after the fact, not threaded onto the wire. Simple, but effective. 
Otherwise the pictures tell the story. I repeat my warning about looking in the box before purchasing a Silver Streak kit.


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## Lemonhawk

I really enjoy your reviews of old kits! I know I have a few of those old zmack kits around and probably need to check them out to see if their viable. Keep up the great "reviews"!


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## ebtnut

Those cars were also knows as drover's cabooses. Livestock being shipped via railroad has to be given periodic rest periods where the animals are off-loaded into enclosures for exercise, rest, water, etc. Oftentimes, the animal handlers accompanied the train to handle this work, and rode in these expanded cabooses.


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## Murv2

I finished detailing the base of the grain elevator: The fence was from Monroe Models (nice, but you'll have to trim the corners if you want to cram the poles into 1/8" holes as instructed), the workshop is an old Lifelike commuter shelter (meh), the figures from the Preiser farm set (nice; still have a couple wagons and bunch of farm animals for the eventual cattle yards), the outhouse cobbled together from scrap wood. The dirt is not well done and I put a little too much effort in the workshop which faces the wall and no one will see it. C'est la vie.


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## Andreash

Nice work...cheers


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## Stumpy

Looking good!

I have the same "workshop", but it's destiny is a hay shed.


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## Murv2

*Strombecker Boxcar and Reefer*

I bought these two cars after one look at the boxes. They scream out old age. A quick rout through the internet revealed Strombecker has been around for over a century, but these kits appear to be dated just after WW2. These kits are “Illinois Central Refrigerator Car” and “NYC Pacemaker Boxcar”. The pacemaker car dates these kits to 1946 at the earliest.
Bottom line, these are kid’s toys, not model railroad cars and were even at the time they were produced. The sides are cardboard, the printing cartoony and all details like grab irons, ladders and doors are simply printed on. The “trucks” are blocks of wood with turned wood wheels, metal axles and cardboard covers to hold them together. Interestingly, the couplers are a hook and eyelet screwed to alternate trucks so when you pull them across the floor they stay in line. Most offensive to a modeler is the dreadnought ends which were simply printed on.
There is only one unique feature of these models and that is the roof. The catwalk is part of the same moulding, so you can’t lose or break it. Looks pretty good too, though there is no detail on the roof like ribs.
In the end I cannot recommend these kits for serious railroaders. It’s a shame too, they had a ‘model’ of a Winans Camel, one of my personal unicorns.
But what to do with the kits now that I spent money on them? The answer is of course to spend even more money to make them useable cars. A quick trip to the Tichy website and plastic ends, undercarriage and brake system were headed for my basement. Some trimming and fill were necessary to make the plastic parts fit the typical wooden frame. Two ounces of lead sheet brought the car up to the recommended weight and a good coat of paint rendered the car useable if not particularly attractive. It won’t win any awards but hopefully no one will look too close when it’s in the middle of a string of freight cars.


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## Old_Hobo

I wonder if that's the same Strombecker that produced the slot car sets in the '60's.....?

Had a lot of fun with that "Monza" set!


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## Murv2

Old_Hobo said:


> I wonder if that's the same Strombecker that produced the slot car sets in the '60's.....?
> 
> Had a lot of fun with that "Monza" set!


Yes, yes it is.


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## J.Albert1949

Well, can't really say that you turned the sow's ear into a _silk_ purse (due to the nature of what they gave you in the box), but it still looks "more than good enough" as a result of your handiwork!


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## ebtnut

Strombecker also made similar airplane model kits. IIRC, they were kind of like, "remove all extra wood that doesn't look like an airplane". They had a pretty full line of railroad rolling stock, including a steamer and a diesel model. I'd call the collectible curiosities.


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## Murv2

ebtnut said:


> Strombecker also made similar airplane model kits. IIRC, they were kind of like, "remove all extra wood that doesn't look like an airplane". They had a pretty full line of railroad rolling stock, including a steamer and a diesel model. I'd call the collectible curiosities.


Agreed, but I collect too many things already. Any kit I don't plan on eventually building will be sold. Right now I have 14 in my queue and am trying very hard to keep that number manageable.


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## Murv2

*Old Roundhouse Steam Locomotive*

(Dennis461 has already made some comments about a Roundhouse Consolidation he’s working on, his kit is one generation newer than this one. The biggest difference is plastic; his kit makes generous use of it and mine has none, so separate reviews are in order. I look forward to a full report on the newer kits when he finishes his.)
I really enjoy making steam engine kits, the thrill of having a product of your handiwork that actually moves far outweighs the frustration of trying to make a hundred separate parts all trying to travel different directions function smoothly together. I have several different types of steam engine kits but none from Roundhouse, so when the opportunity came up to buy an Atlantic from Roundhouse, the draw of an engine I didn’t have from a manufacturer I never built was too much.
I checked the auction carefully and it looked like all the parts were there (of course, you can’t count screws in the baggies but they were all there anyway). In fact there was an extra driver, but the rest of the parts looked OK and the box and instructions said Atlantic. So I hit Buy Now and became the proud owner-of a Roundhouse Prairie locomotive with Atlantic instructions and box top. Unfortunately other than the extra driver and different tender from the picture (and why can’t they be different?) there was no other clue visible that it was the wrong engine.
Now I don’t have a Prairie either so the mistake was a matter of timing and not price. I mean, how many sellers would really know the minutia of 50 year old steam locomotive kits? When I contacted the seller and explained I only asked if they had the instructions for the Prairie ‘And by the way, if you did have the Atlantic I’d be happy to pick that up too.’ He did, complete with a Prairie box top and instructions. So now I have two engines in my to-do pile. Awesome! 
Here is the review for “Roundhouse Productions HO Prairie 6L1 2-6-2 Complete Kit”. The box still had a price tag of $32.50 and 12/71 date from ‘JMC’ whatever retailer that was. This kit mentions the Scott Special, but the Santa Fe Prairies involved all had their drive rods hooked to the middle driver and this one has it on the last driver. Maybe Roundhouse shortened a Mikado for this kit? The drivers are larger than even those on the Mantua Pacific that pulls my B&O passenger train, and certainly larger than those I found on the internet. In fact the whole drive train from cylinder to wheels looks like it is from a heavyweight road engine.
Instructions are two sides of a 10*14 sheet, step-by-step, well-written and illustrated except there’s no mention of how to hook up the electrics.
Unsurprisingly for kits without plastic or wood all the parts of this engine are held either by screws or force (jamming parts into holes), though glue is an option. The screws are all self-threading (except a couple). The motor is from Japan and the drive tires brass as are several of the valve gear pieces. 
Most of the bigger pieces are made from pot metal, most likely Zamac and the cab exhibited crazing and brittleness, the screw hole shattered when I tried to thread it with the screw and part of an awning broke off. The rest of the metal did not, which is good because the drive rods are made of it which is kind of a surprise, though maybe they are heavy enough they won’t wear? Time will tell.
Anyway, the drive rods require some careful fitting and testing to ensure there is no binding, which is almost guaranteed due to the imperfect nature of casted metal. I’m still trying to work out a jink in there somewhere. The Walschearts valve gear is held together mainly with teeny tiny brass rivets guaranteed to give you fits and at least one will end up on the floor. Each side has a dozen parts and mine doesn’t look quite right but it’s complicated and looks neat when the engine moves. 
The tender is weird: there is no floor, the trucks are held in place with a post that comes down from the top of the tender. The whole thing is one piece and weighs a whopping 9 ounces, but that doesn’t stop the rear truck from derailing all the time (turns out one of the wheels was too wide, fixed). Also, the trucks are free to rotate 360 degrees, they shouldn’t be able to because they are insulated on one side for power purposes. I glued a small chunk of wood to one side of each post, sticking up far enough to interrupt the truck rotation so they don’t end up shorting out the track. The instructions didn’t mention how to connect the motor to the tender but there is a screw post in it that I assume is for the wire. 
The boiler has a bunch of detail molded to it already and there are only a few pieces under the catwalks and the handrails that must be added. Most of them don’t fit and will need either glue or forcing ‘When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.’ The jewel for the headlight was missing (I know I have some spares, just a matter of where they are…). Nicely, the back of the boiler has plenty of detail so if you wanted to finish the cab it would be possible. Someday I’m going to put engineers in all my engines.
This engine is complicated and each step in the assembly builds on the last one. That means, when you get the whole thing put together you are loath to take it apart again. That means if the engine jinks when it runs (in this case badly enough to derail it) you have to take it back down to parade rest to figure out what is wrong. I didn’t want to and sat on it for a week, hoping it would go away on its own which of course it didn’t. Good news is that at this stage when you look at it it looks like an engine and not an agglomeration of stray parts. Small compensation for the inevitable string of “before I can take this off I have to take that off…” resulting in entire disassembly.
I put the engine back together a second time and it still has some issues related to getting the gear right. I’m not so proud I can’t admit that I don’t have the craftsman gene and maybe the drivers just need a little more work, but I also wonder if the drive wheels are all aligned properly with 90ᵒ offsets?
So now it’s completely assembled and the jink will take time to figure out (last engine that jinked took 40 years to smooth), so I’m going to let it sit a bit while I think about it. I have to admit, the engine looks pretty sharp. I am also surprised at how big it is, I was expecting a switcher but this is definitely a road engine. Bottom line, I’ll buy more Roundhouse kits when the time is right. They have a Shay…


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## Murv2

*Unreview of Ideal Models Reefer*

I'd hoped I found another obscure old-time car company to review, unfortunately the kit is missing what is probably the most important part, the paper cover that has the sides and ends printed on it. What's more, the box says it is a 36' reefer and the kit looks like a 40' boxcar, as do the instructions. So I'm going to hold off on a proper review until I get ahold of a kit that is basically intact. I ended up buying cardboard sides off Ebay and put the car together but it isn't a proper Ideal kit.


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## ebtnut

I once built an Ideal crane car kit that I picked up at some show or auction a lifetime ago. It was NOT an easy build. The body, roof, and sides of the crane boom were all covered with the printed cardboard, and none of it really fit well. I might still have it buried in a shoebox somewhere. Not one of my better efforts.


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## Murv2

*Varney Gondola*

Varney is almost a name of legend to model railroaders at this point. One of the first HO model train companies, the company flourished from 1936 to 1970, when the company was folded into Life-like although Gordon Varney retired in 1960. Varney’s equipment had a reputation for high quality, so I was excited to try an early Varney kit.
I actually have three Varney freight cars in my to-do box but one is incomplete so I selected “Giant Gondola G-10 Virginian Ry.” for my first kit (to be honest, the Milwaukee Olympian boxcar looked more interesting but this one was higher in the pile). This car is 10 feet longer and two feet higher than a typical gondola, though ‘giant’ may be pushing the superlatives. Naturally, the kit is missing the directions but thanks to hoseeker.com I was able to find Varney instructions for a 1941 gondola and although there were several differences it made the kit workable. BTW, there was a “Packed by” slip, dated 1946 and stamped with the number 17 that puts a distinct date on the kit.
This kit has a wood floor 1/8” thick with cardboard sides, ends and center flange. The cardboard is embossed with a great deal of detail, including rivets and all the stenciling provided. The paint was a little brittle so I had to touch up all the bends and scratches. The first step is to bend the cardboard to double its thickness and provide a black interior, but the bending process didn’t work well for this kit as there is an inlet embossed along the top rim of the car and the cardboard bent along that instead of the proper line, so I cut the inside off and glued it instead. I also added some angle iron along the top of the car to hide the seams between the pieces of cardboard.
The car went together easily, but careful fitting of the cardboard and trimming the base were necessary. Trucks provided had a brass bracket screwed to two cast frames and brass wheels (the screws are hard to get to). Plastic brake parts and ends were crude by today’s standards. Oddly enough, Kadee number five couplers were the perfect height without shimming. I had to cut the coupler pockets off the end sills to make room. Grab irons were missing but fortunately I had spares from other kits, as well as ladders. Steps had to be made from wire.
This kit was about three ounces too light, and I need to make a load for it but it came together nicely. Something about it though looks crude when compared to modern kits. Can’t make my mind up whether I like it or not, maybe the next Varney kit will help make up my mind. It really is large compared to a normal gondola.


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## ebtnut

Those VGN cars were sometimes referred to as "Battleship Gons" because they were so much larger than conventional gons. They were used to haul coal to the VGN's coal piers in Norfolk. The car-dumpers turned the cars over to dump, so the road didn't need a lot of conventional hoppers. The model you have lacks some of side detail and looks to sit too high on the trucks. Varney went to cast plastic kits in the early '50's. They made a number of nice (for the period) loco kits -mostly cast Zamac and brass parts. Some at least came in two styles - conventional and Super. The Super kits had sprung drivers. Their Consolidation kit is very close to the Reading's I-10 heavy Consols. They later dropped those kits and replaced them with the Old Lady 2-8-0 and Casey Jones 4-6-0, advertised as "screwdriver assembly" kits. They were pretty basic, using the same boiler/cab casting, cylinder block, drivers, and tender. They actually ran pretty well for the period, and you could dress them up a bit with Cal-Scale or Kemtron details.


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## Lemonhawk

I think I built an "Old Lady" back in the early 60's. I even think it traveled with me for several moves, but so far its eluded me as to its location. I had a Dockside, and Athearn GP7? I know both were some how destroyed, but I'm sure the "Old Lady" is around somewhere!


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## Murv2

ebtnut said:


> Those VGN cars were sometimes referred to as "Battleship Gons" because they were so much larger than conventional gons. They were used to haul coal to the VGN's coal piers in Norfolk. The car-dumpers turned the cars over to dump, so the road didn't need a lot of conventional hoppers. The model you have lacks some of side detail and looks to sit too high on the trucks. Varney went to cast plastic kits in the early '50's. They made a number of nice (for the period) loco kits -mostly cast Zamac and brass parts. Some at least came in two styles - conventional and Super. The Super kits had sprung drivers. Their Consolidation kit is very close to the Reading's I-10 heavy Consols. They later dropped those kits and replaced them with the Old Lady 2-8-0 and Casey Jones 4-6-0, advertised as "screwdriver assembly" kits. They were pretty basic, using the same boiler/cab casting, cylinder block, drivers, and tender. They actually ran pretty well for the period, and you could dress them up a bit with Cal-Scale or Kemtron details.


Thanks for the history lesson, I planned on filling it with gravel but coal is better. If I get a chance at a Varney engine I’ll take it.


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## Stumpy

Love seeing the builds of the older kits.

The VGN is an interesting story. For all intents and purposes, a one-use RY, it's construction funded almost entirely by one man, Henry Rogers. 

I'd never heard of the VGN until about 6 months ago, and hadn't heard of these "battleship gons" until now. But it's no surprise because, as Wikipedia says...



> It was well known for operating the largest and best equipment, and could afford to. It became nicknamed "the richest little railroad in the world."


Looks like the prototypes had 3-axle trucks, which may be why ebtnut says the model appears to sit too high on the trucks.

https://www.ttnut.com/battleship-gondolas-t1024.html


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## Murv2

Finished the second Strombecker car, this one an Illinois Central Reefer. While my opinion of Strombecker doesn't change, I'm warming to the Tichy parts and will sooner or later try a kit from them.


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## Murv2

*Northeastern Scale Models Container Car*

Northeastern Scale Lumber has been around since 1946 and still exists. I suspect this is the same company that put out this kit because it contains a great deal of engineered wood. Anyway, I bought this car in with a lot of old kits and initially hadn’t planned on building it, thinking container cars were strictly post-diesel inventions. But the decals for the kit give it a 1921 build date and the containers don’t look anything like modern containers. A little routing around the Innertrode showed that the New York Central offered this service between Chicago and New York City. There’s even a picture of a container being loaded onto a Ford truck from the car via crane. 
At first blush this kit is a lot like Ambroid kits: A grunch of little slivers of wood and an instruction sheet that consists of diagrams and “build the model like the pictures.” Where this kit differs is the complexity of many of the parts. For example, the tombstone-shaped container ends come with the top already curved and with the clapboard sides cut in. The bolsters too are preshaped and partially cut apart. 
The instructions consist of a total of seven sentences, the first being “Start construction by gluing the triangular section side pieces to the sub floor.” This didn’t make sense to me because in order to do all the work on the underside you have to lie the car on its top, and the triangular pieces would get their tops broken off, plus you were stressing the subfloor along the grain, making it more likely you crack it. Instead I went ahead and installed all the underside detail then went to work on the top. 
The truss system used some bendable wire (but not enough) and cotter pins for the queen posts. The cotter pins were an interesting choice but the holes were too large. Several parts of the brake system were missing but the junk drawer had extras. BTW, don’t use any “spare” cotter pins to install the decoupling levers, there aren’t any spares. Don’t ask how I know (the levers are a nice touch though).
Like most flat cars there’s really nowhere to hide the 2.5 ounces needed to properly weight the car, so I hid lead sheet in the containers. I don’t plan on removing them so the car won’t be running empty. Sooner or later I’ll have to come up with a better solution for wood flatcar kits.
The containers are perhaps the most interesting part of this kit, but I have to warn you, if you build them to the dimensions of the strap diagram they may not fit in the car. Mine ended up being too long and I had to take the separators out of the car to make them fit. Otherwise the straps are the most complicated part by far, but with patience and a lot of cutting on the diagram you can make them look pretty good. They certainly add to the car visually.
Also, I found out when assembling the containers I’d used the wrong-sized slats for the floor of the car. Oh well, hopefully no one will look too closely… (Last comment on the containers, making four of them is boring. I should have made two before the car then two after, but then I’d need to know how much to weight them and blah blah blah) The decals were too thick to sink into the boards and stand out, an issue I still haven’t resolved. Final comment, this is an excellent kit for an advanced builder and I look forward to more Northeastern kits if the opportunity avails. Next up, a box cab diesel.


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## ebtnut

It's a lot like Ambroid kits because Northeastern once WAS Ambroid. This kit is a re-release of a "One of 5,000" kit. Ambroid had a series of these limited run kits back in the late 50's/early 60's. They included this kit, a U.S. Navy helium tank car, a pickle tank car, an N&W early coal hopper, and others. Incidentally, you can improve the decals some in the following manner. Apply as normal with decal-set and let dry well. Take a really sharp blade and cut through the decals along the scribed wood grooves, then re-apply the decal-set. Let dry and apply decal-set again. That does help them blend into the siding better.


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## Murv2

ebtnut said:


> It's a lot like Ambroid kits because Northeastern once WAS Ambroid. This kit is a re-release of a "One of 5,000" kit. Ambroid had a series of these limited run kits back in the late 50's/early 60's. They included this kit, a U.S. Navy helium tank car, a pickle tank car, an N&W early coal hopper, and others. Incidentally, you can improve the decals some in the following manner. Apply as normal with decal-set and let dry well. Take a really sharp blade and cut through the decals along the scribed wood grooves, then re-apply the decal-set. Let dry and apply decal-set again. That does help them blend into the siding better.


Thanks, I’ll try that.


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## Murv2

*Shapeways/Bachmann Boxcab Diesel*

I am not fond of diesel engines, they simply don’t have any moving parts like steam locomotives do. I have to admit though that my best runner is a diesel, and I have a certain fondness for boxcab diesels. They have a vintage look that fits well into a steam layout (though no automobiles on mine makes even them slightly out of place). 
Roundhouse has a boxcab diesel but it isn’t in kit form, so when I found out there was a boxcab conversion kit 3D printed on Shapeways.com I thought that would be a fun thing to do. The engine advertised was painted in Central Railroad of New Jersey colors but I prefer the B&O so a little research showed that they had a similar model so that sealed the deal for me. The B&O has steel sides and the model has wood, but otherwise they look close.
I picked up a Bachmann GE 44 tonner from Epay and ordered the conversion from Shapeways. First thing you have to do is clean off all the wax. The 3D printing process consists of printing thin layers of the object one at a time, and in between passes something has to hold it together, this wax ends up coating the whole piece and so must be cleaned off. Shapeways has excellent instructions on how to clean it off, but I just use Isopropyl alcohol then scrape off the big chunks remaining. It’s not perfect and to be honest I would research a proper cleaner but the alcohol is always within arm’s reach for me and oil-based paint and Walther’s Goo cut through the wax pretty well.
The conversion is a single piece for the sides and ends plus roof, cooling pipes and a few other details separate. You have to drill out the indents for grab irons and make them yourself but it isn’t too great a burden. Construction is extremely simple, just glue the roof then other bits on and paint after the glue sets. 
The shell simply replaces the old shell, to the point where you use the same screw holes. I used a tap on the Shapeways piece to make sure the screw went in right. The Bachmann engine has head lights and the boxcab has a fixture (hole) where the headlight is, but the entire front of the engine glows when it is running so I’m going to have to take it apart and paint the inside black some time. 
Anyway, a neat project


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## Murv2

*Unreview of Red Box Gondola*

Here's another kit that unfortunately was missing the instructions. What's more, the original owner used the box to store whatever odds and ends he wanted to save for some reason. There were parts to a passenger car and a ship anchor in there. Anyway, I couldn't find instructions on the web but found a line drawing of the 65' gondola from a catalog, including showing how the pipes were stowed. They are were made from paper tubes. I put it together but will have to buy another Red Box kit, hopefully with instructions. Still have to glue down the load but for now moving on to something with instructions.


