Freight car projects

[sarge]

In this day and age (being the last 25 years or so), our frieghtcar choices have been a mixed bag.

I say "mixed bag" because over that quarter century there have been a fair range of new prototypes made available in the field of imported plastic. The down-side is all of it is geared for hirail and last-minute adapted for sale to us only by bolting on two-rail couplers and changing wheelsets. All the compromises for three-rail are pretty much ignored making this compromise product no more than 2-rail hi-rail; certainly not scale.

For most newcomers thats all fine but, for many of us, this product represents an opportunity, not a finished scale model by any means. I did a series that currently that's been running in Dan Dawdy's e-mag ( https://oscaleresource.com/WP/ ) since December about the first step in making both 2-rail and 3-rail product into scale product, that being the lowering of the carbodies onto the trucks.

The basic premise is that the prototype draught-gear is part of the main-frame, so couplers are fixed in height in line and centered on the vertical axis of the frame, placing the vast majority tight up to the bottom of the end of the carbody. What that means is the couplers are fixed in height and it is the trucks that need adjusted to get couplers to match a height gage. Arguably, "coupler height gage" is a misnomer; probably better thought of as a car-height gage.

The layout hosts an operations group, so there are several rosters of equipment we use to run different scenarios based on different localities and time-periods. That meant going through a roster of a couple hundred freightcars for standard couplers, standard trucks/wheelsets, and now checking all for truck height. In all that, I've even encountered a fair number of brass imports intended (theoretically) for scale usage needing lowered. The result, both in reliability and in appearance, was well worth the effort.

I'm not going to duplicate anything here with the article series, especially as Dan has rights to distribute, but show the result using hi-rail (both 3-rail and 2-rail) product and what an improvement in appearance results by first putting the couplers where they belong with respect to the frame and carbody, then lowering the car onto the trucks to properly meet the gage:

Here's an example, a Pecos River plastic 50' auto box on Yoder trucks, lowered to where it belongs, then a little weathering:

[sarge]

BTW, I called this thread Freightcar Projects for a reason. My first post is about lowering freightcars (and there will be more mentions of car-height in my projects) but that should in no way be construed as being the sole selling point of the thread.

Show us your rolling stock projects and teach me somethin'.

[sarge]

Just finished this after finding the basic car in the pre-owned section of one of our local hobby




Started as a Weaver Ma & Pa IPD box, lowered down onto Kadee trucks (in my opinion one of the best things to happen in O Scale in the last two years), a cushioned underframe, a few nips and tucks, then a bit of a weathering job.

The specific methods can be found in the article series (starting in Volume 12 #3) I posted the link to in the first post of the thread.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Not sure what this was planned to be by whoever, but it ended up here:

[sarge]

I like it!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I like it!

Way too modern for me but entertaining and still a 40' car.

It may migrate north!

[healey36]

I'd like to see the inside of one of those "automobile" cars loaded. I presume they are stacked, somehow.

[sarge]

Have a look at this.

http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2 ... xcars.html

[healey36]

Have a look at this.

http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2 ... xcars.html

Wow, that's a pretty comprehensive look...thanks for that!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Have a look at this.

http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2 ... xcars.html

I had seen some similar stuff, but this one I'll save - thanks for posting the link!

[up148]

Sorry posted to the paint thread and not the Freight car thread.

I believe I posted these before. Boxcar is my 1st attempt at weathering with pastels and I like them. But, I found out like many things in life, all pastels are not created equal.

The tank cars were experiments in installing USG plastic bolsters, somebodies plastic brakes shoes on Athearn trucks and some brass coupler pockets with more detail than the standard Kadee box.

Last is a Beaver Creek Express Boxcar that was only imported by this company back in the mid 90's. This one was left on a layout in a humid basement and it shows. I'll clean it up and maybe weather it lightly as these were generally kept very clean running on the streamliner trains.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This one started out as a Walthers kit that someone skinned over with styrene and then stopped......so I finished.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Another bit of a mystery - basically a naked box of resin and cast metal ends, and then a styrene roof and other bits...but nothing much else.

So finished with an added underbody and those missing details and the rest added and some K4 decals that I thought "interesting",

[gregj410]

I'll clean it up and maybe weather it lightly

……and maybe a coupler. Look forward to it. Love the UP stuff. Come to think of it I think I need a service express box car to pair up with my stream liners.

[up148]

UP only used them for a handful of years, but they are unique in their build and size. These Beaver Creek cars are the only ones I found to be truly scale. There was an article in one of the magazines decades ago for converting a reefer to an express boxcar and the modeler did a great job. The express boxcars are shorter than a standard boxcar.

The came in many paint schemes from 1939 to 1955 when they were pretty much retired from passenger service. Years later UP came out with newer and longer express boxcars, but being a steam and transition era modeler they had no interest for me.