Caboose Projects

[sarge]

Carrying on with the Atlas NE-6 project, I made the thinly veiled backhanded slap at modern product in general and this car in particular as "2-rail hirail". In the spirit of fairness, I shall demonstrate:

Here we have the original trucks, couplers, and height of the car as it comes from Atlas.


Here is the result after setting the car down properly.


The excess height to clear hirail flanges is obvious, and how it's disguised is not very subtly done if its disguised at all. First, the factory uses the same trucks with the same bolster width and huge journals for highrail, unmodified other than to put wheels/axles in to 2-rail standard. The height off the trucks to clear the hirail wheels also remains in the 2-rail version. Yet, the factory couplers hit the gage. The boxes tell a lot of the story, very thick between coupler shank and underframe to lower the coupler, and a pad cast on that lowers it even further.

The Kadee box is much thinner up top, allowing one to line the axis of the coupler shank with the axis of the frame, thus the draughtgear is put into proper relationship with the rest of the frame.

Chuck the hi-rail (albeit factory two-rail) trucks for scale trucks, and set the truck height such that the coupler meets the height gage, and the appearance overall falls far closer in line with the height of the prototype off the trucks and in general. This car came down almost a scale foot. As a good friend commented, "Once you see it, you can't unsee it". The improvement is pretty dramatic.

[robert.]

The other day i saw a caboose called “ big blue” i can’t post photos . If you google it yoú’ll see it. There is a cool story to it.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The other day i saw a caboose called “ big blue” i can’t post photos . If you google it yoú’ll see it. There is a cool story to it.

DOD one? Might see the link Re: Nuclear waste train

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Bobber is coming along....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Sine the bobber is going smoothly, I started this one:



Henry-T work caboose.........resin castings.......part of the build it up or sell it off paradigm....

Builds this:



And sums up the instructions,

There's yet another resin caboose kit on the that was intended to build an outside braced NP(?) or WP(?) caboose. Snuck a peek in that box to find a lot of rough warped castings.....might be a 1/2 build 1/2 salvage exercise....and there's a Walthers bay window caboose kit in that queue, too.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Going to be "interesting"...nice looking but heavy and thick castings....some cleaning and then assembly in parts.

[gregj410]

Carrying on with the Atlas NE-6 project, I made the thinly veiled backhanded slap at modern product in general and this car in particular as "2-rail hirail". In the spirit of fairness, I shall demonstrate:

Here we have the original trucks, couplers, and height of the car as it comes from Atlas.


Here is the result after setting the car down properly.


The excess height to clear hirail flanges is obvious, and how it's disguised is not very subtly done if its disguised at all. First, the factory uses the same trucks with the same bolster width and huge journals for highrail, unmodified other than to put wheels/axles in to 2-rail standard. The height off the trucks to clear the hirail wheels also remains in the 2-rail version. Yet, the factory couplers hit the gage. The boxes tell a lot of the story, very thick between coupler shank and underframe to lower the coupler, and a pad cast on that lowers it even further.

The Kadee box is much thinner up top, allowing one to line the axis of the coupler shank with the axis of the frame, thus the draughtgear is put into proper relationship with the rest of the frame.

Chuck the hi-rail (albeit factory two-rail) trucks for scale trucks, and set the truck height such that the coupler meets the height gage, and the appearance overall falls far closer in line with the height of the prototype off the trucks and in general. This car came down almost a scale foot. As a good friend commented, "Once you see it, you can't unsee it". The improvement is pretty dramatic.

So if I understand this correctly the atlas 2 rail out of the box was nearly 1 scale foot higher than the prototype? I wonder what the height difference is between the 3 rail and the 2 rail out of the box. While I wouldn’t sell my soul for scale fidelity I would consider buying any atlas O car in 2 rail if it would navigate my crappy 3 rail track work. The lower ride has always been appealing to me.

[up148]

I've done the same thing with Lionel and MTH scale cars. On some, you can just swap out scale wheels/axles into the high rail trucks and you're good to go. On others, you may have to add your own trucks and/or play with the body bolster and couple pocket. Lionel, MTH and Atlas have brought out some pretty outstanding scale cars in the past few decades.

[sarge]

To be a bit brutally honest, all any of them do is swop wheels with two-rail flanges in for three-rail wheels. The body clearances off the bolsters remain the same. There is no "lower ride" beyond perhaps a difference in wheel diameter.

Atlas' stuff is consistently high.

MTH's conversion kit is the same thing, just you do it rather than the factory.

Lionel's "scale" offerings are an exercise left to the student.

You buy it in two-rail, you aren't buying it in "scale", you're buying it literally to hirail clearances with two-rail wheels and couplers whose boxes and pads disguise the screwdriver-swop pretty cleverly, until you notice the coupler-shank/draughtgear is aligned way lower then the frame, then it all visually falls apart for me. I call the two-rail offerings "2-rail highrail" as they come from the factory, and I probably shouldn't mean it pejoratively but, because it is supposed to be for scale use, I admit I do.

Butch, you're right in that there is a lot that is useful stuff, especially post-steam era stuff, and yes I'm grateful to have it. But, to me it is a starting point. I'm certainly not paying Atlas extra for a two-rail offering because the work required to make it visually acceptable really is the same.