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## Murv2

*Ambroid Hopper Car*

Ambroid seems to make the most challenging kits. This one wasn’t the most difficult built so far but it wasn’t too easy either. Everything I’ve already written about Ambroid (and Northeastern) kits in the past applies here. Two comments on this specific kit “H-17 Erie-Susquehanna 50 ton 3 bay hopper”: first this kit uses lead castings of Z channels for the side ribs. These castings are nice, but they are all the same length and you have to abut two or three together to make the horizontal ribs, then either you have a gap (like I do) or fill in the gap and (carefully) sand it smooth, without ruining any rivets. Second, all the grab irons (and there are a lot) have to be made by hand. I made a crude jig out of a piece of wood but the irons still aren’t consistent and let’s just say that some came out better than others. 
The decals were missing the film over the top but thanks to some cogent advice from the General Discussion forum I was able to rescue them and now have no use for the decals I ordered when I first found out. I’m sure sooner or later I’ll end up with another hopper to decal. Anyway, another kit that is more for serious modelers than casual builders but a fun project.


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## Murv2

*Marker Lights Boxcar*

The gimmick in this kit is the box, which has a window on top that the actual sides of the car peek through (too bad you have to damage the box to get the sides out). Not sure when the kit was built but the company, Marker Lights Models resided at 5710 ½ Diversey in Chicago at the time. I checked it out on Google Maps, there’s a night club and accountant’s office there now.
This is the “USRA Boxcar”, with no serial number on the box or instructions, though there was a price tag of $4.83 hand written on the side. I guess they expected that you’d look in the window to know which one it is. 
This is one of those kits that has painted sides and unpainted everything else. The bottom is about the most complicated for a boxcar I’ve ever seen. Rather than a 1/8” board there are two thick stubs at the ends and a thin floor across the center, with ‘C’ channel frame underneath. In fact, the kit has angles, ‘C’ channels, ‘U’ channels, hat sections, ‘I’ beams and even ‘Z’ channels, all from cut basswood. I recommend you use a sharp knife, these pieces are all fairly fragile, especially the I beams. The bolsters are cut across the grain and both split when I drilled out the screw holes for the trucks.
The doors are made of the same wood the sides are made of (a little thin) and the dreadnought ends are cast lead. The only plastic parts were the ladders on the ends and the brake parts, but I replaced the ladders with metal as they broke when I tried to install them. 20 grab irons, all which must be installed through holes drilled one at a time.
I did something different with the couplers, instead of cutting off the bottom of the coupler pocket hole on the ends I installed long couplers through the pocket holes and into shortened Kadee boxes. Hopefully they’ll work as well as normal installs. It just seems a shame to remove good metal.
The car was stenciled for the C.C.C. & St. L., a railroad I’d never heard of before now. The Stencils are nice enough to read. The car is Tuscan red rather than Boxcar red, but with colors being as erratic as they are you’ll probably have to just look for something similar to match. 
Anyway, a fun build and about the most complicated boxcar with finished sides I’ve made so far. I do recommend these models if you can find them.


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## Murv2

*Morse Productions Mine*

I’m trying to add buildings to my layout to make it look like less of a football field, and after finishing a grain elevator I wanted a mine next. I have some restrictions that made shopping for a kit a little harder, namely: not plastic, steam era, on a flat. Not plastic because I can’t seem to get it to look natural after painting, and a flat so I can build it as a moveable diorama. Unfortunately there are very few kits that meet all these requirements. 
I finally decided on the “Kit #H-9205- ‘HO’ Scale Vicki Jo Mine” by Morse Productions. This building is based on a bunch of mines the designer had family photos of, and is designed for places where the weather dictates all the equipment be under cover in the winter time. That means the shaft derrick most people recognize as a mine is inside a building.
This kit is made out of cardboard and paper with the siding printed on it. It isn’t just paper though, it is photo-quality paper guaranteed not to fade or discolor in a million years. The cardboard is the non-corrugated type, the instructions call it chipboard. The building is supported by 1/8” basswood strips that basically are glued in all the angles where the cardboards pieces meet. The only other piece is a blackened brass rod for the smoke stack. There are a fair few spare windows, doors and other handy pieces (probably to fill out the paper) for customizing.
The instructions are…comprehensive. 18 pages with step-by-step text instructions, pictures, diagrams, recommendations, tool listing etc. After so many kits consisting of simple line drawings and a few lines of text followed by “Make it look like the diagram” this was a refreshing change. They talk a great deal about using a sharp knife and replacing the blade regularly, I second that.
Naturally I screwed up on the first step, which is to glue the paper to the cardboard. You use spray-on adhesive to join the paper to the cardboard which means the paper is face down and you don’t see the clearly-marked half-sheet that isn’t supposed to be backed by cardboard intended to give some texture to the window and door frames. After hitting myself in the forehead and saying “D’Oh!” I copied the sheet onto cardstock with a color printer and hopefully no one will notice until the cardstock starts fading in 20 years.
The building is three basic parts: shaft house, boiler room and office (and separate privy). In each case you glue the ends to the sides then reinforce all the edges with bass wood, add cardstock window frames and move on to the next piece. After the sides are all assembled into one building the roofs go on then the stack and you are finished! The only part that required careful fitting was the little garret in the roof. That roof needed sanding and the triangular sides trimmed a bit to make it fit. Nice that painting isn’t required other than to hide the cardboard (the color they recommend is perfect).
One issue I have is that there is no way to move the ore into a coal car. The instructions say the ore cars would leave through the office door, but that won’t work if the mine is running on a flat. I ordered a lifelike coal tipple, and plan on making a covered way that would hide a conveyer leading from the end of the building to the tipple, though I haven’t fully realized the plan for that yet. I might put the building on a slight rise, just enough to make HON30 track run level to the tipple…
Also, I need to figure out how to get the track to the tipple. I think I have enough room for a turnaround, which would be nice because there is no way currently to turn trains around but means more wiring nightmares. And it would be 18” radius, a tight turn for any but the coal train. I'll put up another picture when I have it permanently settled.
An interesting kit, one I would recommend. The two-hole outhouse is a bonus. They have a similar kit (well, the same kit) in a different color and name. The company is still in business.


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## EdC

Very nice looking mine building. 

Ed


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## Lemonhawk

Not bad at all! And a pleasant surprise on the kit instructions! Looks like its nice and solid, easy to move around to find the best place. Even the roof looks good! And No painting!!!! :appl:


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## J.Albert1949

Looks great, Murv!


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## Murv2

*Update: Battleship Gondola*

I looted a pair of six-wheel trucks from a Bachmann 60' tank car. Cut off couplers, mounting studs and endbraces; drill hole between the front axles, install steel wheels, cut down center sill on car, use coupler pocket as spacer and it rolls great now. Hopefully that finishes the car. (Still have to test it across #4 switches...)


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## Murv2

*Life-Like Buildings*

My hometown has a couple of model train shops that are basically Lionel shops. The front room is full of collectible, old or ancient O gauge three-rail Lionel trains. Sometimes I wonder if the whole purpose of the shop is to show off the owner’s Lionel collection. The back room though is dedicated to selling second-hand stuff in different gauges acquired by various means (yard and garage sales, estate liquidations, walk-ins etc.). 
You walk in there and your first impression is “they actually sell this junk?” But when you start rifling through it comments float into your head like “That’s neat!”, “Who made that?”, “Is that scratchbuilt?” or my favorite “My dad had one of those!” You inevitably end up buying a bunch of stuff you didn’t know you needed and for less than you thought it should cost.
Anyway, after a foray into the train shop I came home with a sealed plastic bag containing “Life-Like Trackside Shanties Item number 1348”. The box it should have come in was missing. I put it on my work table and promptly forgot about them until a few months later when I was “cleaning” the table (putting stuff away while looking for something underneath the pile) and assembled them while waiting for glue or paint to dry on other projects.
The buildings are a Line Shack, Switchman’s Shanty and Whistle Stop. They are basic plastic slabs glued together at 90ᵒ angles in the corners on a base and roofs (sorry, no before pics). The roof on the stop is tin, the rest shingles. The plastic is about the most garish shade of red-brown I’ve seen, though the whistle stop is colored "Rotten Lemon Yellow", not an improvement. The set comes with a bunch of detritus you’d expect to see lying around these places (I didn’t put that stuff down yet).
Anyway, the instructions are one sheet, both sides and as simple as the structures. The buildings are easy to assemble and paint up nicely. I converted the whistle stop to a blacksmith but I don’t have any plans for rest other than sticking them in forgotten corners of the layout until I execute my “master plan for scenery” (basically a series of dioramas joined by disposable ground cover sheets). If you are looking for something similar these will do the trick.


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## Murv2

*Varney Box Car*

My first effort to review a Varney car was derailed because the kit was missing the instructions. This kit ‘VARNEY BOX CAR B-26 Milwaukee- “Olympian”’ came complete with everything expected except the ladders and included trucks (which were in better nick than the gondola kit, these actually roll). 
The instructions are two sides of a standard piece of paper, generic for all Varney boxcars. There is about half text, half drawings in there and both the text and drawings are easy to understand and thorough.
As with most old boxcars this one starts with a wood frame roof, ends and bottom. Unlike other kits this one is completely clad in embossed, printed cardstock sheathing, even the doors. The dreadnought ends, door slides and roof ribs all come stamped into the cardstock (my kit included separate brass roof ribs as well, useful for future projects). The printing has “Copyright 1941” outside the lines which puts a date on the kit. Printing also includes all the expected side detail and the vast majority of it is legible. There are thin cardboard chunks to put under the sides and give them some support. The catwalk is aluminum, an odd choice but not an issue. Several details are provided in plastic; they are crude, incomplete and chunky, but probably cutting edge technology for 1941.
I cut out all the printed pieces except the roof (the edges are embossed into the stock) and that turned out to be a mistake as there was no overlap provided between the ends and sides. I put a 1/16”square strip of wood in the corners to fill it in, but it would have been better to fit the ends, then cut the sides out to actual length. I did that for the roof with an eye towards folding down the edge but didn’t get the part folded over the top of the car sides to sit down entirely, not pretty but I’m not sure what I could have done differently. 
Underside detail is sparse, not that anyone is going to see it anyway. Grabirons and ladder steps were folded out of gardening wire (as given in the instructions) and came out pretty crude (my fault, not the kit’s). Some advice: First, measure the catwalk twice, cut once. That way you don’t end up with a two-piece catwalk with one piece exactly 1” long. Second, if you use rubber bands when gluing put a chunk of fitted wood across the bottom of the car so the bottoms of the sides don’t fold over by the force of the rubber band. 
Now my final comment: The cardstock pieces of this car are very fragile. The printing is brittle and just rattling around in the box rubbed off some of the ink, leaving white streaks everywhere especially the high points of the embossing. With black cars it is easy to paint over the scars but this shade of brown is not easy to match and the white is too endemic to bother trying to cover it everywhere. I consider this issue to be so severe that I intend to avoid Varney cardstock cars in the future. I expect that when made these cars were the height of technology and the modelling art but time hasn’t been generous to this mode of construction.


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## LateStarter

*MDC kit*_
(with some substitute parts)._

This car has been pictured in some of my other posts, but without any particulars.

MDC kits were generally very good. Wood parts are well scribed and nicely detailed. Plastic rivet-detail is outstanding.
But I did substitute some items for the ones supplied...
For instance, Walthers _Caboose Detail_ parts (like wire grabs & handrails) were formed much better than the ones that came with the kit. Trussrod turnbuckles & queenposts from GrandtLine and Tichy.
Brakewheels are Kadee.
It's been lightly weathered with 'dust', but the bright lighting conceals it.
The trucks are tuned Tichy's with InterMountain wheelsets.
Kadee couplers.


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## Murv2

*Detail Associates Covered Hopper*

A friend who knew I started railroading again mentioned that a local shop was liquidating a huge estate and I went over to check it out. The estate apparently belonged to a collector rather than a railroader because all the equipment looked like it had never been removed from the boxes. Most appeared to be premade cars from the 80’s and since I want to build everything I wasn’t particularly interested, but I did find one car that was a kit although still in plastic. So here is “ACF 2970 Covered Hopper #245 Northern Pacific” By Detail Associates. 
According to the (very thorough and well-illustrated) instructions this kit was first offered in the 70’s by a company called Ramax. Detail Associates updated the basic kit and re-released it. The kit consists of several plastic sprues with top, bottom, sides and ends and all the extra riff raff that is hung on the body. Metal grab irons and brake piping are included, along with a really nice bent piece of wire that is supposed to be the coupler lift bar. The kit comes painted and includes instructions on how to convert Floquil (unfortunately) paints to the color used. There is a separate page explaining how to customize the kit for Northern Pacific as well as a sheet of decals.
First, I was impressed with how thick the plastic is for the body. I believe it is thicker than premade kits and I doubt it will ever break. The end frames and ladders are much more fragile and kept coming unglued because there are so few attachment points. Also, I am not sure I got the ends and sides properly attached, the ladders didn’t reach the frame. Only one other comment, there were two little plastic dots on the coupler caps that had to be removed in order for the couplers to swivel. The steps are very thin plastic and I expect they’ll break off quickly if I ride the car hard.
So an interesting kit, that unfortunately doesn’t fit under the chute on the grain elevator. Not sure what to do about that…


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## Lemonhawk

Seems like a rather strange short covered hopper! Wonder what it usually carried, something really heavy?


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## J.Albert1949

I don't think those center-flow hoppers were intended for grain loading.

Plastic pellets, perhaps...?


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## Murv2

*Roundhouse Cattle Car*

Before the advent of plastic you really only had a few choices for building materials: wood, tin, casting metal or cardboard. In the beginning Roundhouse chose to build out of casting metal (though the name Model Diecasting Corporation is kind of a giveaway). There are several different casting alloys used whose composition affects detail, strength, flexibility, durability etc. Not sure what Roundhouse used for their casting alloy but all the products I’ve built from Roundhouse have had good detail, strength and durability (except the cab on the Prairie with zamac rot, it stands out as the exception). 
So here we have “S-105 201850 $1.65 HO 40’ Stock Car New York Central without Trucks”. The first surprise was that there were two complete kits in the box. I doubt it came with two as there is no advertising on the box, more likely a previous owner combined the two kits to save shelf space. All the parts except the truck sockets are metal in this kit. The sides are painted and lettered and include separate plates for the railroad, so the kit is generic except the plates. I’m going to make new plates for the second car for a different RR so I don’t have two with the same number.
The kit itself comes in a bunch of separate little envelopes with the different parts. The sides have an interesting dark grey coloration on the inside, I suspect the result of “Roundhouse metal primer…as it both cleanses and oxidizes the surface for best adherence.” Anyway, there is a great deal of flash on the metal including the painted parts which becomes problematic since Roundhouse Model Railroad Paint is no longer available. I used my usual MO, going to the craft store with a sample and tried to match the paint color. I got a little light but it will have to do.
If scraping flash isn’t your hobby these cars aren’t for you, there’s simply too much. Also, there are a bunch of round molding artifacts on the bottom plate but that shouldn’t worry you unless you plan on displaying the car atop a mirror. OTOH there’s a great deal of detail cast onto the parts, for example all the ladders and grab irons are already there, plus tons of bolt and nail heads. 
The instructions are comprehensive and easy to follow, my kit had two extra sheets, one to show placement of the company boards and the other how to install the horn hook couplers included. The coupler pockets are too narrow for Kadee so unless you can get ahold of #4’s you may have to grind it off and install normal Kadee pockets. 
The most difficult part is final assembly, there are eight separate pieces to hold all together in place while you screw in four screws. I used a rubber band but still had to fuss to line everything up.
So there you have it, a neat kit, fun to build and properly weighted right out of the box.
(Update: I forgot to check coupler height, these are way too high, gonna have to grind off the coupler pockets and install #22's anyway.)


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## Cab1

Good looking Roundhouse Cattle Car. You did a great job. I've never build any kind of rolling stock from a kit myself, but from the pictures I've seen of the finished product they seem well worth the effort. It may be just me, but they seem to capture the look and vibes of the kind of equipment that would be common sight on much older railroads that most folks don't judiciously choose to model. The mid 60's - early 70's or there about seems to be the sweet spot. That way you can run steamers and early diesels together, if that's important to a particular model railroader. It's amazing how just a sprinkling of a few example of older equipment can add a lot of interest to a layout.


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## Lemonhawk

Nice job cleaning up all the metal flashing! I noticed that the roofs have what looks like holes for attaching ribs - were they missing or unusable? I did an old Round House tank car that had a metal chassis, my first paint job with an air brush. I was happy with how well the rivet detail showed after painting. Definitely liked the airbrush for that!


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## Murv2

Lemonhawk said:


> Nice job cleaning up all the metal flashing! I noticed that the roofs have what looks like holes for attaching ribs - were they missing or unusable? I did an old Round House tank car that had a metal chassis, my first paint job with an air brush. I was happy with how well the rivet detail showed after painting. Definitely liked the airbrush for that!


Those are nail or bolt heads, they stick up not down. I have an old Athearn tank car in the to-do pile, unfortunately without instructions.


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## Murv2

*Ideal Boxcar*

My first attempt to evaluate an Ideal kit was stymied by the car missing its sides. This time however I got a complete kit: “Ideal Models HO Gauge FB-14 Pere Marquette 42’ Box Car”. Ideal Aeroplane and Supply Company was founded in 1911 and first made model airplanes (as the name implies). I couldn’t find a date when they started making railroad equipment but there were 1950’s era catalogs in HO Seeker and it looks like Ideal built HO buildings as early as 1939. The instructions were good for four different boxcars, with decent full-size drawings and short but to the point guidance.
This kit is a typical boxcar from the wood-and-cardstock era. With a wood frame (top, bottom and ends), thin wood sides (actually, they looks like Mahogany to my untrained eye) and embossed-and-printed cardstock sheets to cover all surfaces but the bottom. Oddly, the bottom wood was prepainted. Castings were soft casting metal and ladders were pressed sheet metal brass. It came with soft lead trucks, they roll well enough so we’ll see if they are still good.
Other comments: First, I was worried about the cardstock after the Varney car and this one doesn’t appear quite as fragile. It might be because the embossing isn’t as deep or complex as the other manufacturer, and I think the cardstock was better cared for in the box (wrapped in tissue paper). Second, the door channels and latch were not included in the kit. They included all kinds of other stuff, not sure why not that. I ended up raiding the scrap bin to add them. Third, the sides include some chalked-on comments which I think is a nice touch. 
Overall I am happy with this kit. Were I to build another one I’d include the piping on the bottom. I’m still not sold on cardstock-clad cars and will avoid them in the future. They just feel too fragile.


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## Murv2

*E. &B. Valley Railroad Co. Passenger Car*

(Author’s note: I built this kit while taking a break midway through building the Bowser Challenger kit. You need a break halfway through that kit! I’m taking plenty of pictures and will probably put it in a separate post.)
I attended my first train show last month and all I can say is Holy Cow! You could get just about anything there. The place was packed with middle-aged fat men (just like gun shows) and large numbers of fathers with their kids (not so common at gun shows). So I joined the throng and started looking. 
Already having six months’ worth of projects and too many engines I determined not to buy anything but took along a bit of money ‘just in case’. I had a list of esoteric parts I needed but sorting through the boxes of random stuff would have taken hours just to save a couple bucks from buying online. Then I found the guy who had boxes full of wood railroad car kits from companies I’d never heard of and had to buy a few. Then I found the subject kit on another guys’ table and for 10 dollars I couldn’t pass it up. 
My other comments about the train show are that the display layouts were awesome, maybe when I retire I’ll join a club and build a module. The other thing is I get sensory overload easily (like, halfway through the grocery store or as soon as I walk into a loud bar) and so didn’t enjoy the second half of the show as much as the first half.
E. & B. Valley Railroad Company was apparently a husband/wife team who later morphed into Robin’s Rails. HOSeeker has a 1983 catalog from them with this car listed in various road names. This model is the “Series 1700 Pullman Standard Lightweight Coach.” Mine is “Special Limited Run Carstens #7 Newton #205-0707.” The instructions list five different railroads but this one is a special commemorative car for the Railroad Model Craftsman, “Celebrating 100 Years of Model Electric Trains”. 
This kit is a bunch of plastic sprues with the pieces of the car on them. The car is painted in a special scheme that no doubt, goes with absolutely no railroad in existence. Seriously, mustard yellow and orange? The instructions are four pages with a one page introduction (could have been better used) and three pages of written instructions, photos and charts. Unfortunately the diagrams of the underside and roof detail are too small, otherwise the instructions are well-written and comprehensive, even a bit snarky at times which makes them more fun.
I was excited to have trucks to build in this kit, odd because I’ve built trucks before. Unfortunately these were extremely flimsy and easy to build cockeyed, resulting in all the wheels not sitting on the ground at the same time. Also, you were expected to adjust the coupler height by bending the frame, naturally I broke the first one and had to reinforce both with plastic strips. Overall I’d say the trucks are the weakest part of this kit. Oh yeah, as an 85’ car this one doesn’t like number 4 switches very much.
The parts to this kit are well-made, with a lot of detail on them that older wood and cardstock kits seem to hint at, like every single rivet ever attached to a passenger car. One odd thing I noticed is that the sides and ends are two different colors of plastic. It wouldn’t matter except the paint they used is a different tint based on what color the plastic is behind it.
While there was some flash it wasn’t overwhelming. The roof could have warranted a better or larger illustration but it was made considerably easy when I found pins under the vents, then checked to find dimples in the bottom of the roof as a drill guide. The underside details also were difficult to get right because the picture was so small. BTW, read all the instructions before you start gluing, otherwise the air conditioner may not end up on the side with the vents…
Anyway, I ended up leaving the roof loose in case one day I decide to put in an interior, but otherwise it’s an odd and interesting car that desperately needs…something.


