doctorwayne's Get off yer duff Challenge (Part III)

[doctorwayne]

My original intention was to group all of my freight car projects into Part II of my Challenge, but I think that these scratchbuilt cars might be dealt with better in a thread of their own.
My plan is to build four freight cars pretty-much from scratch although I'll use commercially-available stuff where I think it would be better than what I can do on my own, or where it's more convenient. Trucks and couplers fit into those categories, as do detail parts. My aim is to create four cars for layout use...perhaps a bit more detailed than most of what I have done, but this certainly won't be a "plant-the-tree-wait-'til-it-grows-then-cut-it-down-and-hand-cut-scale-lumber-cast-my-own-trucks-make-working-brake-gear-and-put-everything-together-with-handmade-bolts-and-rivets" kind of scratchbuilding.

Two of the cars are being built simply because I have the proper lettering for them. Both are available as either kits or ready-to-run, but I want to try a couple of techniques I've not used before, and I think that I can make them as good as, or hopefully better, than can be bought.
The other two cars are both from the same railroad, (but different from both of the first two) and their prototypes are therefore very much related. I do have lettering for them, too, and while at least one of them is available as a craftsman-type kit, I want to see what I can do. The real ones are a bit unusual, but were built in fairly large numbers and many lasted into the diesel age.

Construction for all will be mostly in styrene, but don't expect this thread to have daily updates. When there's been progress made, I'll show it here, and my plan is to finish building each car before starting the next.

First up is a 1932 ARA boxcar for the Seaboard Air Line. Atlas makes (or made) a nice r-t-r version of this car, which is quite different from most of the 1932 ARA-designed boxcars which were built (most were built after 1932 but before WWII). I believe Funaro & Camerlengo offers a craftsman-type kit for this car, too.

After researching the prototype, I began by laying out the floor, sides, and ends on .060" sheet styrene. The photo shows the cut-out tabs on the sidesill of one car side and the other side shows the .125"x.125" interior bracing...



...I cheated on the centre sill: The prototype used two Z-bars with their upper flanges welded together, and their lower flanges sticking out towards the car's sides. I opted for a pair of solid straight centre sills about .155" high by .060" wide. This was accomplished by using .060"x.125" strips on their narrow edges, with strips of .030"x'060" styrene cemented atop them. No flanges whatsoever - I regretted that, but not until I had already finished applying most of the underbody brake gear. In light of that, I console myself with the fact that it won't be noticeable once the car is on the layout, although most of that painstakingly-applied brake gear won't be too visible either.

Here's an over-all view of the underbody:



...and a closer look...







While it's certainly not the calibre of what my good friend Bernhard does, that's about as far as I want to go for a layout quality model.

Here's the sides and ends assembled...



...and with the roof (from Red Caboose) temporarily set in place...



...and the floor/underbody in place...



The roof will eventually be cemented in place, while the floor will be screwed to the heavy bracing already cemented to the lower portion of the sides.

As an aside to this thread, I realised too late that I had neglected to add the 5/8" pipe (prototype size) for the car's retainer valve, which sits up high on the car's end, near the brake wheel.
The underbody portion of the pipe runs from the AB control valve to, and then alongside, the centresill to the end of the car. I had pre-drilled the frame's crossmembers, before installing them, to accommodate the trainline (brakepipe), but had not done so for the retainer pipe.
While I do have a #76 drill bit (.020") long enough to drill through the bolster on which the truck is mounted, it certainly won't reach any of the other crossmembers. Anyway, I drilled through the bolster, then removed the bit and lined it up to make an attempt on the next crossmember, carefully bending it so that its business end was more-or-less parallel to the bottom side of the car's floor and then very carefully turned the pin vise until the bit was about halfway through the crossmember. The bit was then relocated to the other side of the same crossmember and the feat repeated, surprisingly, with success. I had the feeling though, that somewhere, either in the next crossmember or in the crossbearers (the wider members located beneath what will be the edges of the car's doors) that bit was going to break.
For some reason, it dawned on me that I had some .019" stainless steel wire, and I quickly dug out a length of it, and snipped off the end, using side cutting pliers.
That left the end looking like this...



...a mini spade bit, although somewhat distorted. Chucked into a pin vise, the excess length could be left hanging out the handle-end, then simply advanced as needed as each successive frame member was encountered:



...shown here, it's already through the previously drilled bolster and has taken a bit of a dip through the first crossmember, which had been drilled through from both sides with the bent bit. It's also gone on to, and through, the next crossmember...



Here, the tip is already through the first crossbearer, with only one more to go...



The installed retainer pipe, .008" phosphor bronze wire, is just barely visible here, running alongside the centresill where it meets the underside of the car's floor:



...I know....nobody's gonna see it after the car gets painted and is running around on the layout, but at least I know that it's there...well, and possibly there will be a few viewers of this thread that will be aware of it, too.

More to come....

Wayne