Upgrading MDC/Roundhouse boxcars

[sailormatlac]

Thanks everybody, I hope the nest one will be as good.

The ATSF car is ready to paint (except the doors). It was a straight forward project, if it's not I did have to start again trice the sides to get them right.

First of all, I only cut the side from the shell and kept the ends and roof together. Ends aren't exactly prototype, but tweaking them would have made a lot of mess and wouldn't have looked as good.

My first try was to keep the underframe untouched as much as possible. This was a wrong idea because on the prototype, the original wall wood planking was aligned with the roof extension. As you can see, the original side, on this version, wasn't aligned and it looked bad. The steel gutter on top of the wood side was going to be far too large.







On the second try, I tried to save time by gluing the steel extenseion directly on top of the wood side. It wasn't good because the styrene aligned with the steel structure of the car but not the wood plaking. This made the mating with the existing roof very hard.

So, I decided to start again. This time, I cemented the steel extension directly to the roof, then I sanded down the car side to make them flush with the steel extention. I also filed them at 45 degree, did also the same with the side, so sides and ends would mate perfectly without losing rivet details and ladders.







When everything was glued together, I added the gutter.



At this point, most parts of the car were completed.



The undeframe was narrowed to fit the new car width. I filed down every cast-on brake details and replaced them with parts from the junk box and some styrene bits.



Few steel plate details were made out of paper with punched rivet. It is a very and easy effective way of making them. Even if the paper is perforated, the styrene cement will take care of if by filling the holes with melted plastic.





And the completed car:







Here's a comparison with the precedent B&M car.



Time to paint it now.

Matt