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## Murv2

While working on the challenger I've been trying to figure out a diorama for the coal mine, I've made a bit of progress. Hopefully a good layer of ground cover will make it look better...


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## Cab1

I don't think it looks that bad as a bobber. I do think it looks better in Lehigh Valley trim, though. The dark color seems to pull everything out more. I'm not actually looking at it in my hand. So the actual presentation is still pretty subjective.


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## Murv2

Gold Coast Models? 85’ Passenger Car

A friend that visits yard sales called one Saturday morning and told me they found a bunch of train stuff for sale. They took a few pics and I decided to risk the 50 bucks on the lot. It came with a bunch of stuff, including three diesels. One was an AHM FM, just like the kind I had as a kid. I remember it had sat in a shop window and the housing had melted and drooped in the sun but I didn’t care, I wanted it.

Anyway, this one is painted for New Haven and after a little tender care and new traction bands it runs pretty good. Makes a nice growly sound when running. I liked it so much I bought another one off Epay, this one with a few repairs needed. I carefully changed the number by one so they wouldn’t both be the same, and now they run in tandem back to back. The second one didn’t run nearly as well as the first and they tended to overload the transformer when both ran so I converted it to a dummy.

So now I have two FMs, what kind of train should they run? I always thought covered wagons should pull passenger trains, so I looked up images of New Haven passenger trains and found pics of spiffy looking cars, with silver corrugated streamlined sides but black roofs.

I picked up a couple cars finished, then found an interesting kit with tin sides and ends and wooden bottom and top. It came in a plain brown box but no instructions or even a manufacturer name. A few queries and I decided it was closest to a Gold Coast Models passenger car. Hoseeker had an instruction sheet but having worked on it I’m in doubt that this is the right company. I ended up with another car in the same brown box as well to finish out the train.

Anyway, this kit has pressed tin sides and ends, an 1/8” wood floor and curved wooden roof plus a bunch of wood blocks for the underside detail, two clear plastic sheets for the windows plus handrails and some mysterious pieces whose purpose I can’t guess. There was a door missing, I roughed a replacement out of an old business card.

The floor is held in place with 8 screws. I ended up making skirts out of bass wood and matching the other underside detail using another passenger car as an example.

As far as interior I wasn’t planning on doing too much but got a seat set from Kitbits and used the 1 ½ oz of lead sheet as walls to separate the vestibules. The lead sheet brings the car weight up to NMRA recommendations.

I painted the top and bottom black, the floor red and the new door and skirts silver but unfortunately I can’t show you a finished car. You see, I can’t finish the interior until I install the windows and I can’t install the windows until I finish painting the exterior and I can’t finish painting the exterior until I paint the stripe across the windows in New Haven red-orange. That color isn’t available commercially and I plan on making a single batch and paint all four cars at the same time.

SO, I can’t finish the car right now. I have the last car in the to-do stack and now that I have finished the second to last it will probably get done sooner rather than later. In the meantime the car is complete enough to run and doesn’t look any uglier than the rest of the train.

Anyway, this was a fun kit to build and I really wish I had instructions, there are too many unexplained parts to wonder about.


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## Murv2

Main Line Models Cattle Car

This is the third Main Line car I built, and all the comments I made about the first two are true here. The wood is not a good type or evenly cut. There were a lot of wood pieces whose purpose I couldn’t identify and maybe some wire missing that I looted the scrap bin to replace. I decided not to put in roof beams, the instructions showed the kit both ways and none of the random wood strips seemed the right size for roof slats.

The interesting thing about this kit is the way the sides and doors are presented. They are precut into separate boards and the sides prepainted, but are still joined along the ends so they are already positioned accurately. You glue the supports to the slats then cut the ends off. I think that’s a pretty smart way to make a cattle car kit.

The instructions were similar to the other kits with nice diagrams but an update page forcing you to pick and choose which set of instructions was appropriate. The kit was generic for all 35’ cattle cars with different plaques for different railroads (and Armour Meats) and the instructions included placement for 24 different railroad plaques. This kit was for the Southern Railroad.

I figured it would be easier to paint the parts of the kit before gluing it together, but I chose to use the new jar of Scalecoat Boxcar Red and it turned out way too dark. Matching colors with old kits has always proven problematic, but after putting this kit together I decided to rout around my collection of red-brown paint (I’ve collected quite a bit by now) and found that Testor’s Model Master Rust color was almost a perfect match.

So, a wood kit a bit rough in the details but fun to build. I’ll leave you to decide if it was worth the effort.


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## J.Albert1949

The cattle car came out looking quite good, due to your skills...!


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## Stumpy

It does look good.


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## Lemonhawk

The side look quite respectable! And you did not need to remove flashing!


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## Murv2

Unreview of Varney Express Reefer

This is the last of the three old Varney kits that ended up in the to-do pile, and this one was in the worst condition of the lot. Not only were the instructions missing, the cardstock and details were missing as well so basically there was a frame and a bunch of random wood chunks in the box. Oddly enough, there was also a printed cardstock sheet for a Great Northern 50’ flatcar, but without any other parts for it. 

So I bought a sheet of Evergreen models V-groove plastic and used the Main Line Express reefer I already reviewed as a prototype to make the express reefer. The hardest part was making the rounded roof. Here’s what I did:


Cut a 1/4” basswood sheet to the right size.
Mark 1/16” line along the sides with a scribe.
Using a table belt sander sanded angles about 45° on both sides up to the scribed line.
Roll the top of the roof across the angled part until it rounded off.
Scribe a 1/16” lip around the top edge of the roof ends.
Gently clamp the roof end up in a vise.
Using a wood cutting head on a Dremel cut out the bottom of the ends to the scribed line.
The roof ended up being just a bit cockeyed. Anyway I liked the paint scheme of the Railway Express Agency so that’s how I painted and decaled it. Too bad I didn’t check the decal diagram before I built the thing, it showed the stock (flat) roof and some other details I missed. C’est la vie.

The flat car only took a morning; a 1/8” board from the scrap heap as a base, cutting and folding the cardstock sheath, making ribs out of bass wood, covering all ribs over with lead weight, touching up all the corners where the paint split after folding. I lucked out that the couplers were the right height.

So, the same problem with cardstock wear. Not sure if it dried out over the decades or if they were always brittle but they really don’t make satisfactory cars anymore. I am not writing off cardstock or cardboard cars entirely, but if they require folding I think I’m going to pass from now on (until the next “Oooh shiney” purchase).


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## J.Albert1949

You still managed to do fine with the cardboard cars, Murv!


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## Murv2

Uhlrich Boxcar

Having built two all-metal coal cars and a hopper from Uhlrich I thought it would be interesting to see what they can do with regular boxcars. Thus I present “Uhlrich Model Kit Box Car Kit No. 114 D L & W”, complete with trucks.

This kit has excellent castings for the roofwalk, ends and brake pieces; stamped metal doors, roof ribs, sill steps and door tracks; and bent wire hand grabs. Everything else is wood. The sides are painted and stenciled with grey or silver, including some graffiti. The instructions are nicely written and illustrated.

Assembly was straight forward in the typical ends, roof and floor frame with the cast ends and sides glued on. The underside doesn’t include piping, not even in the pictures. I used Scalecoat 1 flat boxcar red to paint the unpainted parts, it seems pretty close to me. I assembled everything up to the point where the prepainted sides are added, spraypainted everything then added the rest of the parts.

Comments: First of all the sides are awfully thick. They stick out from the end castings, had I checked the thickness I could have trimmed the frame a bit but that isn’t something you’d expect to have to do so I didn’t think of it. There is a stencil on the bottom marking where the ribs and center beam go, but I found out after gluing the beam on the stencil wasn’t centered, so a nice idea badly executed.

The sides didn’t cover the ends of the ribs under the floor, I’m not sure whether that is historic or not but it looked odd so I put a chunk of basswood under there to cover it up. The ends also were 1/16” too short so I lined them up with the bottom of the frame and extended the roof with bass wood.

Overall it came out as a nice kit and will be snaking around the layout for years to come.


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## Lemonhawk

Back in the early 60's those all metal Uhlrich "working" coal cars were my favorite, so I still have 3 or 4 that still operate.


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## Murv2

Quality Craft 85’ Covered Gondola

Let me start by saying this is one butt-ugly railroad car. Yes I know this isn’t a beauty contest and cars are built for utility not looks but ours is a visual hobby and if something is ugly it’s hard to raise any enthusiasm for it. Also I couldn’t find anything on the innertube about this particular type of railroad car. I expect they were designed to carry cannon barrels, pipes or wind turbine vanes.

I’ve reviewed a Quality Craft kit after the line was purchased by Bev-Bel and this one is pretty much the same. It is almost all wood, with lots of engineered bass wood in various shapes and the instructions are a few paragraphs of text with full-sized diagrams of the car. These kits are universally complicated but not difficult if you go step-by-step, have an eye for alignment and patience. One thing I find helpful is how the designer (Robert E. Weaver, he even signed the instructions) deconstructed the car into simple shapes so while taken in whole it looks impossible but is not quite so hard when you concentrate on the piece in front of you.

Anyway, my only criticism of this kit (other than it falling out of the ugly tree and hitting every branch on the way down) is the end brace template is too short by about 1/8”. Comparing the template to the full car drawing and it’s obvious, but I didn’t notice until I’d cut out all six. At that point there wasn’t enough wood left over to recut all six so I took the cut-off triangle and glued it to the top of the brace, then reshaped it to fit. Not a recommended course of action but better than nothing.

There are a lot of pieces to cut for this kit. I’m not going to count them all but for example there are 38 angle irons under the roofwalk. Use a sharp knife and pay attention to the angle of your cuts. The most complicated pieces are the steps, they are bent out of flat wire and I find them almost impossible to get even. Generous use of glue and a coat of paint hides many ills. One thing I like about these kits is that they color code the wood with a dollop of paint on the tip so you don’t have to keep measuring it to figure out if you have the right piece.

So there you have it, another weird and wonderful piece of rolling stock painstakingly constructed out of little pieces of bass wood. Can’t wait to get the next one. As for this, I’m not interested in modern cars so I expect someone is going to have a very merry unbirthday...


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## Lemonhawk

I don't recall ever seeing one of these. It has a roof walk so doesn't that mean its not exactly "Modern"? Certainly not designed to carry something very heavy.


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## flyboy2610

The "New" date on the decals is 7-60.


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## Murv2

Guess I'm showing my age but anything post-steam is modern.


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## Murv2

Still some work to be done but the racing stripes look nice on the passenger cars.


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## Murv2

Finished the (basic) interior and the decals on one side, letting them dry before turning it over. I picked the car names for two seaports. Still need to add the diaphragms. The cars end up looking a bit crude, but fun to build.


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## Murv2

Labelle Box Car
Labelle concentrates on rolling stock from the turn of the twentieth Century. I built five passenger cars by them and enjoyed them, so When I got “Toledo and Western Box Car HO-45” I thought it would be equally fun. It was.
there are some interesting things different about this prototype, primarily in that it lacks some of the refinements of more modern cars, like end ladders, roof ribs and metal parts. But it does have corner braces and truss rods.
The instructions were confusing at first because one page was missing. Fortunately HOSeeker had the missing page and after that the instructions made sense. The kit is a typical wood frame with siding. It is almost all wood, with a few brass and plastic parts. Assembly is pretty straight forward, The floor is milled withs the support beams underneath. Mine was a bit warped but I clamped it while the glue set and it held together nicely. The truss rods are fishing line.
One problem I’ve had with wood cars with individual boards milled in is that when they are painted the spray paint doesn’t get into the grooves, and when you look at the car square on you can see unfinished wood in between the boards. This time I thought I’d stain the wood before assembly. This hides the cracks and staining the back side as well prevents the wood from warping after painting. I’ve had other cars warp after assembly because only one side was painted. If you paint both sides it controls the warping and prevents further warping when applying the final coat. The stain I chose didn’t look dark enough but once painted it came out nice.
I had a two-week delay because I’d run out of boxcar red paint. Fortunately mail order was quick enough and I worked on a diesel fueling station in the meantime.
Rather than decals this car has rub on transfers. At first I didn’t do so great then I figured out the secret was to hold the cover sheet tightly against the car so it doesn’t move while you rub. Then once you think you are done carefully lift one corner of the sheet while holding it down to make sure you got all the decal. Anyway, two of the decals came out broken up and one obviously cockeyed but it was an interesting change from regular soaked decals.
So overall I really liked this kit and will build more from them in the future when I can. Labelle has a doodlebug, that would be especially fun. This kit is still for sale new.


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## Lemonhawk

Fascinating kit. The resultant box car looks from a very old era. I find your kit building lessons really interesting.👍


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## Murv2

Lemonhawk said:


> Fascinating kit. The resultant box car looks from a very old era. I find your kit building lessons really interesting.👍


Thanks for that. I'm really enjoying building these things and every car is a lesson. 
Finally finished the diorama for the coal mine. Like all things some parts came out better than others. I'm pleased with the (scratchbuilt) conveyor belt house and the coal pile inside the tipple but the dirt inside the cut is too regular and I should have made the edges of the board where I would be extending the hill irregular so when I get the rest done the eye won't be drawn to the straight lines. Still, nice to have something done. I'm planning a stockyard next to it and the back edge will have a wall of some kind...


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## Murv2

IMW Boiler House and Diesel Tank
I really enjoy building locomotives and rolling stock, but when I see pictures of other model railroads I’m always struck by how barren my own layout is and have been making buildings to give the trains something to run around. I was actually looking for an engine house or car shop but found instead this neat little kit for a diesel tank and Boiler house.
At first I wasn’t able to find any information about Industrial Model Works of Lodi, New Jersey because the terms were all so generic. Then I did a search for the whole name in quotes and found a blog from a guy who had trolled through old Railroad Model Craftsman and Model Railroader magazines and found some ads from the late 50’s. Apparently the company was one man in New Jersey and didn’t last very long.
The kit advertised that it included real blueprints, but I’ve seen real blueprints and these look a bit truncated to me. And naturally the instructions for the tank are missing. I found a couple line drawings of them on the inner tube and cobbled together enough to fill in the rest. The instructions for the boiler house were clear enough to build it but considering how simple it was that is not saying much.
The boiler house is a relatively simple four sides and a roof made of some kind of pine, too bad the board and batten siding pressed on is not perfectly even on all pieces. I reinforced the corners with some balsa but should have driven the holes for the pipes first as the corners interfered.
Not sure what they intended the roof to be, maybe tin? They wanted us to use paper cut in vertical strips but I wasn’t happy with that so I ended up using black paper to look like tar paper. The building also included a cupola which is a nice touch. I should have drilled a hole in the top of the smokestack.
The tank is a piece of ¾” diameter dowel (maple maybe?) cut to the right height and a bunch of thick silver paper to wrap it in. Like all round clad structures keeping the paper ends flat against the structure is an issue. In this case the fuel gauge is provided to hide it. They provided some overlaying strips with embossed rivets that gives the tank a bit more texture than my description sounds. I had to guess at where all the little pieces in the box went and may have simplified it accidentally because I didn’t know what to do with all these little bits.
Now I have a tank and pump house, how do you get the fuel into the engine? I decided to buy a Woodland Scenic Fueling station to put alongside the track and the IMW structures just outboard of that. The fueling set deserves a review on its own, but basically it’s a half dozen castings with lots of detail and a few rub-on transfers with interesting signs and instructions how to set it up. Due to space I cheated a bit on distances.
I made it into a diorama by putting everything on a concrete pad and surrounding it with a chain link fence. Unfortunately the only really clear spot is right on the edge of the table and as clumsy as I am I don’t know how long it will last before I bump it onto the floor. Anyway, a neat, basic kit and one I recommend for people liking old school building kits.


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## Stumpy

That's cool.


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## Murv2

Athearn Tank Car
This is another pre-plastic Athearn kit. I’d intended to build it earlier but of course it was missing the instructions. Fortunately Hoseeker had the instructions so I printed them out. They are more reminiscent of plastic model instructions, well-illustrated with close ups of the places where life is a bit more complicated.
This is an all metal kit, with the tank made of stamped tin in four pieces with stencils and the rest cast. Apparently they used Zamac because several of the pieces suffered from Zamac cancer. Worst is the bolsters, they are damaged and missing chunks. In this case there was enough metal there to use.
The frame did not have Zamac cancer but it was warped. There are a few pieces missing but nothing I can’t replace.
Otherwise this is a nice kit. Little glue needed and much of it held together with screws and metal tabs. I couldn’t get the straps right (a problem with most old tank cars) because they are supposed to end in holes in the bolsters but the bolsters are damaged. The straps are too far apart and uneven. Also I put a block of wood under the brake wheel because it wouldn’t stay vertical otherwise.
I imagine when it was first produced this would have made a nice car, but because of the Zamac cancer I can’t recommend it. I’ve included a picture of three contemporary tank cars, the center one is Silver Streak and the three dome is Crown.


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## cv_acr

Lemonhawk said:


> I don't recall ever seeing one of these. It has a roof walk so doesn't that mean its not exactly "Modern"? Certainly not designed to carry something very heavy.


Running boards (roof walks) requirements were dropped in 1966, and following that were slowly removed by the end of the seventies.


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## Murv2

Silver Streak Reefer

I pulled this car (‘SP-UP DOUBLE HEAD HERALD REFRIGERATOR SS 405 PRICE $2.60’) out of the bottom of my to-do pile and have no recollection where or when I got it. This has to be one of the oldest Silver Streak kits I’ve seen based on the box art, it’s as crude as I’ve seen. The car has 11-47 date on the sides so the kit must be later than that.

Anyway the first thing I noticed when I opened the box was the smell, it reminded me of a used book store, not one of those run by Aunt Betty in a strip mall with a section of romance paperbacks bigger than all the rest of the books combined but one of those stores in an ancient building downtown full of old hardbound atlases, encyclopedias and autobiographies by Julius Caesar.

The next thing I noticed was a chip missing out of the corner of the roof. Fortunately while I emptied the box I found it and glued it back in place. In addition to the loose larger parts (originally held together with a rubber band long since gone to brittle) the box had a bunch of labelled envelopes with descriptions of what they held: working ice hatches, brake parts, door hardware etc. The wood sides and ends were painted (must match the brown…). Happily this kit included all the parts and the instructions, a rare occurrence.

The instructions are typical for Silver Streak, with nicely done line drawings of the assembly process and cogent advice on the back in all caps, including the admonition “YOU HAVE BOUGHT THE FINEST KIT ON THE HO MARKET DON’T RUIN YOUR MODEL WITH SLOPPY WORKMANSHIP.”

The kit follows the normal frame made of roof, floor and end blocks. The instructions want you to start by building the frame, but I’ve found it’s easier to put all the underside detail in before you start with the walls and roof as the kit doesn’t sit flat when upside down on the roof. This kit has the brake pipe snaking through the bolsters, fish plates and cross bearers and adjusting the wire so it goes through all the holes and grooves takes some patience and care. Also, the top of the fishplate casting isn’t 90 degrees and the interlock with the cross bearers is sloppy so I put spacers in between the plates and clamped another in at the bottom while the glue set.

The roof ribs are stamped metal, probably steel because they rusted badly. I wire-brushed them and used them anyway, after all they don’t move and will be under paint. There’s a nice hole that marks the center and ensures the rib doesn’t crumple when you bend it over the crown of the roof. The ice hatches had the most flash in the kit, some busy work with a knife and file is necessary here.

The wood roof is warped. I didn’t notice until I fitted the sides. Can’t see anything to do about it at this point. The ends provided were cardstock with embossed plank slats and painted boxcar red. I thought it would look neat to paint all the end hardware black but once I finished I was unhappy with the aesthetics and repainted everything boxcar red. At least it all matches now.

I ended up having to cut off parts of the brake system because the rods interfered with the trucks. Not the first time for that. I ran out of trucks so put an old set on that doesn’t roll very well until the new ones come in the mail.

This was the best Silver Streak kit I have built. It is in sharp contrast to the Zamac-ridden newer kits. It was a joy to build and I’m pleased with the results and look forward to building more this age, if I can find any.


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## Murv2

Timberline Warehouse

As already mentioned I am trying to make my layout look a little less like a football field. While trolling about on epay looking for a stock yard kit made of wood I ran across this kit “Timberline II Single Run Kits 2 Story Brick Warehouse 1004-2495”. I hadn’t thought of a warehouse but it had a railroad siding and I can put wagons at the truck bay just as easily as trucks. It looked interesting and challenging so I bought it.

The kit consists of a bunch of wood and cardboard pieces with a couple sheets of vacuum-packed castings, mostly windows and doors. The instructions are 6 pages: four full-sized side views of the building from each direction, one an exploded view of the construction and a sheet of written instructions. The kit includes the interior for the office, something I’m going to save for a roundhouse I plan on scratch building with clear plastic roofs so it will need a full interior.








Bricks

I’ve always had issues making bricks look right. This kit has embossed paper sheets to glue over the cardboard sides. Before I started painting them I pulled up a couple you tube videos on how to paint brick. The first one from the UK showed how to paint a cut stone tunnel entrance, apparently stone blocks are called bricks there? The second used laser-cut wood pieces with flat fronts and decent grooves. Neither was at all helpful for my material. Embossed brick is rounded along all the edges the bricks are very small.

The instructions recommended ‘oil crayons’ so I went to the local craft store and found ‘oil pastels’. Not sure if they are the same thing or not. Then I picked a shade of grey out of the paint drawer that turned out to be too green and too dark and painted all the paper, then went over the paper with the pastels, gently so not to fill in the crevasses. The results were terrible. There was too much green-grey and not enough brick color, and the crayon never dried.

