PGE Stock car

[cnrglen]

I was given this Proto2000 Mather stock car as a basket case a couple weeks ago

     

The original builder made a complete mess of the car, using Testors tube glue to assemble it, leaving some parts off and gluing some in the wrong place. I also found the car to be incredibly heavy. After some prying with an exacto-knife and a small screwdriver, I managed to get the roof, roofwalk and the doors off.

     

After that I found out why it was so heavy, 1 1/2 oz. of extra weight was glued inside. I guess it was added for better tracking? I also found that the original proto wheelsets were replaced with all plastic  ones, probably the source of the poor tracking. They went into the garbage.  

   

I scraped the glue off as best I could and started to replace/add the details. The original grab irons were MIA so I replaced the ladder grabs with some ladder stock, all other grabs were replaced with Tichy wire ones. 

   

I also removed the original lettering with a fiberglass brush. This is a pretty effective tool for this since the car sides are wood and the brush also scratched the wood sides a bit, adding some wood grain. 
The original roof walk was pretty much unusable with large globs of glue on it. I replaced it with a spare resin casting from the parts box. I also noticed that some of the side boards were broken so I fixed those with some styrene strip.  The original brake wheel and housing were badly damaged so I replaced those with tichy parts as well.

   

one of the last things I did before painting was to add the roofwalk end supports and check the coupler height. I used some metal wheelsets in the trucks and the car tracks perfectly now.

[doctorwayne]

It seems that there were a lot of modellers who had difficulties assembling those kits.  When Proto released their ready-to-run versions, a nearby hobbyshop (now long gone) couldn't move the kits which remained, as everyone was buying the r-t-r versions. 
In the meantime, the "used" table was rapidly filling with botched Proto kits, at very low prices - the latter feature an unusual occurrence at that store.  I bought a few of them, stripping off the factory paint and the mangled details, and was able to make them into pretty decent cars.
I went into that store a week or two later, and the "used"table was covered with the unsold kits, again, at surprisingly reasonable prices.  I bought a bunch, but the best bargain was some Walthers kits for undecorated 50' boxcars.  I had bought a couple of lettered ones previously at full price, but got 11 undecorated ones for only a couple of bucks each.

Here's one of them, with dry transfer lettering from C-D-S...

   

...and I have 9 of them, lettered using custom lettering from C-D-S, for my freelanced EG&E...

   

This one was one of those bargain messed-up attempts at kit-building...

   

...with the excess glue scraped-off, and the broken plastic grabirons and sill steps replaced with metal ones.  I also added the boards for the lettering, which keep it out of the range of the sprayed lime, which was used as a disinfectant.

This one is another Proto car, which a friend picked up at a train show.  He thought it to be pretty decent, until he got home and looked at it through his Optivisor.  He saw some of the glue mess, but what bothered him most was the BLT date, which was too modern for his layout. 
He offered it to me (it was too modern for my layout, too, but that's an easily-done modification).  What I saw when I got it was what must have been at least a third-of-a-tube of glue on the underbody, so much that the floor was badly warped, the doors overlapped and glued to one another, side ladders and grabs broken or over-glued.  I spent a lot of time scraping off the excess glue, but with the use of some heavy strip styrene and small screws, was able to straighten the floor.  The running board was beyond salvage, so I scratchbuilt a new one...


   

I also scraped off the BLT date, and replaced it with one more suitable, and offered it back to my friend, but he thought that the work I put into it was so excessive that I should keep it.

Here it is in service...

   

While some of this recovery work can be tedious, it's always satisfying when you succeed in making it useable again.  I wonder what the original owner would think.

Wayne

[jim currie]

proto kits were look  good but they looked good even if you didn't add anything to them  , bought several stock cars then found that they were mostly retired  and replaced by steel ones by my modeling era . my biggest gripe with the proto kits is that they never produced a 40 ft. steel box car  or a 50 ft. gon. 
Jim

[cnrglen]

I built one of the Mather's right out of the box a few years ago. It was considerably more challenging than their auto boaxcars or their 50' gondolas but if you take your time they come out okay.


   

I also built a Canadian National Fowler stock car, a Westerfield Kit.

 
   

That was even more of a challenge but I enjoyed the build.
Speaking of the build, I sprayed the current project in primer.

     

and because I used a fast drying primer I was abled to airbrush the acrylic paint and apply the dry transfers to it the next day.


   

Sorry for the blurry pic, I was in a hurry and used my cel phone's camera.
The dry transfers came from CDS. They were for a 36' stock car with the letterboards just under the roof but I adapted them to the mather car in a way I thought PGE would have lettered this car if it was theirs.

[doctorwayne]

.

....my biggest gripe with the proto kits is that they never produced a 40 ft. steel box car  or a 50 ft. gon. 
Jim

You're right about the boxcars, Jim, but they definitely offered 50' (actually 52'6") gondolas, with working drop-ends.  I have at least six of them for my freelanced road, and a bunch for well-known prototype roads, too...

   

   

   

   

   


Wayne

[jim currie]

Wayne i was griping about not about 50 ft. ones but big fingers and not reading post I meant 40 ft. standard gon.s have several of the 52 ft 6 inch ones in fact i have a 4 pack of c p ones  unbuilt and probably will never build them.
Jim

[cnrglen]

I don't know about 40' gons, but Life-like probably looked at the market and saw all the 40' boxcars from other manufacturers and thought it best to make the 50' auto box instead.
I have a PGE 52'6" gondola on the shelf that I should build someday as well.

[doctorwayne]

Accurail offers a pretty decent 40' gondola, and it's not too difficult to shave-off the grabirons and replace them with metal ones...

   

...and even Tyco/Mantua ones can be acceptable with a few detail upgrades...

   

I also scratch-bashed a few, using Tichy's 40' flatcar as a starting point...

   

   

...this one was made in the same batch, based on a TH&B cinder car, but lettered for one of my freelanced roads...

   

Wayne

[cnrglen]

Nice stuff Wayne. I've got enough rolling stock to fill 2-3 of my modest 7X16' layout though. I don't know why I keep building more.
I did finish off the PGE stock car.

     

I decided to weather it a bit heavier than others to hide any defects that I couldn't absolve with my rebuild. I used the fiberglass brush to scratch the red oxide paint and decals back to show the gray primer showing back through on the wood parts, then I unleashed rust, dirt and grimey black with my airbrush. 

   

[doctorwayne]

That turned out well, Glen...nice recovery work.

Yeah, I don't really need any more freight cars, either, although I have four more TH&B hoppers to do (once I can get down to the States to pick them up).  I also have five single sheathed automobile cars to scratchbuild, and some Santa Fe panel-sided boxcars.  I also bought a book about the Magor Car Company, and it has photos and detailed drawings of their early side-dump gondolas, so I'd like to build maybe three or four of those for my MoW trains.

Unless something else that's really notable shows-up, that'll be it....I hope.

Wayne

[cnrglen]

Unless something else that's really notable shows-up, that'll be it....I hope.

Thanks Wayne, That seems to be the way it goes for me too

[jim currie]

you could throw some lime around on bottom sides of car other than that looks good . as far as  ot building anymore rolling stock i don't think that will ever happen to me  unless i quit surfing the web  one photo of a pile driver was enough to set me off on another building project .
Jim