doctorwayne's New Years Resolution Challenge...

[doctorwayne]

Finally got the tank car finished. The paint is Floquil, while the decals are from Black Cat.



I have another three cars nearing completion, including the Espee boxcar which needed a couple of "adjustments", the Southern Su-class boxcar, and that yellow MDC old-time reefer shown in the sixth photo on page one of this thread. For some reason, I forgot to take early in-progress shots of this latter car - it may have been because, whilst removing the too-old-style board roof, I ran into a little difficulty.
The trouble was, as usual, of my own making : I cut around the edges of the roof from inside the car, using my X-Acto. This left only a thin remnant around the perimeter at the top of the car's sides and ends. Flipping the car body upside-down, I placed it atop a sheet of sandpaper, face-up on my workbench. A few passes of the car back-and-forth over the sandpaper made short work of the last bits of the roof....and the first bits of the fascia strip around the top of the sides and ends.
I carefully sanded away the rest of the fascia, then made a new one using strip styrene. Here's the reefer with the new fascia installed and the cast-on grabirons replace with metal ones. These were bent to fit, as they're wider than usual.



The new roof, built-up from sheet and strip styrene, represents a Hutchins "Dry Lading" type - basically sheet metal over wood, secured with battens. I also added hatch platforms, built-up board-by-board with pre-distressed strip styrene. The hatches are from Accurail, left over from some EG&E reefers built last year.



Here's the MDC metal underframe. I added a styrene centre sill and also used the kit-supplied queenposts. The turnbuckles are from Tichy (covered with masking tape here). I used clear monofilament fishing line for the truss rods, and installed it as a single piece. After the paint and weathering have been applied, the tape will be removed and the turnbuckles touched-up using a brush. The clear line running through them should make their centres appear to be open.



This is the top side of the car's floor. The two bits of grey sprue have the ends of the monofilament line tied around them and then glued with ca. The white bits of strip styrene are then slipped under the line where it loops over the floor to reach the next location - the loop is lifted, then the strips inserted - this puts tension on the lines beneath the car, drawing them tight. The strips are left un-glued - should the line become slack with the passage of time, it's a simple matter to take the body shell off and insert additional spacers.





This car, along with that Espee automobile boxcar and the Southern Su car, will next be seen when they're in service. I've also started on the eight Athearn boxcar rebuilds, although it's very doubtful they'll be done before the Challenge time is finished. :cry:

Wayne