I went ahead and started with construction, at the same time trying to figure out a way to clean up the mess. Painting a wash over the brick smeared it, and I doubted painting over it would stick over the crayon. Finally I tried spraying on a white wash and that made the brick look – not good but not totally embarrassing.








Windows and Doors

After adding the brick to the sides you get to install the windows and doors. The castings have the window frames around them but interestingly for this kit the frames go on the inside of the building. This changes the appearance of the building significantly, and I think is an interesting way to use the castings in different ways. In order to hide the cardboard the instructions were very clear during the gluing stage that you slice the brick vertically through the window openings then fold it inside the building. That gives the sides of the window frame a brick pattern. It’s a good idea in theory.

In practice the paper isn’t perfectly locked into the cardboard and of course, the printed holes aren’t the right size for the windows. End result is I had to cut the cardboard behind the paper, scrape out the cardboard then refold the paper. Also many of the windows I had to stuff the brick back behind the frame or cut it off after installation with more or less success. Once they were installed though they really look sharp, or would if the window holes are cut perfectly even..

Once you glue all the walls and floors together it really starts to look like a building. One thing that occurs at this point is how easy it would be to add a complete interior. The floors are already there, as is the elevator shaft and office furniture. Install a light kit, paint the floor and walls, a few stacks of random crates plus maybe a couple flat car loads and you’d have a nice highlight for a layout. There enough large windows that people would be able to peek inside and see the detail.








One of the neat things about buildings like this out of wood and cardboard is that all the details have to be done individually. Unlike plastic where everything is molded on and waiting for a coat of paint the window sills, wall caps, roof lines etc are all added piecemeal and the building’s appearance changes noticeably with each addition.

The office is just like the rest of the building but smaller, other than the interior that I didn’t install. At this point I gave thought to where I’d install the building. I found a roughly triangular area on the layout formed by track, an extra switch later and there’s a siding ready for use. (The switch was originally remote operated but I cross wired the track and it melted the guts of the switch. In this location I’m going to need a remote switch, will have to invest in that…)

After all that detail work on the building the platforms are relatively simple, just frame the floorboards, glue on the verticals and attach to the building. I ended up adding diagonal supports extending from the bottom of the building to the outside edge of the walkway to give them more support. In that position someone would have to get to within an inch of the ground to see them. The posts under the platforms are not square but I couldn’t figure out how to lock them in place so they’ll be wobbly regardless.

The hand rails are hard to get straight and even, especially the longest one along the back side. Also I glued them, perhaps soldering would have been a better choice but I’m not good at it.

And there you have it. This was a challenging kit to build that was well-thought out in terms of detail and layout. The bricks proved to be an issue but overall a good project. I’ve ordered the materials for the diorama and when they come in it will be finished, but in the meantime here’s the first carloads arriving at the “Edwards Mining Equipment Company.”


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## LateStarter

Murv2:
Wow, nice job!
I really like that structure!
Looks great!


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## Spade

My old buddy just died and I inherited some of his unopened HO kits. I have a Silver Streak Caboose kit , Southern Pacific. It looks all there. I believe everything can be fixed and if a part is left out or warped lets make a new one. We grew up building a layout back around 1960 and one buddy wanted a bay window caboose. There wasn't one on the market at that time so we went down to the S P yard and measured one top to bottom. This guy built two from scratch and they are beautiful.


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## Murv2

Does it look like this?


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## Stumpy

The mining equipment co. looks great!


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## Lemonhawk

Always interesting. I think it came out better that you ever imagined it wood!


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## Murv2

Comet Reefer Kit

I picked this kit in a lot and it came in an Athearn blue box, so I wasn’t sure who manufactured it. The instructions didn’t have the logo on it, only signed by Fred Schlieng. The only clue was a note under the first paragraph “Use Comet cement for best results.” I just happen to have another Comet kit and it looks the same, so There you have it. The other Comet kit is a Hormel reefer so I won’t have two of the same cars.

This is your typical wood-frame roof, bottom and two ends with sides stuck on later. There are wood sides plus embossed cardstock with the side decoration printed on, and embossed cardstock ends and hatches expected to be painted. This car is marked American Refrigerator Transit Co with a 1924 build date.

The underside only has a chunk of wood down the centerline and the brake cylinder turned out of wood, no other detail. I added a few ribs to help reinforce the sides where they project below the bottom block of wood. The center sill will have to be checked to make sure it doesn’t block the trucks and coupler pockets. Trucks and couplers are not provided and the only picture shows a cast metal coupler, so modern couplers will take some care fitting. The coupler height is just right.

One of the things I noticed about older kits is that the wood isn’t cut as uniformly as modern bass wood. It gets fatter and thinner and is often tapered. Obviously manufacturing techniques have improved since the 40’s. Also, this kit is cruder than even the early Silver Streak reefer I reviewed recently. It’s especially evident in the ice hatches and ladders.

So there you have it, a halfway decent kit for the era but not as high quality as others. I plan on finishing the other Comet reefer but will stay away from them in future in preference to other manufacturers. I do hope to try a different kind of car from them when the opportunity avails.


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## Lemonhawk

A noticeably crude looking kit. I can see why you will stay away from them. I love your kit builds!


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## Murv2

Red Ball Bunk Car

I already built a Red Ball kit, the rotary snowplow and I thought it well done, so when the opportunity presented itself to pick up another I couldn’t resist. This one is “Special Car No. 1 Bunk Car”.

The instructions are mostly text with a half dozen diagrams showing the important elements. Well written and fairly comprehensive, I wish the had measurements for the length and location of a couple things like the smoke stack and grabirons.

It looks a lot like a fancy old boxcar kit and basically it is. Standard wood roof, floor, end blocks. One nice thing about this kit is the number of castings. It has enough that you don’t actually have to add weights. Also, the coupler pockets are just the right height. The included trucks are not modern but roll fairly well. There was a bit of rust on them.

The floor and sides of this kit are embossed cardstock. Oddly, the holes for the doors and windows are rounded at the corners and have to be cut to fit. The floor isn’t really even needed, the screens on the windows ensure no one can see inside the car. The sides are black and unmarked, and after some thought (and routing around in google images) I decided to leave it black and unmarked. The instructions didn’t have a road name and there were no decals.

The car came together nicely but I screwed up the painting. I didn’t have any flat black so used ‘Velvet Black’ then flatcoated it. The flatcoat went grey and even the second coat didn’t help. So I guess it’s going to be faded by the sun. The car has some nice screen windows that scream to be drybrushed with rust.

Anyway a neat kit and one that will be joining my maintenance of way train. I look forward to getting more Red Ball kits.
(Forgot the before picture)


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## Murv2

Athearn Flatcar

I had the good fortune to pick up 8 old wood and metal Athearn freight car kits at less than half the usual price but when I got them in the mail there was something odd about them. First the package was a plastic bag instead of a yellow box. Second the package said Athearn on the front but G. F. Menzies Co. on the back. I did a little research (googled the internet) and found that Athearn sold off their metal line in the 60’s and this company made them for a while. I got a total of 8 cars, almost all different and look forward to building them.

This one is “HO ATHEARN METAL LINE HO FLAT CARS A-605 50’ UNION PACIFIC”. The instructions were copies of the old Athearn instructions, signed B. E. Danielsen and dated 10/53. They were clear and well illustrated, but terse.

First, this kit has riveted narrow coupler pockets. I crammed the springs in for this one and am not happy with that. Next car I’ll use a Dremel and grind down the sides of the pocket a bit. Also there was some flash that had to be filed off the mouth. They were the right height.

The stake pockets are stamped on a single strip of tin and go into square holes in the sides but are just a smidge too close together so when you try to stick them in the first one fits and they progressively get more misaligned. I ended up cutting them in threes and fours, may have been better to do each one individually. I used pins instead of toothpicks to hold them in place while inserting the inner tin sheet so they are rounder rather than squarer. If you want to add stakes you’ll probably need to file down the wood deck.

There are a bunch of pre-bent grab irons in this kit that go in holes stamped in the outside cover then bent on the inside to hold in place. Unfortunately there’s a sharp angle on them that broke almost every time I tried to fold the inside over and I ended up making new grab irons out of gardening wire. Also the grab irons hold the corner steps in place.

Underneath: The cast frame lacks any brake equipment, not really something anyone will miss and gluing it together makes assembly easier but isn’t required. The trucks are shiny plastic and the bushing and spring you are expected to use seems an unnecessary embellishment, especially since the screw is too short for the spring. I ended up using a thin bushing from a Kadee coupler kit instead. The washer underneath turns out to be needed to separate the truck from the surface detail on the frame.

Because the sides are pre-painted I intended not to paint this kit but the gardening wire is green and the brake wheel just doesn’t look right as bare metal. Next flatcar I’ll paint the stake pockets too. I stained the wood deck just to darken it up a bit. The sides are pre-painted and stenciled. The text is readable but not sharp.

Overall a nice quick-build kit, not too much work and comes out pretty sharp. That’s a good thing because I’ve got seven more just like it. I think a boxcar next…


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## Murv2

Athearn-G.F. Menzies Boxcar

After finishing one of the Menzies flatcars I figured a boxcar would be a cinch, but boy was I wrong! This kit, “A-193 SANTA FE SUPER CHIEF” only has one chunk of wood (floor) and more tin than a tomato can. The pieces fit together poorly and construction includes trying to hold a piece inside the car over the trucks with a finger stuck through the door then screwing in a screw that is too short with a head too small for a standard replacement while holding the rest of the car together with a pinkie.

A great deal of force had to be used to assemble this car. The shell is held together with four rivets sticking down from the roof walk (one was bent and broke when I tried to straighten it, had to drill a hole for a screw) and the rivets pass through the roof, ‘W’ plate, car body and end stamps then through a block of zamac. This all flexes and of course when you pound the rivet it ruins the paint on the roof walk.

Speaking of paint, I think this kit expects you to hand paint everything because there is simply no way to partially assemble the kit then paint everything but the sides. I ended up building up the underside and adding the roof ribs, spray painting everything (Scalecoat flat boxcar red is a perfect match) then assembling and touching up (fortunately I have both hand and spraypaint for that color).

In addition to the broken rivet the grabirons were easily broken and had to be replaced. Of course the wire used got in the way of all that tin and getting the end caps on was problematic. Also half the wire pieces they said to push into the wood were misaligned in one tin sheet or another and had to be cut and glued in place or ended up bent and nasty looking.

So overall, not a great kit and I don’t recommend them just because they are difficult rather than complicated. The good news is I checked the rest of the kits and they have the usual wood roof and ends, so I expect they will be more like the Southern boxcar than this one.


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## Lemonhawk

Looks like that car was a real pain to put together! Nice rivet detail!


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## J.Albert1949

Murv, you make even the difficult jobs "look easy"...!


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## Murv2

Built another one of the Menzies-Athearn tinclad boxcars. This one didn't turn out as good as the last one. I ended up cutting the roof in half under the catwalk because I couldn't get it to fit otherwise, didn't get the roof to go over the ends either and it isn't flat. The doors came painted but a different shade of red from the sides. 
Not sure the black roof is right but I couldn't find any real pictures of Timkin Roller Freight cars with red sides and a red roof just didn't look right (though somehow it looks right on the NYC Pacemaker car). 
Anyway, bit of a disappointment but we'll see what happens with the next one.


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## Lemonhawk

I noticed that even the last build of the Menzies-Athearn tinclad boxcars, the roof on one end didn't fit. This one is even worse. Shame, as the graphics really look nice. I use to live in Columbus in the 60's, and would drive by the Timken plant on the way to work!


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## Murv2

I think I'll try grooving the wood frame under the metal tabs in the car sides. maybe fitting everything together before gluing but boy that's gonna take a lot of rubber bands.


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## Lemonhawk

I sure looks like the roof is for some other car. Take a lot of effort to really fix it. Maybe the next one will have a roof that's too long


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## Murv2

Suydam Engine House

I found this on ebay and thought it was interesting because it was almost entirely made of stamped tin. It fit a need I have for an engine house and I thought it would be something different. It certainly proved to be that. Suydam was founded in 1950 by its namesake and focused on buildings and traction equipment. The company was merged into Alpine Division Scale Models, L.L.C. at some point in the 90’s or 00’s and that company is still in business. This kit isn’t available.

Other than the tin sides and roof there were two milled wood strips for the louvers and some other wood for trim. As usual with old kits the instructions were missing. HOSeeker had them but the print was so small I couldn’t make out some measurements so I fudged them as needed.

This kit was designed to be soldered together. There were really nice instructions on how to solder included but I’m not interested or skilled enough at soldering so I used my favorite glue (Walthers Goo) and hoped for the best.

Most of the assembly consisted of laying down a bead of glue, clamping it and leaving it for a day to set. I have over a dozen clamps of various types on my work table for just these occasions. It made building the kit very much an exercise in patience but unlike wood where the material itself absorbs some liquid and speeds the setting progress, with metal you just need to let the moisture work itself out of the glue. To fill in the time I worked on two other projects as well, all requiring long set times.

Each slab of metal had to have angled metal glued along the edges then all the edges were mated to make the building. What ended up was fairly sturdy, the only weak point being the doors. If I put in a floor I could support the center piece and make the sides less floppy but I plan on keeping it open on the bottom as a drop in. For that reason I also added 3/8” square basswood rods along the bottom of the building, to give it the height it needs to fit taller engines over regular track.

The louver piece didn’t fit quite right, I probably should have cut it narrower before gluing it in but instead I left a little gap at the apex of the roof. The louver frame didn’t fit right either, I should have installed it in place rather than assembling it then trying to fit it in.

Wood was provided to build the window frames, but as a simpler alternative the clear plastic window panes had the frame printed on them. I chose the simpler alternative because I feared I’d get glue on the panes and frankly was tired of this building. I also cobbled together a back door from an old business card and straight pin, just seemed like it was needed (naturally it’s going to face the wall so no one will see it).

I had to give some thought to painting this building. Based on googling images of corrugated steel buildings they come in two forms: modern buildings with very even corrugation and a solid color and old buildings with obvious seams, slightly to majorly rusty with patches and blotchy color everywhere. This steel was very regular so the modern appearance seems appropriate but I felt paint would be prone to rub off the metal (similar to a tin can lid). There were photos on the company website showing another building made of the same material, they were able to make the building look like an older corrugated building by using an airbrush masking technique.

My final decision was to spray a flat coat on the building and leave it silver. The metal isn’t completely free of blemishes so it has a little character but if a little flat coat rubs off it won’t be as obvious as paint. I’m going to plate over the track inside the first 6” or so of the building so it looks like it has a concrete floor, otherwise I’ll ballast around it when I do the rest of the yard.

While the final result is a usable building I have a basic philosophical complaint about it: With the arched windows and peaked roof the shape of this building is decidedly older in architecture, but the even corrugation looks like a modern building. If the walls were made of brick everyone would say this is a nice old engine house, if the roof was flat and windows rectangular everyone would say it’s a nice modern engine house. The way it is doesn’t really fit either description. That bothers me enough that if I had it to do over I would not buy this building. Now that it is built though it’s going to be around for a while.


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## Lemonhawk

I think glue made things a lot easier! The likely hood of having a big enough soldering iron and some really potent flux to get thru the coating wound have deterred me trying to solder! Not sure a resistance machine would have worked either as it would have messed up the visible outside. A little paint (will paint adhere to that coating?) and it will look just fine!


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## Murv2

Finished the base for the warehouse. Fence from Walthers, cobblestone from Chooch Enterprises, wagons from RSlaserkits, dynamite shed from Banta. It's too bad I can't source horses and oxen with the proper harness, but I'll figure that out sooner or later. Hardest part was once I started gluing everything to the fiberboard it warped. That had never happened with the other bases. I ended up wetting the underside then clamping it to a thick board overnight, that straightened it right out.


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## Stumpy

Looks great!


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## J.Albert1949

Nice job as usual, Murv!


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## vette-kid

I'm not too good at detailed reviews, but I'll give this a go. Just put together my first "limited editions" passenger car it. These are no longer in production, although I spoke with the new owner and they are planning to do a new run it detail kits for them as well as lighting and interior kits. He also had a large stock of original kits and I believe his plan is to update the detail kits in those for a new release at some point. It's a side hobby for him right now, so no real timeline.

This is also only my second attempt at any kit, so go easy on me! The first was an auto rack that was a little simpler. This seems more if a "craftsman" kit to me, but then I'm a noob.

The pot metal ends and aluminum required a little filing to get a good fit. I think the window panel could have used a little trimming for a better fit as well, but I didn't do that.

I also forgot to paint the doors, so those will get added later, along with under body details (water tanks etc). Overall I'm pleased with the result considering it was a learning curve. I need to find some better adhesives, super glue is great for some of it, but messy for the window strip. I'm confident the next will go better and I have 9 more. I also have an articulated diner that I missing one car for that I need to find.

As for the livery, the blue turned out a little darker than I hoped, so I think I'll go back too the auto paint supply and try again. I also need to find stripes. I've tried micro scale, but they aren't long enough. I suppose I could try using two, but lining them up will be a challenge, especially with my shaky hands. 

I'll add some more pictures later of the kit pieces as they come in the box.










Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk


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## Murv2

Nice! I've never heard of those before, but now that you mentioned them I found some on Epay.


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## vette-kid

I think they were in circulation in the 70s-80s?? They actually seen like they make pretty nice cars if you know what your doing. 

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk


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## Murv2

Trout Creek Engineering Flatcar

This kit is deceptive.

There are two kinds of railroad car kits: There are kits for modellers and kits for model railroaders (actually there’s a dozen ways you can divide kits up so really there are more kinds than two, but this review would be hard to write if I tried to describe them all). Now before you model railroaders start to protest, the difference is that a model railroader wants his car to look good going by at 7 inches per second (though with 50 year old DC locomotives mine travel closer to about 20) while a modeler wants it to look good on a shelf, preferably with a mirror underneath and magnifying glass in front.

It may seem trivial but model railroaders have to make concessions to get the trains to run. For example, the piping underneath must be clear of the trucks which can’t bind on #4 switches (don’t ask me how I know). Things like stirrups tend to be bulkier because they need to survive derailments. And I use Kadee #5 couplers despite them being larger than prototype because my track is rougher than real track and the cars would uncouple more often otherwise.

All this philosophical meandering is to explain why I state that this kit is deceptive. It looks like a nice model railroader kit but is actually a modellers’ kit. When you first look in the box you see the tiny pile of lumber and a couple plastic bags of parts and think “This can’t be complicated, I’ll have it knocked out in a day.” But then you start working on it and oh boy!

Back to the beginning though, this is “Trout Creek Engineering Kit # 2210 Maryland & Pennsylvania RR Flat Car #120”. That’s right, this is not a model of a class of car, it’s a model of a single car (It shares that honor with Lincoln’s funeral car). From what I’ve read the Ma and Pa was popular with railfans in the 30’s and its rolling stock is well-documented. It was also acquired haphazardly and this car was unique: It’s a 35’ truss-rod flatcar rated for heavy objects, converted from a FEC boxcar. I didn’t find pictures of this car but found pictures of the next one, #121.

This kit is mostly scale wood beams, a floor that is two pieces (it ended up as four for me because I cut it wrong), some wire, fishing line and a bunch of various bent wire and plastic pieces.

On to the instructions: They include three pages of written directions, one page of diagrams and one and a half pages of materials listing. These are extremely well written, so thorough in fact that I got confused on several points and had to either undo things or extemporize to get the kit finished.

Some things though I thought were just a bit of fluff designed to make the kit harder to build. For example, rather than assembling the frame by gluing it to the floor upside down (which would be the easy way to do things) they have you pin down the frame to a copy of the diagram while it’s gluing. Turns out they do it this way to make it easier to string the truss rod fishing line. Also all measurements are in prototypical feet, real inch measurements would be easier to work with. BTW, figuring out what the top is can be confusing when you’re assembling the car upside down.

Building the kit this way does have some interesting revelations. For example, I always assumed that truss rods ran between the truck bolsters but according to this they ran between the endbeams and through gaps over top of the bolsters (Kind of surprised this kit didn’t run the fishline all the way to the end, but I guess even they have limitations to acknowledge). BTW I liked the way they installed the truss rods, by filing little angles in plugs of wood, glue in the plugs under/over the bolsters then feed the fishing line through the gaps.

One thing to mention is the bolsters. Usually companies use a milling process to mass produce the bolsters then slice them across the grain to cut them into individual pieces. The result is a cheap and easy piece that almost always splits when either drilling or tapping the truck hole. This kit gives you a rectangular chunk of lumber and tells you how to shape it. The quality of the result will depend on your wood working skills but won’t split on you. The cast metal truck plate glued to the bolster is nice but I had to file off all the detail to make the car the right height. You can’t see it anyway.

Another nice thing, the stakes were included and they even fit! I just tapped them in, didn’t glue them. Nice thing though, they’ll help protect the brake wheel which always sticks up dangerously on old flatcars.

This car only weighs an ounce with the trucks and couplers. There’s no place to hide a weight so I followed my usual MO and weighted the cargo (in this case a crate) to bring it up to NMRA specs.

I had trouble with the decals again. They were very thin and stiff and didn’t cling well to the relatively rough sides. I should’ve filled and sanded the sides before installing so they were glassy smooth. Hopefully the flat coat will keep them on. Worse, the instructions said to use the decal instructions to place them but there weren’t any. I ended up routing through the inner tube and found the Ma & Pa Hysterical Society website that had the aforementioned pic’s of #121.