Here's how it went down for me. The Layout Design SIG recommends a 55" nominal height as best, probably due to the idea of replicating your view of the prototype. They also admit a depth of no more than 19-20" with that height due to limit of reach. I guess that's fine for HO, but that 19" in larger scales is far too shallow to do any depth in design; 19" might let you reach across the street in O. Also, as an operations platform rather than a work of art, reach is more important than a replicated view. This one is designed at a nominal 42", which allows a depth ("radius of reach") of 32" comfortably.

My (and our operators') view is now from overhead. I really didn't notice the height thing until Ryan Shawyer shot a Youtube video, one shot from the viewpoint of the "scalefan", not from ours as operators. That height issue just jumped at me from that perspective; the camera is a vicious thing! It didn't help I was coming back into US prototype from UK 7mm, where proper height is just taken for granted in commercial models.

After watching it, I started in on this binge. I've gone through some 200 freightcars alone. It's madness I admit, but I just can't "unsee" it.

[up148]

the camera is a vicious thing!

It is, but is a wonderful tool as well and I know that's what you mean. Unless photoshopped, photos don't lie. I use them all the time and I'm constantly amazed at what I've missed. Work done on a model that I though was very acceptable, when in reality sucks.

I've found buying stock 3R cars for conversion to be much cheaper in most cases to buying the RTR 2R version (if offered). I had some 3R Lionel PFE Reefers maybe 15-20 years ago, that cost around $35. The trucks that came installed were beautiful and easily converted with 2R axles/wheels. I now see them rarely but selling in the $75-$100 range, which tells me everyone likes them. They were very nice scale models and much more robust than the IM or RC kits.

I also bought some scale MTH UP cabooses and sitting beside an OMI brass caboose it's hard to tell which is which and at a fraction of cost.

[sarge]

Butch (and Greg), don't get me wrong. GRIN! There are some really nice models out there from the frame up, and I couldn't model the era I do without 'em. The realisation that the 2-rail versions out of the box are no better then the hirail ones below the sills, though, defines the lowest hanging fruit in how to make them better than merely useable, how to make the 21st century hirail-centric stuff blend well with Intermountain, Red Caboose, and the best of wood and brass.

A fleet of stock all meeting a standard, painted, weathered, ride-heights, wheels, couplers, all of it, they blend into a very pleasing whole, a blended roster where no car needs apologise when next to any other, all reliable, maintainable, and useable.

In this case, I don't want someone looking over the yard, pointing and saying, "Oh, that's a nice car!" I want them saying, "This is a nice railroad." It's an ops platform. I want people fixated on what they are doing, not what they are seeing.

[gregj410]

In this case, I don't want someone looking over the yard, pointing and saying, "Oh, that's a nice car!" I want them saying, "This is a nice railroad." It's an ops platform. I want people fixated on what they are doing, not what they are seeing.

I’m just impressed that you seem to be into scale fidelity, operations and you have the scenery to go with it. Not a combination I see with many 2 railers.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

In this case, I don't want someone looking over the yard, pointing and saying, "Oh, that's a nice car!" I want them saying, "This is a nice railroad." It's an ops platform. I want people fixated on what they are doing, not what they are seeing.

It's good to have a focused objective! Far too many modelers lack a cohesive end point in their layout design or have one that's so complex as to impede it ever coming to fruition.

[sarge]

I’m just impressed that you seem to be into scale fidelity, operations and you have the scenery to go with it. Not a combination I see with many 2 railers.

Greg, Kind words but I'm not as unusual in that regard as you might think. In all the years (over sixty I'm afraid) I've been in the scale side of O, there have been many I can think of who meet that set of criteria.

I'd guess a lot of that impression is due to a stereotype my experiences with editing OST over the years says is not entirely true. I never was lacking for a lead layout article, and they were invariably nicely done and of a good healthy variety of design.

If anything, the stereotype is at least partially of our own doing, as the O Scale (scale being 2-rail) community has always been insular as hell since the advent of HO, our own magazines, meets, convention, only going to multi-scale shows and things like TCA York as interlopers with our mouths firmly shut (or more recently as evangelists trying to convert people to the One and True Scale using cutesy names like "learning station" and "OS2R" whatever the hell that means). For that lack of information on our part over the decades, general organisations like NMRA and TCA created a stereotype of blacksmiths, hoarders, machinists, and luddites, a stereotype we did very little to debunk.

The generations behind me are, by my observation anyway, swinging even more in line with the smaller scales with respect to building complete railroads. There are some real beauties being done in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast by several folks I know.

Meanwhile, our group that regularly operates this one is intentionally recruited from the more general model railroading community, not just the local O Scalers (though they form the core and are some of the best "real" ambassadors for the scale) but folks modelling in the smaller scales, hirail, tinplate, even live-steam. No more hiding away by ourselves, not here anyway, and no pressure on anyone to chuck their chosen medium and be saved by embracing O Scale, either. This is a club layout and ops platform that just happens to be built to 1/4"=1ft. We've also had visiting ops groups and individuals, some of the latter have been gamers, IPMS modellers, and the various R/C modellers.

I'm also finding it interesting that lately we here are given to wandering about between sub-forums without agendas really. Folks say something on pretty much any discussion if they feel they have something tangible to contribute, no matter where it's initially posted. Not a bad thing at all.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

And, a caboose.....









Not lettered so far, but not sure what to letter it....I have far too many so maybe it goes in search of a new home next month in Strasburg?