What’s on your Workbench?

[sarge]

If those reefers are Weavers, do you happen to know how to detach their roofs from the rest of the body? I have a couple I need to work on, but I haven't figured out how to get their roofs to release.

The key is the ends. They are cast integral to the roof and there is a lug on the bottom of each end that holds at the floor outboard of the coupler pad.



Push up with your thumb on the bit of the end that stands proud of the floor whilst holding the sides (not the roof).



Once the roof lifts clear...



...keep working each end up its rails with the side til the whole end/roof assembly slides clear.



Can all be done with your fingers so no tool marks from prising away at the wrong places with a screwdriver.

[Chris Webster]

Can all be done with your fingers so no tool marks from prising away at the wrong places with a screwdriver.

Thanks. The first car I tried came apart easily and instantly, but the other cars I have seem to be glued - I'm assuming their prior owner may have done that.

[sarge]

Take the couplers and boxes off, take a nice wood block and a light chasing hammer, and give the proud bit at the bottom of the end a bit of judicious persuasion. See if someone hasn't gotten glue on that lug or the car was assembled at Northumberland with uncured paint. I have a lovely SPFE white one that needed a little whack from the box.

If someone really glued up those side rails though (and I have no idea why someone would), it ain't coming apart.

[sarge]

Meanwhile, from an older virgin brass Sunset caboose from the eighties, we did this:




A good lesson in not believing the box label, btw. Sunset called it a USRA wood caboose which would have been fine for Lehigh New England, which was the original intended use.

Looking at it once in hand, it was obviously not the USRA design but the WWII car that was based on the Reading steel car (the so-called Northeastern caboose). These were built for Reading and Lehigh Hudson River, the latter I needed to build anyway, so a quick change of direction.

[De Bruin]

Really sharp looking car! Decals or dry transfers?

[sarge]

Thanks Pete.

Decals. Once I set them on a plank-siding car, I add a step before sealing them where I take a fresh single-edge razor blade and go down every scribe-line cutting the film as I go. Then I hit them one more time with decal solvent.

[sarge]

Of all people, MTH made a really nice offset side twin hopper, available in multiple numbers for LNE, very useful for one of the scenarios here. Beautiful art and finish. The problem is the ends, for LNE had flat ends and the MTH car has heaping shields/peaked ends. The challenge? Save the artwork but fix the ends to better represent the Lehigh New England car.

Here it is, stock after using MTH conversion trucks and Kadees for 2-rail:


After gathering the armament...


...The brake winder housing is popped off out of the way, a virgin (unbent) razor saw is used to slit the side caulks at the ends, then used to slice the heaping shield off taking care to hold tight up under the caulk at each corner.


The corners are squared up with a single edge blade and file...


...then a new straight caulk is fit up, made from Evergreen strip and offered up to ensure a nice tidy fit before gluing it in.


Shape the ends and blend a bit, then to the paint-booth we go, unlimber the airbrush, masking tape, and some black Trucolor.


After an inspection in colour to ensure satisfaction with joints and form, weather as usual.


A pleasant hour and we have a far better representation of the prototype. I have three more to do.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

.

[healey36]

Very nice. One is left to wonder why the six-foot high "L N E" scheme? Hoppers weren't interchanged too often, were they?

[sarge]

Very nice. One is left to wonder why the six-foot high "L N E" scheme? Hoppers weren't interchanged too often, were they?

The big "LNE" was more in keeping with the boldness of graphics that became popular in the postwar era than anything else.

As far as interchange, hoppers were certainly free to do so, but the traffic routes really defined how far off line they'd wander. As an example, Pennsy cars would be common in New Hampshire on B&M as coal loaded in PA would go up the PRR Elmira Branch, up the New York Central Corning Secondary to the NYC main, through Syracuse to Rotterdam Jct, get handed to B&M for the trip to the big power plant at Bow, NH. From there, they'd return from whence they had come as empties to reload and make the trip again.

What usually didn't happen was "free-interchange" in the manner of a boxcar. A car in free interchange (rather than dedicated service like a hopper) gets emptied, then it is advantageous to load it as soon as possible, send it to the new load's destination, empty it and repeat the process, so that car pretty much goes wherever the sequence might arbitrarily take it.

Because coal in different types and grades comes from very specific locations, it is financially advantageous to own a fleet of hoppers dedicated to that particular source, thus you don't usually see a Pennsy hopper in Utah or a Rio Grande hopper in Florida.

[sarge]

Three pleasant hours all in, and the four are now up to scratch:

[healey36]

Thanks for the thoughts re: hopper interchange; it makes sense.

The LNE string looks good. It would have taken me three weeks to do what you accomplished in three hours.

[sarge]

Oh, I've seen your model ships and the paper structures you build; you have the skills. You'd be able to do it. That's only the time it took to actually do the work which goes pretty smoothly and quickly once you figure the process out and gather the tools and materials.

I'm not including the time it took for the method came to me (in the middle of the night, as usual. GRIN).

[bob turner]

Those look really nice! I remember seeing an LNE covered hopper in the Ma & Pa yard at Towson. Standard two -bay, grey, with a red circle logo, I think. The Towson depot was between grade school and home, and if I walked the depot was a necessary stop. The streetcar was eight cents, and I enjoyed that as well.

Here is one of my latest projects - an All-Nation Atlantic, slowly being converted to a ten-wheeler of dubious prototype.

[sarge]

Here is one of my latest projects - an All-Nation Atlantic, slowly being converted to a ten-wheeler of dubious prototype.

Same one as you showed earlier? If so, nice progress. You changed tanks, too, I see.



If not the same one, there certainly is a "fleet" vibe going here.