In the end I’m pretty happy with this kit. Assembly was challenging but not sweep-it-into-the-trash overwhelming and the result is a nice-looking turn of the century flatcar. I believe if I get another kit from this company I’ll have an easier time because I won’t make all the mistakes I made with this one, and if the opportunity avails I’ll certainly pick another up. This company is still in business.

(P.S. Sorry about the trucks in the picture, I don’t have the right ones yet so mismatched Aristocraft tender trucks are substituting for now.)
















The car joins the truss-rod mixed freight.


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## J.Albert1949

The new flatcar fits right in with the train!


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## Stumpy

Most excellent, Murv, as usual.

Make no apologies for what you like to do. When it comes to model ships I'm a "modeler" - photo etch &^%$ and all. When it comes to model railroading I'm a scenrey-er. Had no bloody clue that's where it was going to go when I started. 

I do have some trains running thru my scenery though... and I have more trains/rolling stock than I can run. Oh look... more trees...


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## Murv2

I just figured if I didn't mention it some other eagle-eyed member would. I'm working on converting an RS3 to B&O number 50 so the next review might be a while. Here's #50 right now:


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## Murv2

Got stalled waiting for detail parts on the diesel project:








So I pulled another kit out of the pile.


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## Murv2

Japanese Boxcar Kit

I am always on the lookout for different or odd old railroad car kits so when I found this one on ebay I was drawn to it. First, it is a B&O car, one I’d never heard of. Apparently the Sentinel service was similar to the NYC Pacemaker. Second it was not in a car-sized box, it was in the smallest box you could fit it in. Third, the instructions were not in English.

I figured I could build the car based on the drawings and experience with other cars of the same sort but I thought it would be fun to see what the original builders had to say about the model. So, scan the instructions in with a printer/ office mate, convert the PDF using character recognition software, translate into English using Google Translate and here is the result:

_Steel boxcar (5 卜 66 丨 86 father 031 ") Assembly



(2) Attach ribs, walking boards, and treads to the pole.



Eleven ribs are equalized and sewn at intervals, and the walking board is glued by cutting the length from the roof to the size of a few millimeters each.

Cut the side plate according to the skeleton, glue it with a thin square bar under the floor, and attach the pre-painted ladder, door and rail on it.

Cemedine is easy to use because it is far from soldering.

It will be better if you use it as little as possible.

¢ № 611 also 15 605 Ge 1156,

厂 0 96 丨 匕 ❹ Moriko "Tadapo 5 卜 8 卩 ^ | B 35 I! Forest 16 35 卩 0.55181 ¢.

(3) Glue the paper living board to the frame, and attach the ladder, break handle, and brake to one side and the ladder length glue to the other living board. Attach the end beam to both living plates, and properly glue the porridge and brake cylinder under the next bundle. 〇 The brake rod is at the bottom.



! ; It is sure to put it on the linen plate from the bottom and glue it to the character mark. 0 Cuff. La is ho. 0- contempt ^^ Twist-Fix with a child.



& Let's finish the lacquer up to this one. Then attach the trolley to the paint and you're done. Did you enjoy the joy of a new freight car coming out on the rails?

4-5, Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

Telephone Kyobashi (56) 0022, 3360, 7294

Arrangement account Tokyo 5 5_

I have had some experience with translation software and while it turns the words into English it doesn’t really understand the subject and often chooses the wrong word. The results are often quaint if not silly, but usually you can figure out what they really mean. The last paragraph is cute.

I didn’t see a name but the top line at the bottom looked like an address so I pulled it up in google maps and it’s the address for the Wako Department Store in Tokyo. Back in the day you could buy just about anything in a department store and this particular one has been here since before WW2 so I think it’s a good bet that is where it came from.

The kit is a close match to American wood-and-cardstock kits of the era, but the wood is some type I cannot identify (Cedar?) and the cardstock is actually cardboard. That is both good and bad, good because it is thick enough not to flex, bad because it was warped and counterbending can crease the part more easily than cardstock. Fortunately that didn’t happen. Another nice thing, the silver on the cardboard looks like silver, very well done.

The parts do not all match the car, it has fishplates and endbeams which are older than expected on this type of car and the parts don’t match the diagrams in the instructions. In the end I just fitted it together as best I could and used other standard boxcars off the layout for reference. I left off the endbeams.

Other than the fishplates the underframe consists of nicely cast bolsters and a brake cylinder turned from brass. No pipes or brake levers, no holes in the fishplates to fit any either.

The wood is too narrow for the cardboard, some wood is provided to fill it out but there wasn’t enough to completely frame the sides and it was too thick anyway, so I used some plastic sheet and fitted each piece carefully.

A big negative to the kit was all the grab irons and stirrups were not provided. These details are small but important to the look of a freight car. The brakewheel used a brad to hold in place and the brake platform was a thin sheet of brass that the supports had to be properly bent. On dreadnought ends I have found that brake platforms never fit right anyway so getting this one bent right was not as important as gluing the hell out of it.

I must confess that I did not do well on the roof ribs. The notches underneath were too small to hold the ribs physically so I glued them, but the clamps hid the ribs and when I pulled them off the ribs weren’t square or even. I should have taken them off and refitted them but did not. Oh well.

Testor’s silver matched the sides and ends well. I was fortunate to find a reasonably close approximation to the printed blue color in the stash (“Accent 2441 Soldier Blue”) , and after touch-up the kit turned out pretty nice. A good coat of paint hides many ills.

For what it is this is nice project. Not sure I’d buy another from this unknown company but it was a worthwhile experience.


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## Stumpy

Nice build.

As usual.


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## Lemonhawk

Nice looking and unusual boxcar. Your kit build always make my day!


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## Murv2

As threatened, here's the second Comet Reefer. If I ever put an order into Tichy I'll buy replacement ice hatches and ladders (for both) but otherwise will steer clear of these reefers. I would like to try a different type car eventually. My first Hormel car.


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## Murv2

Bowser Boxcar

After enjoying the Challenger I built from a Bowser kit (even though it still doesn’t run right) I found this kit on on Ebay and in addition to the maker it was a B&O, my favorite railroad (inherited from dad).

This is “Bowser Boxcar kit. B&O 1-004103 $16.95”. My first surprise was it’s a brass kit. Other than a few cast pieces and the wooden floor the rest is made of brass. (Oddly the fact that it is brass doesn’t really excite me. I’ve been drawn to brass engines but cars, who cares?) Second, it’s heavy: 5 ½ ounces out of the box. Third, most of the pieces are fit together with either tabs or screws.

I found a date on the instructions, 3-81, two months before I joined the Navy so this was manufactured almost forty years ago. The instructions are one page of exploded diagrams, one of text bullets with a couple illustrations of the assembly process and a parts list. They are both adequate and satisfactory.

I have to say, the paint on this kit was beautiful. The sides, ends and top came painted Scalecoat Tuscan Brown with the text all in white and it’s complete and legible, very lovely. The ends have stuff printed on them as well, a flaw of many cheaper cars. Also interesting is that one end and side are a single sheet of brass folded 90 degrees. Both ends have holes for the brake system, something that diehards will have to fill in and paint over.

Assembly was fairly straight forward, order was important as some parts had tabs to bend over or studs to peen but nothing too complicated. Aside from painting the bottom and cast details this should be a couple hour project. Couplers came out the right height as built. Trucks were included, and not cheap plastic ones.

Now the two issues that I found. First, the paint couldn’t withstand the assembly process. When I bent over tabs the paint flaked right off, installing the spring steel grabirons scratched the paint around the hole and just pushing the door closed with my fingernail scratched off the paint. The paint is available for touchup (I didn’t have Scalecoat Tuscan Brown and raided the stash for DecoArt Antique Maroon, which matched if just a touch dark) but it doesn’t bode well if you ride your boxcars hard.

Second, and the problem I haven’t solved, is that the corners of the ends didn’t snap into place like they were supposed to. I put them together the way the instructions specified but they just slid back out. I ended up putting a rubber band on to hold the car together during assembly, hoping that screwing on the bottom would solve the problem but no joy, so there’s a hole and misalignment along the seams in two corners.

Perhaps soft soldering the seams from the inside would help but then would probably damage the paint. Otherwise there isn’t enough overlap to make glue work. Maybe cutting corner blocks out of wood then gluing with compound epoxy would keep it together? Also might help to fold the corners beyond the right angle to pressure the opposite corner to stick. Anyway this is a serious problem that will have to be addressed if you pick one of these up.

So there you have it, a beautiful car kit marred by a single serious design flaw. I will look for another one of these kits just to see if I can solve the corner problem.


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## Murv2

Still working on my diesel project, probably will be for a few more weeks. It's time consuming because everything you take for granted with plastic or would be provided in lead castings in a wood or metal kit has to be fabricated, and many of the brass parts have to be modified. Still, a challenge is not a bad thing. This engine pulled the B&O Royal Blue in 1935 and I'm researching what the train looked like back then, hopefully I'll be able to make a half-dozen passenger cars for this engine to pull.


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## Mark VerMurlen

Very nice! Congratulations on such a great looking model!


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## Murv2

Finished the diesel project, last step was cleaning the goo out of the trucks so it picks up electricity reliably. Here it is with a couple contemporaries in the passenger yard:








So on to the next kit!

Camino Boxcar

This kit was one of the ones I found at the (only) train show I attended before Covid destroyed that opportunity: “Camino Scale Models Southern Pacific HP-80” boxcar. Unfortunately I was unable to find anything on either Camino Scale Models or their parent company D.O. Courtney Enterprises with a quick search on the internet, but it looks like they made only this kit with SP, ATSF and CNJ decals plus undecorated (BTW, if you’re looking for a model of an El Camino auto there are tons). The box says the kit features Camino’s wood, Grandt line, Cal-Scale and Durango Press castings and Herald King decals.

This box car is a turn of the 20th century wood framed and sheathed truss-rod box car. It’s a bit larger in all dimensions than the Toledo and Western kit I built earlier, and wider than the plastic Roundhouse Santa Fe boxcar that appears to be its contemporary.

The instructions consist of a puke green page with typing on both sides and a urine yellow 8 ½ by 13 page of diagrams. While the colors aren’t particularly appealing both instructions and diagrams are well made and make the kit easy to build. I really liked the brake system illustrations that included both diagrams and perspective drawings.

The wood in this kit is good quality and evenly cut. My only complaint is there were some beards on the ends and a few pieces didn’t have clean cuts on the end. There was enough wood to get the job done though. There wasn’t enough fishing line to string all the truss rods. The castings were all nice but the brake platform struts were badly bent and broke when I tried to straighten them. Most castings were plastic but the brake wheel was brass and the corner steps were pressed brass that had to be properly aligned by hand. The grab irons were wonderfully thin bent piano wire.

Having learned my lesson on getting paint inside the grooves of wood-sided cars, I made a stain out of 50% craft paint and 50% water and applied it to both sides of all the siding as well as the roof walks before starting on the kit.

Assembly is straight forward though as usual I didn’t follow the steps as written, mainly because the bottom is easier to build when you aren’t trying to balance the car on its roof. There weren’t any particular challenges with this car, and I’d rate it as mid-range in complexity, with Ambroid as the hardest and Strombecker as the easiest when talking about wood or metal kits. The most skillful part of this car is bending the piping and lining up the braces for the brake rod.

After painting it I found for the third time what has become my pet peeve: The decals are missing the final coat of varnish. When you try to use them they fall apart. I don’t mind so much that it was missing so much as the fact that I destroyed one of the decals finding out. Because this car has the board sides I don’t wish to use these decals with my crude layer of gloss coat on them so the car is on hold while I source replacement decals.

So there you have it, another very nice turn of the century box car to be pulled by your favorite Ten Wheeler or Mikado. I do recommend this kit and will pick up more from this company should the opportunity avail. The undecorated kit especially provides an opportunity to do one of those obscure roads that got merged into the bigger lines so quickly.


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## Lemonhawk

Nice looking undercarriage!


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## J.Albert1949

The Camino car came out really well.
Post another pic when you get some decals...


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## Murv2

I just finished the third of five Menzies/Athearn boxcars, this one Florida East Coast. I focused on fit this time and sanded down the wood frame just a bit in various places to get everything to come together right. I also test-fitted it before gluing. I found the roof curled upwards at the ends when I installed the roof ribs. I laid it upside down on a table with one edge slightly elevated and worked my way out from about the middle, pressing it down against the table until the ends were bent the other direction slightly. I think that worked pretty good. 
Bad news is one side of the car is badly rusted. I tried water, enamel and acrylic thinner and none got rid of it. I was afraid anything stronger would take paint as well so, although not happy with it I decided to just let it go. Rust isn't uncommon on the railroad anyway. 
Anyway, it looks better than the Roller Bearing car, which will probably end up sans trucks and couplers in the 'Cars that Displease Me' box sometime soon.


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## Murv2

Applied decals to the Camino boxcar. They still aren't perfect, but are better than any woodsided car I've built so far. 








Here's what I did this time:
1. Sanded the sides with 600 grit paper after staining the crevices.
2. After spray painting I took a piece of plain paper and buffed all the places where decals were going to go. 
3. Applied Microsol, then the decal, then another coat of Microsol.
4. Let dry
5. With an Xacto blade scored all the crevices.
6. Applied another layer of Microsol.
7. Flat coat.

Next I'm going to try using shiny paint and trim the decals closer to the writing. Still, I'm not entirely displeased with the results for this car.


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## Murv2

Ed Lee’s Wood Side Ore Car

Found two of these for sale on epay for a bit less than I’ve been paying for car kits lately. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box up to find out each kit was actually three cars, all with different numbers. Talk about an instant train!

Anyway this is “ED -LEE’S HO WOOD SIDE ORE CAR KIT MB-3” the sticker on the box also states the kits were manufactured by Suydam. The instructions say Model Builders Supply Company Duarte CA. One box had Santa Fe cars, the other Buckhorn Mining. The instructions were missing from the Buckhorn set but the Santa Fe instructions recommended Scalecoat Tuscan Red so I ordered the paint and put the box back temporarily. Once the paint came in I was ready to start, but I decided to build one kit to make mistakes on (I did).

Anyway, the instructions are both sides of one sheet of paper with tiny type and a few diagrams and black and white pictures. One thing missing is a side-view diagram of the whole car, which would have helped getting the details right. The text is ALL CAPs, well enough written to be able to reason out and a bit light-hearted in places.

Basically this type of car is a 30’ truss rod flat car with a wooden box on top to put the ore in. The box is actually smaller than the car and is supported with stakes on the sides. There is an option to add wire reinforcements on the end, makes a nice touch.

The kit has a single piece of scribed plank wood painted and stenciled for the owner. It is cut up into the sides and ends of the box. The back was unpainted and when I painted it warped just a tad so I had to clamp the stakes when I glued them to keep the sides flat. There is a single slab of wood for the bottom (instead of being assembled out of scale beams like more expensive cars) and minimal detail underneath (I enjoy building detailed undersides but have to admit it’s kind of pointless for working cars since you never see the bottom of a car on a model railroad, unless you crash a lot.)

The queen posts, end beams and bolsters are all metal castings. Interestingly, the turnbuckles are a single brass sheet punched and folded over. I think it’s a unique way to depict them, the only issue being how to cut them apart without damaging or crimping them. The Buckhorn kit box had three trucks in it, but I do not know if they were original or not. I bought a dozen old Tichy Bettendorf trucks and they’ll grace the Santa Fe cars.

This being an old kit, much of the metal had rust on it. I ended up filing some of the wire to knock enough off for assembly, but the stake pockets were rough and brittle, and too small to do much about. Still, rust is about the same color as Tuscan red.

As usual, I decided to finish the underside before doing any other construction. My reasoning this time is not that the car would roll around on the roof while you work on the bottom (the box is flat on top), but the wood plank sheet that covers the top of the car is thin and in order to drill all the holes and tap for screws you need to be able to punch through the thicker board without damaging the planking. Once the truck and coupler screws and truss rods were fitted I spray painted all the big pieces (including the back of the prepainted sides) then touched up everything else after completing the kit.

The truss rods are wire on this kit, nice because it will stand up to abuse just a bit more than fishing line. The brake cylinder is the only brake detail. Couplers are low, I used medium underset Kaydee, and ordered the ones with integral springs so I don’t have to cut off the pocket on the end beam.

Once the underside was done I went ahead and built the box. I didn’t get it centered right because the queenposts weren’t perfectly centered and I lined it up with them, and the end supports are offset because I screwed up a measurement there too. Most people won’t be looking close enough to notice.

The car weighs a little less than an ounce as finished. I’ll put a little weight in the bottom of the box and once I make a load for it no one will see it. The prepainted sides are just a bit lighter than the Scalecoat paint, that may bother some.

Anyway, the car came together fairly quickly and after assembly, touchup paint and a flat coat it came out nice. I think I’ll build the rest one at a time too. I expect a train of them should look pretty neat tooling along behind a Shay.


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## Murv2

Varney Passenger Coach
I have some friends who enjoy yard sales. They occasionally text me with pictures of HO things they find to see if I want them. In that way I ended up with an Athearn passenger train set including an F7 in warbonnet paint scheme and four silver cars with stripes across the bottom plus oval track, two switches and a transformer. The transformer is in use and the track is in the closet still in the box.
I like having five or six cars in my passenger trains so after a bit I started looking for more. That is when I found out the Santa Fe didn’t use silver cars before the streamline era, Except for the Valley Flyer: There was an exposition and world’s fair in 1939-40 in San Francisco and the Santa Fe set up a special train to transport fair attendees. It had two Pacifics and six cars, all painted silver. The fun ended after Pearl Harbor but the train was kept intact to haul soldiers instead of partygoers. At the end of the war the cars were repainted and returned to the general pool. The train I got included everything except two coaches. I found another one on ebay, but the last one eluded me (found a Mantua Pacific at the local used train shop, streamlining in order for that).
Then the other day I checked my box of unbuilt kits and found “Varney Pullman PA-300”. It is an 80’ pullman coach and, thanks to World War Two the sides weren’t decorated. The kit had an inspection date of 11/7/1946. The Athearn cars are only 75’ but the Concor is 80’ so it won’t really hurt anything to have another car that doesn’t match in length.
This is a wooden car with cardstock sides. The sides have window holes cut and are embossed with rivets, door and the stripe that runs along the windows. The wooden pieces have no such detail, and the wood is not bass. It has chips and slivers missing and lacks the same level of detail as the sides (or the plastic Athearn cars).
The kit comes with a tree of plastic parts, including roof vents, brake parts and the corner stairs. The plastic is crude compared to modern plastic. There was a pair of trucks in the box but they were freight trucks and I’m not sure they were original to the kit. I have a bag full of old passenger trucks so that wasn’t a problem.
I was a bit surprised by the instructions. They are one page, both sides and mostly diagrams plus a half page of tiny text. There are two half-size views, a ¾ view, an exploded view and a side view showing the ends of both the coach and baggage car but broken in the middle. The surprise is that even with all the gimmicks used to reduce the footprint of the diagrams they work effectively. The written instructions end with “Gordon Varney 1941.” The paper was yellowed, spindled and so brittle I tore it in half by accident.
On to construction. Having a bit of experience with older kits, the first thing I did was to check to see if the ends, top and bottom would be square when assembled. They weren’t. I cut off just a bit of the bottom to square it off. Then I assembled the bottom according to the instructions.
The roof is a molding that requires rounding along the ends. The instructions recommend a bit of whittling but the task is easily accomplished with a disk sander. There’s a single bead along the top of the roof of prototypes that curves down to the side and that bead has to be extended in the model. It is not mentioned in the instructions. Labelle passenger cars deal with the issue by adding a strip of wood trimmed round and so I did it here as well. It’s one of those tiny details that laymen may not notice but it jumps out to me if I built the car.
I spent a lot of time trying to make my car look like the Athearn cars. The roof on the plastic car has a series of seams running across it, I reproduced them crudely by scoring the roof and gluing string into the channel (paper would have been better). I added the doors to the undercar boxes with cardstock and a brake wheel to the end. I had a spare diaphragm set for the ends. When I was nearly finished and looked at the car with the sides on I decided the ends needed a bit more work to fit in and added a beam across the bottom with grab irons.
This a typical kit for the era in that the top, bottom and ends are structural. The ends are narrow for this sort of car and due to the length it feels like the whole thing is a little floppy. I ended up gluing ¼” blocks along the angles of the ends to provide more support. I also considered adding beams in the middle to support the both roof and sides but once I test fit the sides I decided there was no need.
Speaking of the sides, Varney’s plan is to glue in a sandwich with two cardstock sides and clear plastic in between. I just happened to have a plastic package from a track set that is the perfect size for the clear part, and Varney gave two extra sides to take care of the interior. It would have been nice if the inner piece wasn’t embossed but the whole idea works out pretty good. The instructions recommended painting the interior of the car black but I decided that wasn’t necessary.
The steps are historically accurate, unfortunately that means they are too tight for the truck-mounted couplers the rest of the train has and the car would have derailed on tighter curves. I ended up cutting them down where I could and trimming as much from the trucks as feasible to give them the necessary clearance. It was a compromise but a necessary one.
I spraypainted the car Testor’s silver and it looks pretty close to the other cars. I didn’t have the heart to paint the diaphrams. Microscale used to make decals for the Valley Flyer, no longer listed on their website but all things reside on Ebay. Had to order Kaydee 505’s too to replace the old horn hook couplers on the trucks.
I’m actually quite pleased with this car. Perhaps the next car I’ll use wood filler on the roof and ends and add rivet decals to the ends but overall the car should look good in the train when zooming by at 50 mph. Once couplers and decals are installed I’ll take another pic.


