QRL&PCo Boxcars

[doctorwayne]

Regarding Kadee axles, it depends on which products and what time of day. The Kadee wheelsets you buy off the rack at the hobby shop have the metal wheels and the axle ends molded as one piece, joined by a plastic center axle piece, so what touches the journal is in fact metal.

That's interesting to learn. Almost all of my passenger cars (mostly modified Rivarossi) have Kadee wheelsets. When I decided to polish the wheel treads, a few of them "got away" from the wire wheel in my Dremel, resulting in melted axle ends. I should point out that these are not recently-purchased, so perhaps that change was made for the benefit of dummies like me. What was surprising was that the engineering plastic used for the axle melted before the relatively soft plastic used for the sideframes. New wheelsets in those same sideframes roll perfectly well.

Wayne

[sailormatlac]

Some update, my first prototype is almost completed. Just need to redetail the underframe and add the brake apparatus. It should be easy to mass produce this model! ;-)





Matt

[sailormatlac]

I decided to start bashing the undeframe. I have almost no information about these undeframes, except they were truss-rod and rebuilt in 1927-1928. For this reason, I decided to follow Doctorwayne challenge thread. He was talking abou truss-rod cars rebuilt with a steel centerbeam to respect interchange regulation. A Tichy K-Brake will be added once I'll have build all 5 cars.



This morning, I built 4 more cars. Roof, undeframe and details are left to do. Trimming and fitting Tichy ends is the big job and it's now done.



Matt

[sailormatlac]

I kitbashed a new QRL&PCo boxcar prototype this week, serie 1001-1015. Rebuilt in 1918, they were retired from revenue service in 1952. 14 survived until retirement. According to pictures, they were used to haul bricks, terra cotta block and textile. They were wood framed truss rod boxcars and equipped with archbar trucks. Doors, hardware and roof type varied from each one. I decided to model #1011. They probably never were used interchange service like most QRL&PCo freight fleet. They were 34' long and I suspect they were in fact car originally built in the late 19th century. They were preceded by serie 200 which were 32' boxcars which I actually started to do using a AHM old time boxcar.

I spliced a MDC/Roundhouse classic 36' boxcar and reduced the height of 2 feet. I didn't have undeframe. I decided to used 1/4" masonite which proved to be the best replacement option. I'll probably continue to use it in the future. Strong, easy to glue styrene to, easy to drill and having weight. It cost nothing!

When compared to a 40' boxcar, this boxcar looks completely out of place!

Decals will wait until I prepare a decal sheet for all my QRL&PCo projects.

Enjoy!



























Matt

***EDIT*** I didn't completed the other 5 boxcars shown in previous post. I'm seriously thinking about making a master and casting them. In fact, I started to think about doing them as 3D print. I've seen traction modellers doing wonders with that technic and I'm curious to try my hand at it. If it works well, I'll probably give a try and create 3D models for the unusual side doors QRL&PCo's gondola and maybe try, finally, to make the elusive steeple cab #30 built in the company shop. But all that is another story.