That car is a pretty basic modification to an Athearn blue box car. I cut off the cast-on stirrup steps, then drilled out the bottom edge of the car sides, using a #76 bit in my pin vise, to accept formed metal steps from A-Line. The cast-on grabirons on the sides (near the PM reporting marks) were shaved off using a #17 chisel blade in my X-Acto, taking care to leave the cast bolt heads intact. I then drilled holes for the wire grabs using a #79 drill bit. The car was done some time ago, and it looks as if the grabirons are the older type formed from .012" music wire. I generally use drop or straight grabs, as appropriate, from either Tichy or Westerfield, or form my own from .012" brass or stainless steel wire. After the "legs" are inserted into the holes, I place a spacer of .030" strip styrene between the car body and the handholds, bend-over the wire projecting into the body shell, then apply ca from the inside to secure them in place. This car was originally a decorated car that was stripped, then repainted after all the modifications were done, but you can do most of these changes to a decorated car, then paint the new details with a brush. Don't worry about getting an exact colour match, as weathering will hide any glaring discrepancies. Also, metal details like this often need touching-up periodically, and I don't always bother to disguise the fact - after all, the real cars often suffered minor damage that was repaired or replaced, then painted with a suitable colour. Shops don't have time to blend in these repairs with "weathering".
On these Athearn cars, oversize door tracks were used to permit an operating door - this meant that the door itself was too short, losing height from both its top and bottom in order to accommodate the tracks. The doors also grew "claws" to grip the door tracks.
To remedy this situation, the lower door tracks were shaved off with the #17 blade, then a new track of .030"x.030" styrene strip was cemented in place just below the strip of rivets which extends along the lower edge of the carsides. The upper tracks were removed from their locating grooves, then a suitably-sized piece of styrene strip was used to fill each groove, with an upper door track of .020"x.030" strip cemented to that.
This car has been re-fitted with doors from Front Range or McKean cars, as they are the correct height for this car. You can also use the original Athearn doors by segmenting them and inserting sections from spare Athearn doors, which should be readily available.
The roofwalk is the original Athearn casting, representing an open-grid metal type (of course, it's not really "open" - several manufacturers offer true open grid walkways in stamped or etched metal). I again used the chisel blade to remove the cast-on corner grabirons on the lateral walkways, and, to improve the appearance of the kit part (and cut down on costs) I sliced off the mounting pegs from the underside, then used an autobody file to remove material from the underside - the original walkway was about .044" thick (roughly 4" in HO scale) while the modified part is about .017", or roughly 1 1/2" in HO. I used brass wire and a home-made jig to form new corner grabs, then ca'ed them in place, then cemented the roofwalk to the car.
The car was then washed in warm water, using dish detergent, rinsed clean, then air dried. After airbrushing it with Floquil, I lettered the car with C-D-S dry transfers, then gave it an overspray of Dullcote. The car was then weathered, using an airbrush and also a regular brush.
As I'm currently back-dating my layout's era to the mid- to late-'30s, I decided to give this previously-done car a quick makeover, which consisted of obliterating the original late-'40s BLT date with some additional weathering, then brush-painting the car ends black - many railroads in the 1920s and '30s used a product known as waterproof car cement to protect the ends (and sometimes roofs, too) with this tar-based emulsion.
In the photo above, the car is heading back into the shops to get re-weighed and have its journal boxes re-packed, which will result in some of the data on the car's side being re-painted. This serves both to place the car in an earlier period (August, 1938 for this one) and to add some "history" to its existence.
I'm currently working on some four dozen freight cars, backdating some in a similar manner, and rebuilding some to better follow a particular prototype. Many are complete rebuilds of cars that were already in service on the layout, while others are newly acquired cars that require some form of upgrading. All are receiving some basic brake rigging (the Pere Marquette car is yet to be done) and many are getting new ends, along with upgrades similar to those described above. Many have been repainted and are currently being lettered and weathered, with only another 50 or so to be done after this.
I'll be posting pictures as the current batch are placed into service.
This Walthers 50' car is one of nine that were recently re-done with black ends and roofs - all of the other modifications were done previously, so all that was required was new reporting marks on the car ends along with a little weathering.
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Ditto for the three Train Miniature cars like this one (these got new ends, re-worked side framing, and rebuilt underbodies in a previous rebuilding)
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And another two similar cars, newly acquired, were rebuilt to match the previous three:
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These still require weathering, and some re-weigh/re-pack data.
Here are some in-progress shots of the TM cars:
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[album]1031[/album]
Wayne
![[Image: image.php?image_id=1023]](http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/gallery/image.php?image_id=1023)
The PM car was one of my early Athearn rebuilds, but it wasn't in the lot which I sold. I'll be posting a new shot of it soon, along with another PM car, this one a Train Miniature boxcar which has been re-worked somewhat.