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## Murv2

Finished the second Ed Lee ore car, this one Buckhorn Mining. UP Harbor Mist Grey by Scalecoat is a little less blue than the preprinted sides, otherwise it came out pretty good.


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## Murv2

Put the racing stripes on the coach. That's Athearn on the right and Concor on the left.


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## Murv2

Roundhouse Plastic Boxcar and Sleeper
Having just finished a Roundhouse locomotive kit I needed something simple to be able to say I accomplished something (the engine shorts regularly and I can’t isolate it so I’m putting it away for a few weeks). Anyway I picked up a couple plastic Roundhouse kits: “40’ Roundtop Box Car 1085” and “50’ Passenger Car 5009” and went to work on them.
These are the notorious “Shaken Box” kits, the joke is that you can assemble them by shaking the box. That is pretty close to the truth. So long as you have a sharp knife to clean up flash, some kind of glue and a decent screwdriver these should be easy peasy for you. The most complicated part was stringing the truss rods on the passenger car.
These kits are complete, the only thing I did was put Kadee couplers instead of the horn hooks provided. They need no painting, though you could weather them if you had the urge. The trucks are shiny plastic but roll well.
The boxcar is nice but unremarkable (bought it because it says B&O); I’m not looking for fast construction but challenges so I will avoid Roundhouse plastic freight cars in the future. The passenger car though has a wonderful paint scheme and I will likely keep an eye out for enough to make a full train in the future. The Roundhouse Overton coaches are interesting too.


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## Stumpy

Ahh yes... the plastic "warsher" to secure the weight.


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## Murv2

Bathgate Caboose
I’m always excited to see a kit from a company I don’t recognize so when I got two Bathgate kits out of a lot from Ebay I was happy to find them. Both kits included a flyer listing their products: box cars, reefers, cabooses and “Coming soon” work train and passenger car kits. The other kit I picked up is the wrecker so they got that far at least. Otherwise I couldn’t find any information on the Bathgate line or the manufacturer “Fabricated Products Corporation” of East Orange, NJ.
This kit is the 38’ Erie Caboose. The instructions are a single sheet of shiny paper with a single crude diagram, one photo and a wall of text for directions. Trying to follow along is difficult and one line has been corrected by hand. One curiosity is the ladder in the picture is on the opposite side I’ve normally seen on cabooses (which is opposite from other cars). Looking at my other cabooses, I found the B&O wagontop had the ladder similarly located, all the rest were on the same side as freight cars.
The kit is made of thin cardstock for the sides, ends and cupola, wood for the inside, some wire and a few crude lead castings. The cupola roof appears to be a piece from an office folder. The wood pieces are labelled by stamp and some are precut, others not. Most of the wood appears to be pine, but there’s one chunk of balsa. The roofwalk is a single ¼” strip of wood with two grooves in it.
Assembly follows the usual pattern, build the frame, paint, and add the sides. The end platforms are pieced together from lead castings and wire you must bend yourself; the underside detail is limited. I bent the endrails as instructed then added strips of thin wood between the posts and glued them to the end casting to give the whole assembly some reinforcement and thickness.
The big problem I had with this kit was that after I had it half assembled, I found out the base was 1/4” too long. That meant that everything I’d already glued in place was wrong and had to be removed. The instructions didn’t list the length of the car so I didn’t realize until I was cutting out the car sides and held it up to see what the finished car would look like. I took the opportunity while the car was apart to sand grooves out of the two center blocks where the center windows overlapped them, but the wood is still visible. This is a design defect that should have been given more thought by the manufacturer.
After that slight SNAFU the car went together pretty well. The roof ribs are supposed to be made from that chunk of balsa, but it was warped and grainy so I found some scrap wood the right size and used it instead. I added an ounce of lead. I cut the sides long enough to overlap the ends but didn’t compensate for the window glass (the company provided a rather gnarly piece of clear sheet so I cut up a Kadee coupler box instead) and had to add thin strips along the corners to fill in.
The side rails were bent by hand. I found a round jar the same radius as the rails on other cabooses on the layout and wrapped the wire around it. The wire unbent a bit when I let it go so I found progressively smaller cylindrical objects and kept wrapping the wire and comparing to the jar until it was the same radius. Then I cut it into quarters and bent over the ends. While I was at it I added elbow handrails on the ends of the cars that weren’t mentioned in the kit, but every caboose I’ve seen have them.
The cupola sticks up from the top of the car and is just thin cardstock so I reinforced it a bit with wood and added some along the roof edge to give better adhesion. The diagram shows how to cut an 8-sided cap for a chimney but there isn’t anything about a chimney in the instructions and none in the picture so I ignored it.
The car came with trucks and couplers but the trucks were crude and I couldn’t tell if they were insulated so I replaced them with Walthers bronze trucks that are just as old but roll better. They’ll probably work even better once the vertigris wears off. I had to use Kadee underset couplers and add some washers underneath the trucks to get the couplers the right height.
So what are my final impressions of this kit? The cardstock is nicely made and the other pieces OK, other than that major issue with the length of the floor you’ll have a decent car when you’re done. It leaves a lot of room for customizing and detailing too. Overall I’ll keep the Bathgate line on the list of cars OK to buy and look forward to the Wrecker, It looks like a real challenge.


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## Murv2

Bachmann Plasticville Saloon and Barber Shop
I’m sure most of us have fond memories of Plasticville kits from our youth. I don’t. In fact, I don’t think my father or brother ever got far enough along on their layouts to put up buildings so this kit is the first I’ve been exposed to.
I decided to install a ranch on my layout to explain the cattle train and started looking about for an appropriate ranch house. I put in a search for HO ranch house and got tons of ranch-style homes, mostly older kits with attached garage. I really wanted one made of wood but I realized I was going to get nowhere this way. I ended up finding the Bachmann Old West Saloon and figured all I needed to do to convert it to a ranch house was change the swinging doors to solid and get rid of the floozy on the second floor.
The barber shop would be the office, the main entrance the house and the second floor the dormitory for the cowboys working the cattle. I envisioned this to be a smaller ranch, maybe in Florida instead of the west.
Plasticville kits were designed to be snap together, without even needing glue and came multicolored so painting isn’t required. In fact all the pictures show the building unpainted, except the floozy and cowboy at the door.
I ordered a kit off Amazon and got- an O scale trailer park. But there was a sticker on the box that said it was the HO saloon. Obviously someone at Amazon screwed up when they put on the sticker. So we filled out the form on the website, asked for another kit and took the wrong one to UPS for return. A couple days later I got another O scale trailer park. Either someone marked all the kits wrong or they sent the same one again! I’m not going to fight Amazon just to get the right thing so we filled the form out again, asked for our money back this time and bought the right kit off Ebay instead.
I don’t like the look of plastic. Having chosen to make this kit out of plastic it was imperative the building be painted in a different color. Most of the buildings on my layout are either red or brown, so I didn’t like the idea of another red building (though the stables will end up red I think). After consulting my daughters I decided powder blue with white trim would be best. That might be an odd choice for a building but this is a home as well as a business and I guess the wife got to pick the color.
After a trip to the hardware store for the appropriate colors I proceeded to-wait for my wife to go out for a few hours. We’re having a cold streak here and that means painting in the basement but SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) doesn’t need to smell proof I’m spray painting in the house so timing is critical for this step.
The walls were all painted blue then touched up white, the doors, window frames and rails painted white and the roof and floors all painted light brown. The brown came out sandy-feeling, not sure why but I decided to stain it darker then dry brush it to bring out the grain pattern. The stain was too thick but drybrushing made it lighter again so the overall effect wasn’t too bad.
As I mentioned this series of buildings are snap together, but with paint in the holes and on the pins I had to file off the paint and use extra force to snap everything together. A couple times one part would come apart after snapping in something else and one place never came together completely but hopefully no one will notice. Gluing would have helped.
Oh yeah, one of the banes to my existence cropped up, missing parts. In this case it was the staircase but I had a spare in a junk box. It’s wood and doesn’t really match the rest of the building but a coat of paint and hopefully no one will notice.
Anyway, once the stable and loading pens are done I’m going to fence in the entire ranch and add grass, dirt trails and cattle, lots of cattle.
This is a start. I’ll start on the stables after building a couple cars. I’m considering adding a small town in a part of the railroad I can’t fit a siding and may look for more Plasticville houses to fill it in. Maybe a ranch home…


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## Stumpy

Well done.

On working ranches it wasn't uncommon for the year-round hands to live in the main house. The foreman/ramrod at the very least...


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## Murv2

Built another Athearn/Menzies flatcar. This one is Clinchfield, a new railroad for me. This one came together nicely and the stake pockets fit, I think because I used thinner wire to hold them in place. For some reason the grab irons didn't break when I bent them either. The end rose up from the coupler pocket a bit, there's a tight fit in there you really can't get to with a file (maybe a saw?) but it's not too noticeable unless you are looking for it. The seams between the floor boards weren't cut deep enough, If I'd noticed early a few hundred strokes with a triangular file would have solved that. I stained and drybrushed the floor so it doesn't look so much like a single plank. Scalecoat boxcar red matched the color of the car precisely.
Anyway, good solid cars that look good on the layout. I'll need to look for an interesting load for it.


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## Murv2

Tyco Interlocking Tower

I’ve almost got my ranch finished and found I had a sliver of land trapped between two sets of tracks that I couldn’t include in the ranch. I’ve thought for some time I need to start putting more railroad administration buildings on my layout so this seemed like the perfect place for an interlocking tower. A trip to my local used-train shop found an unassembled kit still in the box “TYCOKIT No 7773 Interlocking Tower” The kit was made in Germany for Tyco and a quick check on google images showed it was similar to interlocking towers throughout the East and Midwest United States.

The first thing I thought when opening the box was “What a hideous shade of yellow.” Yellow is a common color for old railroad buildings but this wasn’t the earthy tan almost-schoolbus yellow, this was the overripe lemon yellow of well, nothing railroad related. The kit is designed to be assembled unpainted and comes in three colors to facilitate that, but it still looks like plastic and that shade of yellow had to go. (Sorry, forgot open box picture)

So what color would you paint it? I’m fond of the B&O so grey sides with blue trim seemed natural enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if the B&O never painted a building in this color scheme but no matter what it looks better than yellow. It was pretty easy to paint everything still on the trees and then cut them off for assembly. Touch up of the blue was easy enough.

The instructions are 1 ½ pages of plastic model-type instructions, mostly line drawings with dashed lines where everything attaches. I must admit though, this building is so simple you don’t really need instructions to fit everything in its proper place.

This kit has a lot of flash. Don’t be surprised if you have to spend quite a while cleaning it off. At least most of it isn’t that thick. Some of the pieces were firmly attached to the tree, I had to use a hobby saw instead of nippers to cut off the stairs and platform. Filing off mold lines is a bit of a project, I could have done better. Those dots on the back of the walls were pretty annoying because you have to get them flush to get the trim to line up right.

Fit and finish isn’t too bad, except for the corners. These don’t quite meet and it might be better to glue the sides together to the base then add the trim to make sure it all abuts.

The building has nice attachments, bins and boxes and such, but the only piece of flotsam is a wire drum without any wire. A bit more of that sort would have given the building a lived-in look. The base is OK but lacking any kind of sidewalk away from the doors, needed considering the irregular edges of the base. If you like building lighted and complete interiors this building has nice big windows so people could look inside.

One other trend I’ve noticed is I’m picking up cheap plastic buildings now instead of wood ones, have to stop doing that. I have designs on the BTS City Point car house, maybe that should be next…


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## J.Albert1949

Nice job on the tower.
Here's mine, built back in the 1970's, still in the "factory colors":


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## Murv2

That is not the shade of yellow in my kit. That actually looks respectable.


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## Murv2

The ranch is pretty much finished. I have a wagon on order (the bull on the trail will be staring it down) and wish I had more cowboys but most of the ones I could find online were either outlaws or fighting natives. 








The Stockade is Life Like, Windmill and water tank were bought second hand, house and barn are Bachmann Old time. Fence is Atlas and cattle are from all over the place. There is a Woodland Scenics Cowboy set in there.








The owner inspecting his domain.








The corral is around the corner in the first photo.


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## Murv2

Marker Lights Boxcar Part 2
Finished my second Marker Lights USRA Boxcar. This one was Southern Pacific and had a price stamped on the box, $4.95. Compared to the 20 to 30 dollars modern wood kits cost it seems a fair price. I must admit I wasn’t as enthusiastic about building this one as I wanted to be because someone had already started it. It felt like I was cleaning up someone else’s mess or something. After I got into it though it was fun.
The only suggestion I’d make if someone chooses to build one of these boxcars is to replace the I beams with plastic if possible. The pieces are so short and delicate you are sure to break them while preparing them for the build.
So, a great build, too bad the company didn’t build other kits. Still, if I find this kit with a different railroad I will consider it.


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## Murv2

American Beauty Shorty Coach
I have a great deal of confusion when it comes to passenger cars. You see, there are 40’ foot cars, 50’, 60’ and 80’ (rounded). The cars lengthened as time passed but how do you know what length car to use at what time? Also, and probably the big source of confusion for me is that some model railroad companies made their cars shorter than the prototypes to make them run on narrower curves. How do you know that a 60’ car is a prototype or a compromise? There are 70’ models too; My Valley Flyer has 4 Athearn cars that are 70 scale feet and two from other manufacturers that are 80’. Some cars are nice enough to admit they were shortened by being labelled “Shorty”. My layout has wide enough curves that I don’t need shorter cars, so I try to avoid them.
Anyway, I got a Pennsylvania T-1 4-4-4-4 for Christmas and knew that I needed to build a train to go with it. I kept an eye on Ebay and eventually ran across a set of six Pennsylvania passenger car kits at a reasonable price and snapped it up. Turns out two of the cars are Shorty’s. I should have paid more attention to the description. It is unfortunate, but now that I have them, I might as well go ahead and build them.
One of the things that bugs me about really old kits is that sometimes there is a lot of dirt built up inside the boxes. Not sure why that usually happens but in this case I know what it is, rust. The end diaphragms are made of steel plates and they rusted badly, so much that some are missing chunks. The steel sides rusted just a little bit, maybe because they were sandwiched in with the wood top and bottom. The kits must have been stored in a humid environment.
There were some parts missing, as well as the instructions. Fortunately HOseeker had them on file. There was a roof template included in the kit which I used. There was only one complete set of diaphragms so I stole the second set from the other shorty coach kit, will have to come up with something when I build that one. There is an interesting coupler mounting system that is designed to keep the coupler centered but increase its swing in tight curves. I don’t have tight curves on my mainline so I’m just mounting the couplers normally.
This kit is typical with the frame being top, bottom and end blocks and painted sides, in this case made of steel that go on afterwards. The bottom has skirting with cut outs for the trucks, except this one had only one cut out. I checked the other shorty and it did too. I decided to go ahead and make the other cutout using a Dremel, but the though occurs that maybe there is some other instruction I don’t have. Maybe Shorty’s are supposed to run in pairs?
This kit is almost all wood, with a few pieces of stamped metal. There were only two plastic pieces, which were typical crude pieces like most early plastic. The Diaphragm was foam rubber. It isn’t a typical accordian-looking piece like Pullman heavyweights and in fact I thought about replacing them until I found a photo in a Broadway Limited book that showed what may be the prototype for this diaphragm in a 1938 car.
All the tanks and boxes under the car are cut from wood beams; the dowel was in the kit but the other pieces of wood were missing. The parts on the roof were all in the kit, I added a wire attaching all the radio antenna posts. I might not add the antenna to the other shorty because the pictures in the book show that not all cars had them.
The good news is that the top, bottom, ends and sides not only fit but fit tightly. That makes the final product look better. After reading the directions about adding the grab irons I decided not to try on this car, it involves drilling holes through the steel sides using #75 drill bits and the potential for breaking bits or ruining the paint seemed not worth the final design. I’m sure I’ll kick myself everytime I look at the car. I wish the clear plastic used for the windows was a little thicker so it doesn’t look wavy, glass isn’t like that.
Anyway, turned out to be a pretty nice car, The paint job is pretty sharp. I wish it was 80 feet but mixed in with the rest I’m sure it will look good. Not a big fan of the Pennsylvania Railroad but I’m warming up to it.


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## Murv2

Silver Sides Passenger Car

As mentioned, I bought six Pennsylvania passenger cars to make a train for my Christmas present to pull. Half the cars were American Beauties as previously reviewed. The other three were “SILVER SIDES HO PASSENGER KIT HO1 70 FT PENN MODERNIZED COACH”. I did a little research (ain’t the internet wonderful?) and determined the cars are model P70 FA, an updated version of the P70. It seems the Pennsylvania measured their passenger cars based on the size of the actual passenger compartment, so they called them P70 even though the cars are 80 feet long on the outside.

Anyway, the ‘silver sides’ of this car are stamped aluminum. The rivet detail is nice if not a bit overbearing, and the window frames and doors are inset just a bit. The roof is shaped wood that has to be rounded at the ends by sanding and the floor a sheet of basswood. The ends are cast lead and are screwed into both the roof and floor. The car comes with cast lead diaphrams. The stairs and some parts under the car are cast, the rest either dowels or blocks of wood.

This car is missing a few things: The handrails beside the doors for example. And the ends are completely open, allowing you to look down the length of the car. A superdetailer could have a field day adding vestibules, interiors and swapping the underbody boxes and tanks for cast versions with detail like hinges and straps.

Instructions are one page, 1/3 wide column of text and the rest diagrams. Text is not extensive but descriptive enough to get the job done. Diagrams are a bit small and include a blown-up view, half-size bottom diagram and a few detail shots. Between text and diagrams I didn’t have any unanswered questions about where things went.

Assembly was straightforward, with no real surprises except that I found (while looking for directions) one kit of the three was pretty much complete but for painting the sides. They’d also cut open one of the doors to make it look open, I’m hoping to find a porter to put in it (I know it’s on the worktable somewhere). Anyway, it confuses me to find half-finished kits. Why would you start a project and not finish it? You get most of the way done and just put it back in the box? I guess life sometimes interferes with our projects, this must be one of those cases.

I’m a little bit concerned about the paint, it doesn’t seem to be sticking to the sides as well as I’d expect. I’m going to need to do a bit of research on primer especially designed for aluminum. Also, the clear plastic provided for the windows is tinted a bit brown either through age or on purpose and a bit warped. Fresh mylar would be a good choice. I installed thin wood blocks between the windows to provide gluing points for the plastic, as mentioned the window frames stick up a bit and it would be difficult to glue the window to the edge like that.

The hardest task building this car is the [email protected]#$ racing stripes. They are decals, maybe eighth of an inch wide and about seven inches long and getting them to line up perfectly over the lumpy riveted car sides is almost impossible. The first attempt was a complete disaster, I ruined the paint and had decals stuck everywhere. So I quit the project for a day, then went back the next day, painted over the mistakes and read the decal instructions.

What I ended up doing was practically floating the decals in water when I first put them on the side. Then I pushed them around to the place they needed to go with a paint brush. Problem is the decal wants to center itself on the water droplets, so once you get the stripes close you must alternate between wicking off the water with the edge of a napkin and pushing the stripe back into place. Also, the stripes tend to teeter-totter on you; you push up here and the stripe goes down over there.

It helps to look down the line from the end, shortening your focal point and exaggerating the curves you are trying to eliminate:








After you’ve gotten rid of as much water as possible and the stripes are right where you want them you (very gently) brush over the line with Microsol. I found that cutting the stripes into more manageable lengths helps, and it isn’t that difficult to align the pieces on the ends, the sharp corners stand out. Anyway, the stripes on mine aren’t perfect but a casual look isn’t too embarrassing.

So, another basic car that really looks good when finished but could use a few points for style. I’m going to add some details on the last car just to see how it comes out.


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## Lemonhawk

Reminds me of putting racing stripes on my car. you flooded the entire area with windex then moved it to where it was supposed to be and squeegeed it down! Probably a lot easier to do on a big car than a HO passenger car!


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## Murv2

Having sworn off Comet reefers I find myself in possession of another one from a random lot. This one is the Green Bay and Western, a small railroad that ran across the middle of Wisconsin but ended up with 500 reefers. The kit was missing several parts so I used Tichy ladders and made the hatches out of some scrapwood I found in the bin. The result is more presentable than the others, in fact I think it came out OK. These will never satisfy purists but they are neat cars and join the reefer train.
My next project is a BTSRR car barn that is going on the end of the crummy track. The parts are stained, just waiting for me to start.


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## Lemonhawk

Actually looks nice and clean! I like the green color! The door hinges just look like print except for the locking bar, but in a string of them, no one would know!


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## J.Albert1949

Green Bay looks good, Murv.


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## Murv2

Better Than Scratch Car House
(I have built stuff from BTSRR before I started doing reviews, but this is the first building from them.)
Let me start by saying I love laser-cut wood. It is evenly cut, with sharp contours where needed and the burnt part where the laser worked adds character to the structure, though I doubt that was the original intention. What is more, the wood used is apparently selected for even grains and it looks much better on a miniature building than wood with a heavy grain structure or age rings visible. Unlike older kits, where you get strips of wood that must be cut the right length and angle, laser-cut wood is already cut to length in most cases.
This is BTS Kit #27803 “City Point Car House”, based on a structure on the City Point Railroad in Virginia. That railroad ran from City Point to Petersburg, VA. During the Civil War the union used the railroad to supply the forces besieging Petersburg, and the car house was built then to service the rolling stock on the railroad.
The instructions are eight pages of text, diagrams, pictures of the model and include one photo of the actual building. They are very well-written and the only part I was a little confused about was the worktables, but there is a side view of one peeking out of the building that answered my question. The first three pages are more general in nature and I glossed over them, maybe a mistake but I got the building done so whatever.
All the wood is in sheets of different thicknesses, individual piece held to the sheet using little tabs easily cut with a knife. Mostly there are thicker frame pieces and thinner siding pieces. I started by staining everything, the walls with Driftwood and the floor with Ebony which turned out too dark. I sprayed the frame with dullcoat just as a preservative. Painting is also a valid option but I like the look of natural wood. I stained both sides so the wood would not warp and except for the doors it worked. I let the sheets dry thoroughly, then the kit sat for a week while I played with some new steam engines before starting assembly.
The engineering in the kit is very well thought out and thanks to the laser-cut framing, assembly is fairly easy. The frame is four pieces with all the beams on each wall cut out of a single piece of wood. I was especially impressed with the windows; because this kit has an interior, they had to be careful to make the windows look right on both sides and they succeeded by making a fragile sandwich of the windowpanes with clear plastic sheet between.
The roof is a bunch of strips of paper with adhesive on one side. The interior of the roof is scored to serve as a placement guide and worked perfectly. I stained the shingles before removing from the sheet and wish I had dusted the roof after I finished it (but I haven’t had much luck dusting lately, it ends up looking like mud)
In fact, the only thing that looked so oppressively time consuming and fiddly I didn’t want to do it was installing the battens (those little strips of wood that cover the cracks between planks on outside walls). When I found out it was optional I threw it over immediately. I wonder if they could laser cut wood with the battens milled in already.
If I had anything to criticize in this kit (And I have since I am going to) it is the castings. They are made of soft lead, the barrels are not round, one piece is actually slanted and there is so much flash the detail on the sides of crates is ruined trying to file it off. The small barrels and tool chest are nice, and the pigeons for the roof a pleasant surprise. A more fastidious modeler would want to replace most of the castings.
Nice that this building has a fairly complete interior. In addition to the castings of barrels and crates there are sawhorses, ladders, tables and best of all, a boxcar under construction! I cannot say anything bad about that, in fact I was tempted to go ahead and put siding and make if a finished car. I dug up a few workmen from the people box and that was all I needed, though a super detailer would want to add tools lying around and more stuff hanging from the walls.
One final comment, I’d intended to keep the track inside the building so I can run cars inside it (the building is on the end of the crummy track) but found out the doors were designed for Civil War-era cars and modern cabooses would not fit, so I moved the car frame to its rightful place and put the open door facing track end.
Overall I’m extremely happy with this kit and look forward to building the boxcars I bought at the same time.


----------



## Stumpy

Nice build! BTS makes good stuff.

I build the McCabe Car Repair Shop which is a little bigger. I was so impressed with how the kit looked that I did it "under construction".


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## Murv2

That's awesome! Where'd you get your people, they look so much better than mine?


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## Stumpy

Most are the WS carpenter crew.









Woodland Scenics HO A1947 Carpenter Crew


Woodland Scenics HO A1947 Carpenter Crew




www.modeltrainstuff.com


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## Murv2

Just thought I'd close the circle on the Pennsylvania passenger cars after finishing what I thought would be the last two. I ended up with three Silver Sides coaches (P70FAR), two shorty sleepers and one POC70 observation car. The coaches were all the same model and I'm not going to dwell on their differences resulting from missing parts. 
The American Beauty observation car was missing instructions and some parts, so I basically made up the roof and underside details based on some pictures I found of brass models of observation cars. The window configuration is not prototypical. Unfortunately the rust issue on all the American Beauty cars resulted in some damage on the outside of the painted sides and the stripes reflect it. Also got some glue on one of the window panes, oops. 
The kit included a pair of trucks you had to assemble, 13 parts each. They had real springs and rivets holding the center to the side plates, and roll pretty good. 
I'd planned on that being it but ended up ordering a combination car to put behind the engine. I have room on one passenger yard track for a 7 car train so this will be it. Gonna take a break first and build something else, something not brown...


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## Lemonhawk

Passenger cars are always great looking! Your kits come out looking great, a real tribute to your skill and patience!


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## Murv2

Berkshire Valley Models Farm Wagon

When I started model railroading again I made several rules. First I ruled all steam, but broke that. Then I ruled no plastic model buildings, then I broke that too. The one rule I managed to keep is no automobiles. I have to admit though, I’ve been tempted to buy a Cadillac to put in front of Boss Hogg on the ranch house porch.

So it’s wagons only. Today’s fare is kit #2100, a farm wagon made by Berkshire Valley models. The company is still in business. They have about a dozen different wagons, as well as some buildings and other scenery for railroads.

The instructions come with two pages of text and three very nice pictures: one of the pieces, one of subassemblies and one of the finished wagon. Only lacking is a three-quarters view but it is a minor quibble.

The kit itself is laser-cut wood for the body and running gear and cast wheels and axles. The wood is part plywood and part regular wood and all very thin. In fact there are a lot of little parts, tweezers will be necessary. The cast parts are very clean with little flash.

The instructions have an interesting read about colors; all the real wagons I’ve seen were that dirty grey color from being left out in the sun too long. I never really thought about whether they painted them back in the day.

Assembly is pretty clean, the only trouble I had was lining up the tabs in the wagon body. Once it came together though it looked good though. It feels delicate, but once it’s in place it won’t have any hard use. I finished the kit with horses from Shapeways and some random other touches.

So all in all a good purchase. I have plans for a few other places that will need wagons, I’ll keep this company in mind.









(horses and person not included in the kit)








This is what comes in the kit when assembled








Ferdinand has found a nice patch of grass and is not inclined to share the road.


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## Murv2

Finished the Baggage car for my Pennsylvania passenger train. It was a Silversides from JC models just like the others. This one was, I think PB70D model. The only issue I had was with the stripes, baggage cars didn't get stripes while passenger cars did, combination cars weren't mentioned. After doing extensive research (looking through Goggle images) it looked like more combination cars didn't have stripes than did and to be honest they are a pain anyway, so I left them off this car. Fingers crossed that closes the book on Pennsylvania passenger cars.


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## Murv2

Bowser Boxcar
I bought this car, "English's Model Railroad Supply HO 40' Box Car Kits West India Fruit and Steamship Co #3-1032" because I'd never heard of the West India Fruit and Steamship Co. The instructions inside are from Bowser, of an X-31 round roof boxcar. It turns out to be an easy plastic build, a few screws and switch to Kadee couplers. I found out it was missing one truck. The one that was there had a plastic frame and wheels, brass axles and both a leaf and coil spring on each side. I replaced them with regular Bettendorfs. So, nice kit from an interesting company.


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## Stumpy

I have a WIF car somewhere in my to-be-built box, but I'm certain it's not a Bowser. Now I gotta dig it out and see how they differ. 

All of the old BB, Roundhouse, et. al. kits get Kadees and metal wheelsets and weight. And if the trucks won't "tune" those get replaced also.


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## Murv2

Stumpy said:


> I have a WIF car somewhere in my to-be-built box, but I'm certain it's not a Bowser. Now I gotta dig it out and see how they differ.
> 
> All of the old BB, Roundhouse, et. al. kits get Kadees and metal wheelsets and weight. And if the trucks won't "tune" those get replaced also.


I know how you feel, I just finished my truck replacement program, now I have "The History of the HO Scale Model Railroad Truck" in a box:


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## Stumpy

I have a box like that. 

Although recently I have started throwing the old trucks & wheels away instead of in the box.


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## Murv2

Trail-Blazers Combination Car

I recently finished a project converting an 0-4-0T Teakettle to an 0-4-4T Forney.









Building an Historic Steam Locomotive 2 - Forneycation


I am a collector, always have been, it is part of my nature. When I got back into model railroading I wanted an all-steam layout and immediately started trying to collect all the engine configurations in the Whyte Notation system. You can fill out much of the line quite easily and some oddities...




www.modeltrainforum.com





The Forney had old-fashioned cowcatchers on both ends and there was no way I could get a knuckle coupler to fit without it looking ridiculous. So I determined to build a car with link and pin on one end and knuckle coupler on the other that would be more-or-less permanently attached to the Forney.

I intended this to be a commuter engine so I started looking for two Civil War-era passenger cars and found this one: Trail-Blazers Kit No. 56-98 Combination Car, Manufactured by Advance Molding Corp, 65 W. 21st St, New York 10, NY. I looked it up on google maps and the building is still there, now occupied by an Indian-themed cocktail bar. The car is part of the “General” set that included mail, passenger, baggage and combination cars plus the engine. I know it’s authentic because it says so on the box.

Anyway this is a plastic kit. It comes with four plastic slabs for top, bottom and sides plus ends, stairwells, trucks, brake wheels and crude plastic couplers unique to this set. Even the wheels are plastic. Only metal parts are truss rods, handrails and brake staffs. The plastic is canary yellow and I ended up priming it with grey before painting it the proper color.

The plastic is very clean to my eye, with good detail (if simple) and only the roof was warped. One queen post was missing, had to cobble that together using bits of plastic and wire. Most everything fit together well and didn’t require a great deal of fitting. I clamped the roof on and glued the heck out of it, hopefully that will prevent it from curling back up again.

The kit came with Western and Atlantic decals, I needed a different railroad so didn’t use them but wouldn’t have anyway because they were so old and yellow. I replaced the wheels with steel wheels, installed they were a little looser than most trucks but didn’t fall apart so I’m calling it good.

So there you have it. I prefer wood to plastic in my kits but this one came together nicely and I’m on the lookout for a coach to finish the commuter train. I already found and purchased both flat and boxcars from the same company.


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## Murv2

Trail Blazers Boxcar

This is the second Trail Blazers car I’ve built, and a continuation of their General train line. These are decent plastic kits, sturdier than modern plastic with clean lines and little warping. I’ve come to the conclusion that they are intended to be models and not model railroad cars, but don’t let that stop you, they look like they can survive the transition.

I don’t usually remark on historical accuracy, but in this case… First, the trucks provided are Fox trucks. They weren’t invented until 1889 and as this is intended to compliment the General they should be wood beam trucks. Second, the decals include a great amount of detail common to 20th century freight cars but not to Civil War freight cars. The decal wasn’t really a problem though, I couldn’t separate them from the paper and ended up putting other decals on, more appropriate for an older car. Kept the trucks… Third, they are taller and wider than Civil War boxcars.

Speaking of the trucks, I replaced the two-piece plastic wheel sets with metal. Modern Walthers wheels were too long so I routed around the old truck museum and found a couple brass ones with shorter axles. The truck frames are three-piece, normal plastic and they don’t roll well. Hopefully some graphite will help.

I ended up painting the car darker brown rather than boxcar red, not for any reason in particular though, it’s just what I had. I doubt there was a consistent shade of boxcar red, well ever so perhaps modellers worry about shades too much.

So, another nice, simple early model of an early boxcar. I’m going to look for a coach to go with the other car, and this one will join the W&A freight train. Still have a flat car to build.


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## Murv2

Red Ball Container Car

One of the things that surprised me when I got back into model railroading was how much older containerized freight was than I thought. The idea started when trucks became common in the 1920’s. The containers weren’t designed to be interchangeable like modern ones, nor (AFAIK) were they transferred to ships, but the basic idea, loading a box at the factory, shipping it by truck to the nearest railroad, ride the train to the destination city then unloading it at the customer were set up before WW2.

I built a NYC containerized freight car from Northeastern Scale Models two years ago, this one is from Red Ball, ‘LCL CONTAINER CAR PRR HO #4322’. First thing you notice before even opening the box is this kit is heavy, 9.7 ounces assembled and painted. While the wood blocks used for individual containers add significantly, the vast majority of the weight is from all the cast pieces that make up the sides and ends of the car.

The instructions are one page of small print, line drawings and the brake kit instructions copied onto the page. Lacking is an explanation of how the brakes are piped unique to the car, side views and most importantly, illustrations of decal placement. I’m pretty sure I got it wrong but even an extensive search for images of the car didn’t turn up any specific Pennsylvania examples of this model car.

As mentioned each container consists of a wood block, arched on top with two cast plates to make the front and back. While this is an efficient way to produce containers, the blocks are not all the same size and I wonder if the castings are supposed to stick out beyond the flats? Two coats of sanding sealer minimized the appearance of the wood grain.

Bottom detail is pretty simplistic with a fishbelly bottom and a standard brake kit. There’s an additional tank under there not common on freight cars, maybe has to do with express trains? I decided not to pipe the brakes because there is no explanation for how the tank is attached. The top of the car is almost all cast, end castings, side castings, braces. The only wood parts on the car itself are the floor and supports behind the end pieces. There are even little triangular separators between the containers.

Unfortunately, that is where the happy story ends. I painted the car Pullman Green from Scalecoat (looks black in the pictures but is really dark green). The first two decals shredded when I tried to put them on. In this case I think they dried out rather than missing the top coat, but regardless they couldn’t be used in their current state. I put a coat of gloss varnish on the decals which rendered them useable but made them stiffer and I couldn’t get them all to lie down flat, especially across the rivets in the sides.

Then when I went to flat coat the finished model it went all frosty on me. The weather changed and it was cool and windy, that must have had an effect. I tried the old second coat trick, it looked better but still pretty bad so I hand painted flat coat over the worst of it. Now it’s blotchy but not a complete disaster. The flat coat emphasized the places where the decals didn’t lie flat.

So there you have it, a good kit ruined by old decals and humidity. I might consider another one of these if I can find new decals for it.


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## Murv2

BTSRR Boxcar

BTSRR is an active company that primarily produces laser-cut wood kits. Their focus is on the 19th century, with an extensive line of Civil War equipment and buildings. I built a couple car kits of theirs before I started reviews and reviewed the Car Barn a few months ago. Their lumber mill line is quite extensive as well, and if I had the space and scenery-building skill I’d love to try it.

Anyway, this kit is #29527, USMRR Horizontal Sheathed House Car. During the Civil War the US Military took over or built 2,000 miles of track, primarily in captured territory and the United States Military Railroad was the agency established in 1862 to operate that track. They built their own locomotives and cars as well as capturing rolling stock or collecting it from Northern Railroads.

House cars were what early boxcars were called, and as they were made from wood, one at a time. There were many different versions and patterns used. This car is based on Civil War photos.

The instructions are quite extensive, including massive amounts of text, diagrams and photographs. You shouldn’t have any problem figuring out what goes where, though the diagrams don’t necessarily follow the instructions in order. The parts are mostly laser-cut wood, probably bass wood for the most part on sheets with tiny tabs holding the individual pieces to the sheet. A couple baggies of plastic and metal parts complete the kit. Decals, trucks and couplers are not included.

Before I started the kit I stained all the siding pieces and roof, inside and out. I’ve found through experience that this ensures the crevasses between individual beams cut into the wood fill in (spray paint often doesn’t find its way in there, and the stain hides the bare wood) and prevents the finished boxcar from warping when you paint it.

Assembly is straightforward; the parts fit well and require only a little sanding to fit properly. The most time I spent was waiting for the glue to cure on parts that needed drilling. All drill holes are marked by laser holes so putting the holes in the right places is easy. I must warn you, there are some tiny parts in the kit, so either use a magnifying glass and tweezers or do without those parts. They give you extras of the tiniest pieces so if you lose one it’s not a disaster.

You may want to glue a piece of wood on the back at the top of the door to provide additional support as it is butted to the frame and rather thin.

Painting the car is a bit of a problem. The instructions recommend Floquil Red Oxide but of course Floquil is long out of business. I went online to find a color conversion chart and the recommendation was for British Crimson from a company that was also out of business. In the end I did my normal fallback, took a trip to the hardware store to find an interesting color.

I decided upon “Georgia Clay”, a little brighter than boxcar red but not quite as red as caboose red. Spraypainted the whole thing and decided to leave the underside the same color. Decals came from Microscale. 

One of the things I find of interest when building cars from various eras is how each generation becomes more complex than the last. Just looking at the progression at the number, amount and locations of grab irons, steps and ladders can really date the car. I’ve included a photo of a modern car from the ‘Cars that Displease Me’ box so you can compare.

Anyway, I highly recommend BTSRR kits. They have small pieces but are well-designed, uncomplicated and come together easily. I’d even suggest one as a starter kit for someone wanting to build their own rolling stock.


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## Lemonhawk

Looks like its a fun build. That said, its a really ugly box car.


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## Murv2

Limited Editions Sleeper
I got ten of these cars in a trade from a fellow MTF denizen in exchange for some N gauge rolling stock I had sitting on a shelf for 20 years. They are all cars intended for the Santa Fe Chief, apparently from 1938-ish, with corrugated sides and smooth roofs. I have an A-B unit of Santa Fe F-7’s so these cars will make a nice train to go with it.
While researching the company on the internet I found SPDaylight.com, the company that currently owns the rights to the kits. They explain the cars were made in the 70’s by a guy who knew a bit about aluminum extrusion and the two principal parts are made out of aluminum extrusions, cut then milled in the right spots to turn them into the floor and roof of the cars. Different types of cars are modelled with different window strips. Mr. Anderson was primarily interested in the Southern Pacific Daylight train, but Pullman built the cars for other trains too and Limited Editions released them as well.
The cars come in an impossibly small box and include all the basic parts to build the car. Lacking are undercarriage details other than the bolsters and frame, an interior and diaphragms. The undercarriage tanks and air conditioner boxes were available as separate detail kits but do not appear to be available anymore. Most of it wouldn’t be important for a runner (vice a modeler) but the parts that stick down below the skirting should have been included in the basic kit, plus the gratings that show up on the diagrams.
The instructions are generous if not overwhelming. A four-page pamphlet on the basic kit assembly, another one on this specific car type, including a floorplan and diagrams of both sides and the bottom, a top template and parts list. The back of the box has basic instructions as well.
Some metalwork is involved in building this kit. If you have a hand drill and a steady hand you can probably get away with it, but a drill press would be better. You’ll also need to tap the floor for screws to hold on the trucks and coupler. Otherwise Walthers goo will hold everything together.
The worst part of this kit are the door castings. They are one piece of clear plastic, and the molding is brittle and doesn’t fit right. In order to make it fit I recommend gluing the ends to the floor, hold the roof on with a rubber band and file the doors to fit. I glued the doors in before I realized they needed fitting and they came out a little slaunch-wise and were a pain to file. I also broke off a corner trying to cut off some extra plastic, hopefully a little paint will hide the repair.
They recommend painting the metal pieces, which seems counterintuitive, after all they look like metal anyway. But metal corrodes and these will oxidize eventually too. You can polish the metal then coat with something like varnish to get a mirror-like finish, if you choose this route keep in mind there are seams you scribe into the roof (hint, don’t mark both sides then try to match them, the lines won’t be parallel), polishing will need to be done first. I decided to paint mine with testor’s silver. The side panels come in the appropriate color already (silver for mine)
I bought Walthers trucks for this car, they had the right model (silver were out of stock so I bought black and painted them). One thing that annoys me about Walthers trucks is the stupid big-headed screws that MUST be screwed in from the top. I had to cut the bolsters off the center and throw them away because those screws rubbed against them. If the screws were on the bottom they’d be hidden and the top of the truck would be flush.
Regarding weight, the NMRA recommends 6.5 oz for cars this length, once assembled this one weighed in at 7.1 oz so weights aren’t needed.
After hemming and hawing a few days I decided to put in an interior, then after building it decided to put in people, then after painting them decided to put in a light kit. The interior was a breeze to cobble together with sheet plastic because there’s an at-scale floor plan in the instructions, and the resulting interior lines up with the windows on the side of the car. Once the lighting kit arrives I can adjust the roof for a better fit.
Overall, I think these kits make nice cars. I’m sure I can do better on the next one. If you are looking for a different challenge after building a bunch of wood or plastic cars one of these will certainly fit the bill.


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## vette-kid

Hey murv, nicely done. After reading your comments I'm sure they are in the right hands. The owner did mention he is trying to get undercarriage details made (I think I sent you a few samples he gave me), although I'm not sure where he is with that venture. 

Sent from my SM-G781U using Tapatalk


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## Lemonhawk

Nice clean looking passenger cars! I don't know why, but I really like passenger trains, I probably have more passenger cars than freight cars!


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## Murv2

GC Laser Caboose Servicing Station
I made the mistake of perusing Ebay for cabooses and found this caboose servicing station. I figured it would be a nice bit of kit to fill a blank spot on the crummy track, and it looked like an interesting project so a couple days later it appeared at my door.
The instructions are in two half-sheets of paper, both sides. They read like plastic model instructions, with lots of diagrams. I didn’t have any problem following them, although at the end I found a couple pieces on the sheets that I’d missed but when I went back through the instructions I found them, I just missed it.
This kit has a lot of parts, maybe 100. That is a lot of tiny pieces for so small a kit so even a reasonable person can expect to use tweezers to finish it. That said, everything fit together nicely and the finished kit looks very much like the pictures. I stained the bare wood (have to throw out the can of driftwood before all the buildings on the layout end up that color) and the only piece I had to paint was the tank.
In fact the tank was the only piece that didn’t come out perfect. Wrapping the paper around a stack of chipboard lozenges didn’t work out as well as it should have. It may be on me though; the paper might have been inside out. Also getting it crammed inside the crossbeams turned out to be a pain. A minor quibble, don’t let it put you off the kit.
One really creative thing the designer did was set up the sheets to act as jigs for construction. All the pieces that ended up being hard to assemble loose were glued together while held in place by the scraps left over on the burn sheets. The stairs especially benefited from this concept.
Bottom line, this is a nice kit of an uncommon structure. I highly recommend it. I went on the company’s website and there are a bunch of interesting kits in there, I’ll keep them in mind for the future.


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## Murv2

Here's another Athearn tinclad boxcar. This one is an original Athearn as opposed to a Menzies, but it suffers the same issues with fit. The basic problem is that wood is not a precision material but metal is. In this case it's compounded by missing parts, but bottom line: it takes a bunch of work to make these fit together right and I'm not sure how to do it. 
I think the best way is to build the wood frame then fit all the tin pieces to it using rubber bands and clamps. then you can sand down the frame in the places needed to get the metal to fit together. That's a lot of parts to hold still but (for example) I found out this wood frame was 1/8" too tall after I glued it together and didn't see the ends didn't line up right until I had the sides and z-rails glued in already.
This particular model also suffered because the sides rubbed together for 70+ years, I had to touch it up and of course the colors aren't a perfect match. 
Santa Fe put lots of neat stuff on the sides of their cars, including this one. Anyway, must stay away from Athearn tinclads...


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## Old_Hobo

Found this at my LHS today…..didn’t buy it though, not into the vintage kits….


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## Murv2

Finished my second Limited Editions sleeper. Took a while, mostly because of the worst cold I've had in 10 years. This one fit together better than the first one because I had an idea what to expect, but still, the side panels are a problem. If you glue them in place top and bottom you can't open the car up anymore but if you don't they don't seem to fit right. I put braces in the middle of the car to hold up the panel, next car I'm putting three on a side instead of one.
Fixing the roof permanently was a conundrum. I ended up gluing a chunk of wood at the ends of the roof and putting a screw in the ends of the car. I wish I could make it less obvious. 
Built an interior, this car is all cabins. It's nice not guessing the floor plan. I'm still guessing colors.
For painting I ran out of Testor's silver spray paint, and after going to two shops I settled on Chrome instead of silver. It's a little darker but shinier. I think I'm going to order silver and maybe paint these cars both colors, the difference is slight.
Anyway, on to the next project.


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## Murv2

Megow’s Tank Car

Megow is one of the oldest model railroad car makers in HO scale. I’ve already reviewed their B&O wagon top boxcar; this is the review for kit Q-25m The Gulf Tank car.

Although they were the height of technology at the time, none of Megow’s kits are for rivet counters now. If you want an absolutely prototypical car that will look good in a railroad magazine these aren’t kits worth pursuing. So why build them at all? There are a few reasons I find myself drawn to them:


History. As I said these kits are some of the earliest HO kits made. HO was made feasible when electric motors could be made small enough to fit inside the shell of an HO-scale locomotive, and the first electric OO locomotives were built in Germany in 1924. It took a while to make its way to the United States but by the late 30’s several companies were making trains and track in HO scale. So if you want to know how your grandfather played with trains these kits are a good start.
Challenges. Modern kits take advantage of plastic, resin and 3D printers to produce highly detailed and interesting kits. Old kits are made of wood and metal, so the challenges you face trying to turn out an attractive car are different and require different skills. For example, how do you add weight to a car that doesn’t have any empty space?
Nostalgia. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and while my dad and older brother had much plastic equipment, wood and metal cars showed up on the layout as well. In fact the only car I have left of my dad’s is an old Silver Streak caboose.
On to the review.

To start, the instructions: These are typical for older kits and consist of a few paragraphs with general guidance and then more-or-less “make it look like the diagram”. The diagrams are very well done but require some examination to process. The cross-sections are helpful. I wish they showed how to pipe the brake system. Anyone having worked an Ambroid kit should have little difficulty working through the instructions.

Parts: This kit is a typical early kit, with a few special pieces and a bunch of chips of wood that you form into the pieces not provided. In this case the tank is a piece of broom handle with a hole drilled for the turned wood dome (a cast dome would have been a major improvement).

I believe they also provided cast saddles but these were missing and the one chunk left had all the earmarks of zamac cancer, so pretty good odds you’ll have to replace them. Otherwise a few plastic castings and a bunch of wire complete the parts. Hook and loop couplers are provided and there is a cutout in the box to hold trucks, they weren’t there but I would replace them anyway..

The wood is probably not bass wood but not too grainy (except the tank, probably maple). It isn’t as finely cut as modern bass wood and at least one piece was warped a bit. Much of it was already cut up, I assume by an earlier attempt to assemble.

One problem is weight: I weighed the assemblage of parts and it came out 1 ½ oz too light to meet NMRA standards. But there isn’t anyplace to put weight, the tank is a solid piece of wood. I thought about replacing the center beam of the under carriage with a lead piece but instead used a router to make a channel in the bottom of the tank then filled it with lead.

The underframe is made from wood beams. I was able to figure out the central and side pieces but I ended up cutting the ends and bolsters from scrap bass wood. After that it’s a matter of cutting wood or wire to shape and gluing it in place. The only difficult parts were the tank saddles, these parts were missing, so I ended up cutting them out of a piece of bass then using a Dremel with sanding wheel to shape the actual saddle. I used an old bolster to make the seating surface for the trucks. Couplers were long Kadees with the opening in the end piece filed large enough to fit them.

I really failed on the tank. First, I glued the paper to the wood dowel, it came out pretty good until I decided to wrap a piece of paper around it and rubberband it in place. That caused the tank paper to wrinkle and I wasn’t able to get it back to even. If I’d let it be it would have come out fine without the rubber bands. Most of the rivet detail disappeared with the glue.

Next, trying to get the handrails even turned out terrible. It didn’t help that the wire provided for the handrails was springy steel. Thinner, bendable brass for example may have made a better result. They recommended cutting the handrail supports from wood, that seems ridiculous so I made eyelets out of soft wire and used Kadee coupler parts as collars, a little too substantial, just the eyelets would look better.

I couldn’t figure out how to make the holes for the handrail eyelets level. The end is higher than the sides and I think one side is higher than the other. This is probably the most disappointing part of the build and a problem I’ve had before. Trying to measure around a curve stymied me on this kit and other old tank cars as well. Hopefully a coat of paint will hide that ill. The tank bands and ladders went together, better or worse.

So that concludes this build. The underframe is serviceable if somewhat crude (I have three Athearn tanks needing underframes, maybe this is the solution), but the tank bands and dome will require some serious rethinking before I purchase another tank car from Megows. I imagine my grandfather would have been more pleased with the result.


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## Stumpy

Looks fine to me!

I'd forgotten about "no-nox".


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## J.Albert1949

Agree with Stumpy. You done a pretty good job wrastlin' and wranglin' that one together!


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## Lemonhawk

Not bad for a broom handle! Actually the sort of ruff surface just makes it look like some stuff slopped around while filling it with product! Nice looking!


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## Murv2

Outland Models Covered Wagon

Outland Models is a 3D printing company that produces a wide variety of ‘things’ and people for railroading and wargaming. I am always looking for new wagons for my pre-automobile layout so I picked one up when I saw it on Amazon. Outland does have quite a few old west-style scenery items so if that’s your focus you may want to take a look.

Technically not a kit, “Old West Carriage / Wagon – Caravan” comes in one piece. That doesn’t mean that it’s ready for painting though, like most complicated 3D printings it has a lot of extra chunks designed to support it during the printing process (sorry, forgot the out-of-box photo). These have to be cut off and the stubs filed or sanded down. Also, depending on the angle the printing process can leave a tight grid pattern that needs to be sanded off if possible.

So first the good: This is a single piece, including the horse and all the tack associated with it. It is sufficiently detailed that you can just paint it and put it on your layout (I did), or you can add a bunch of detail, for example I’m tempted to try to find a small barrel to put on the shelf where they always have a water barrel in the westerns. The bed is empty but has detail to it, the metal strakes that hold up the cover are visible on the inside, and the cover itself is textured so it appears to be cloth.

Now the negatives. My biggest complaint is the wood parts look kind of doughy, without the sharp edges and flat sides you’d expect to see on something constructed of wood or metal. The wheels are a bit too thick and all the leather tack is thick too. The reins are anchored to the front of the wagon, resulting in them hanging unnaturally, though it does provide more support.

The horse and driver are very stiff and in a pose that can only be them waiting patiently for something to get out of their way. If Outland wants to make a second model have the horse’s legs in a walking pose and the driver holding a whip. BTW, The driver looks like a pro wrestler with no neck. Nice 19th century cap though.

I generally follow the three-foot rule, so this wagon will fit in nicely with my layout and will probably sit for years at a railroad crossing, waiting for trains to pass. Outland produces a number of intriguing items and I’ll keep an eye on them for future projects.


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## Stumpy

Murv2 said:


> My biggest complaint is the wood parts look kind of doughy, without the sharp edges and flat sides you’d expect to see on something constructed of wood or metal.


I purchased this from Outland... Outland Models Train Locomotive Maintenance Platform & Accessories HO OO Scale | eBay

You can see the parts are made form two different types of media. The black stuff is very rigid and pretty crisp while the gray is softer. You would think the black material would be more suitable for the wagon.


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## Murv2

Walthers Baggage Car

Last year I picked up 9 plastic shells of Roundhouse cars that were advertised as paint samples. Three of them were Boston and Maine 80’ wood passenger cars with truss rods and after finishing two of them I decided to finish off the train at five cars. A look through my unfinished kits brought up Walthers kit 7820 70’ Baggage less trucks.

The instructions are two sides of a single piece of paper, totaling 1/3 text and 2/3 drawings, including blown up views and top, bottom, side and end view, plus templates for the fishplates. I didn’t have any problems understanding how to assemble this model, although the constant recommendations to purchase detail kits were annoying.

This kit has stamped tin sides, cast ends and wood roof and floor. The ends are cast from soft metal and looks like they were intended to be screwed into the roof with a tab but the hole was filled in. The bottom was glued and two pin holes provided to pin the floor in place, conveniently they were even in the right place so the pins went straight into the wood.

All the underside detail is made of wood, except the brake equipment and truck bolsters which were cast. In the end I had to file them down a bit to get the trucks the right height. None of the rails were provided and the ends and sides had to be drilled for rails. I made the rails out of garden wire. The steps were provided as 10" of ladder.

The couplers were a little low if installed in the Kadee pockets as normal, so I tried using just the bottom piece but the couplers ended up a little too floppy so I took the top of the pocket, drilled the hole a little wider, trimmed off the sides back and front and filed off the text. The top then fit in the bottom of the pocket and the car floor serves as the lid. I used a long coupler and left the rib under the bottom of the end casting as is.

The roof came out nicely because I took the time to get the little lips along the curves right. These are tiny, fragile and fiddly but the cars just don’t look right without them. If you look at the car you probably won’t even know what I’m talking about. Anyway, this time I used wood filler on the roof and sanded it with superfine sandpaper, and the shiny black paint went on OK (it’s a bit tacky, hopefully that will go away sooner or later).

As usual I went ready fire aim with this kit, in that after I had already painted the sides I went to find an appropriate number for it. Turns out B&M had only two cars that may have matched this model, purchased from the C&O. That made choosing the number easy. Microscale had the right decals. I used maroon paint from the hardware store, it’s pretty close to the other cars. The decals went on OK, although the numbers are slightly messed up and the long skinny name decal isn’t perfectly straight.

Overall I’m quite pleased with this car, and if any more Walthers passenger cars come my way I’ll enjoy building them. This car's prototype is much newer than the Roundhouse cars (which should probably be green anyway) but I doubt anyone will complain about that.


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## Murv2

Quality Craft Covered Hopper

One of the cars I remember my dad having was a little grey covered hopper from the Pennsylvania Railroad. I knew it was made from wood so periodically I’d go searching for a kit that matched it. Finally I found one from Quality Craft. This particular car was from the Western Maryland Railroad rather than the Pennsy, but the diagram included the Pennsylvania as one of the options (last being Norfolk & Western).

This is very much a typical Quality Craft kit, consisting of a bunch of chips of wood, a few castings, pieces of wire and a decal sheet. The instructions are typical also, an 11 by 17” sheet printed on one side, half diagrams and half written instructions. They are very thorough and only threw me in one place (described below).

All the parts were present in the kit except one grab iron and the #30 wire was about an inch too short. Unfortunately the wood angle irons strips were too long for the box and went in bent, so they came out warped. Hopefully they straighten out on the car.

Before starting assembly I used wood filler on the major pieces and sanded them to make the car look more like metal.

One of the things that always amazes me about these kits is how complicated the car looks but how much simpler it is when broken down piece by piece. The most difficult part of construction is bending wire correctly (something I’m still working on). There was some wood shaping in this kit, the 45 degree angle on my cutting sheet came in handy. Nothing really complicated though like other kits.

The side panels were made up of two different sheets of wood that were different thicknesses. I glued a sheet of paper to the back of the thinner piece, then glued a sheet across the back of both to make sure there wasn’t a bulge where they abutted. I should have sanded the bottom flat when the glue had set.

The only thing that really threw me was the brake system, it’s shown on the diagram from the bottom and I added it to the car right side up, ending up with the tank and cylinder on the wrong sides. Hopefully no one will look too closely.

Fortunately the recommended paint is Scalecoat and still in production, unfortunately it is on order now so I’ll have to set this aside until it shows up in the mail. I’m worried about the 40+ year old decals but we’ll see what happens when the paint comes in. I’ll file an update once it is complete.


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## Lemonhawk

That is a really nice looking car for an old wood kit! Everything seems to fit quite nicely!


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## Murv2

Suncoast Models Reefer
I’m always excited to try a model from a company I’ve never built before, so this model was of particular interest to me. A quick search of the internet finds this reefer kit dated 1970 and a boxcar dated 1968. JV models has a whole series of buildings using the Suncoast name but no cars, so there may be a connection between the brands and there may not.
This kit is for modelers rather than runners, but on the thin end of modeling. Other than a few cast door pieces and plastic brake system it was just a bunch of wood chips to be assembled in the proper sequence.
The instructions are four pages, but one of them is to illustrate variants. There were decals in the kit for Great Northern and Western Fruit Express in addition to Fruit Growers, and optional steps in the written instructions for modernizing the car. The written instructions are two pages and quite thorough, the diagrams side, top, bottom and end views plus a nice blow-up diagram.
I opened the kit up, found I needed a color paint I didn’t have and ordered it then closed the kit and worked on something else. A month later the paint was here and I was ready to start. I stained all the thin slat-board wood chips, inside and out, then sprayed them the appropriate color. I wish I’d taken the undercarriage pieces out and sprayed them too, as well as the sills on the bottom. After that dried I was ready to actually build.
One odd thing about this car, you start by carefully assembling a rectangle of wood out of 7 separate pieces (plus 2 oz weight), sand everything flat and the rest of the kit is attached to this closed box. My first thought was why don’t I cut a block of wood to the same size and move on from there? Every other kit I’ve built had parts making up the structure also exposed to the outside, I mean it makes sense to multi-purpose your wood pieces (unless you sell glue for a living). Not wrong, just strange.
All the slat pieces go together easily, slapped on to the wooden box then trimmed to fit, though you have to pay attention to the order from the instructions so the corners overlap properly. The roof is actually not milled to an angle, instead a 1/16th inch beam goes down the middle and the roof chips are glued to it and the edge of the side, forming a shallow teepee.
I followed the instructions this time but wish I’d done the bottom before the top as the car would sit flat on the box but the roof was uneven. Many of the pieces are already cut to size, a nice touch. The only complicated part is the underside, all the beams, pipes and brake pieces have to get stuck in under there. I had to shave the wood block under the coupler to get it the right height.
Once everything was glued together I went back and touched up all the paint, then applied the decals after a coat of shiny varnish. These are a little thicker than modern decals and didn’t settle down in the slat cracks but were easy to work with and after they dried I went back with a knife and cut the slat cracks into the decals then applied more Microset.
Also, one of the slat sheets bowed up after I put the decal because the water soaked into the bottom of the sheet. Clamped it until it dried again but it caused the decal to curl a bit.
The diagrams had an end car number but none of those provided matched the side numbers, not sure if they were required when the cars were first built in 1928 (they started at 36000). I still have to apply a flat coat but it’s too humid outside to do so today, so I’ll be moving on and do it another day.

Anyway, I really liked this kit and hope to find the boxcar one day too.


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## Lemonhawk

Nice clean looking refer! The yellow really sets the car off!. Is unusual that they included weights? Most of the wood cars I've built never included weights and were light as a feather!


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## Murv2

I had to provide the weight. FIL gave me a box full of lead in 1/16" sheets (to make bullets) but it's really useful for car weight.


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## Murv2

BTS B&O Boxcar

I’ve reviewed BTS a couple times before, so I won’t have much to say about this car that I haven’t said before. It’s a laser-cut kit mainly of wood that models a railroad car from very early in the Steam era. In this case it is #29425, 1878 M-2 B&O boxcar.

The only difference between this kit and the others is it included decals. They are the nice super thin kind that slide right around to the back side of the paper when you wiggle them enough to get a pair of tweezers on the paper but not the decal. There were two different sets but only the side photo to go on for where they went. After a quick look on the internet I decided to include the decals on the ends as well.

Anyway, another neat car from a company that models an interesting era.


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## Old_Hobo

Nice…..you have more patience than I will ever have…..


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## Murv2

Roundhouse Pennsylvania Caboose

I’ve already reviewed an old Roundhouse cast kit (cattle car), this is more of the same. A few additional comments:

First, this kit is designed to be a more-or-less generic caboose, but able to be customized into several different railroads’ cabooses. The cupola can be positioned in several different locations, the catwalk is scored on the bottom so it can be cut to fit that location, end details are easily changed out and the sides are cast with the right window pattern, painted and lettered to the caboose model they are reproducing.

I checked my shades of red before I started this kit and found that none of them matched precisely, so I went to Scalecoat and purchased “Pennsylvania Caboose Red”, which is unfortunately not the same shade as Roundhouse Pennsylvania Caboose Red. It is a nice shade though, one day maybe I’ll find another use for it.

This kit didn’t fit together very well, there are seams everywhere and to get rid of them you’d ruin both the paint job and rivets. Also, the screws had rusted and made it harder to screw all the parts together. One nice thing, the caboose weighs in at 4.7 oz out of the box, well above the NMRA recommendation for a 34’ car.

Would I recommend another one of these kits? While I really like the detail on the parts, the fact that they don’t fit together that well bothers me, as does the fact that I can’t match the paints. For those reasons I’m going to try to avoid these in the future.


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## Lemonhawk

Lots of rivets! The hand rails make this model!


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## Murv2

Finally got the paint for the covered hopper, so sprayed it and applied the decals They didn't have a top coat and I ended up using gloss coat. After three cars like that I'm suspecting it was expected that you apply the gloss coat and not a manufacturing mistake. Half the stripes came off the sheet damaged as well as a W, I touched up what I could. 
Anyway this is another car where the decals yellowed and unfortunately they stand out from the grey paint.
Last time I use yellowed decals, next time I'm buying new.


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## Old_Hobo

Very nice car otherwise!


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## MichaelE

You might be able to touch that up with a 000 brush and a steady hand.


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## Murv2

Finished my third Limited Edition passenger car, this one a 14 section sleeper. It is more of the same, see previous reviews for details. I really tried to include details in this kit, including grab irons (which were simply glued on, drilling tiny holes in aluminum seem like a losing proposition), scoring the skirts for access doors, AC grating on the side (need finer mesh). Honestly it didn't do much for the car.
I inventoried the cars, of the 10 kits 7 were sleepers, a kitchen and dining car, and an observation car. I'm not sure my Athern F7 will pull 10 cars plus a dummy B unit, so for now I'm aiming at finishing 6 cars. In the mean time there are plenty of other things to build.


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## Murv2

Finished my third Marker Lights boxcar, this one Great Northern. I really enjoy making these cars, they are a challenge but look pretty good when finished. I'll keep an eye out for more.


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## Murv2

I swore these off, but this Athearn tinclad snuck in with a random lot. Interesting the different ads stuck on. 








Usual problems with fit and finish.


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## Lemonhawk

Still looks really nice to me!


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## Stumpy

Me too.


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## Murv2

Laconia Reefer
(it's been a while since I built a kit, mainly because I've started my project to scratchbuild the 8-car 1935 B&O Royal Blue trainset. It took 2 months to finish the first car, so the next seven will take a while)

Laconia is one of those companies that showed up periodically when I was routing through Ebay looking for vintage kits to build. A quick look through Hoseeker finds a couple catalogs from the fifties, paired with Binkley Models. Other than boxcars and reefers they produced Sierra-style passenger cars. This one is #6204 Bourk-Donaldson-Taylor POTATOES.

The kit is a typical wood and cardstock kit, with a wooden box covered with cardstock embossed to look like wood and appropriately painted. This kit is special because the laminate is covered with painted aluminum, giving a slightly metallic cast to the sides.

Instructions were one page of text and one page of line drawings, obviously done with a pencil by someone with draftsman training. Unfortunately they don’t include a piping diagram for the brake system.

Also typical for the era, metal castings are decent quality, but the brake system is crude plastic. Turn buckles are stamped brass and after cutting them apart you have to pry the ends open again. The bottom is crude otherwise, the wire provided bends too easily, piano wire would be better. The grab irons and corner steps are staples. Door hardware is embossed onto the sides, separate castings would be better.

The kit is decent, but the colors just look off somehow.


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