Freight car projects

[bob turner]

Well, I do need help. First, I believe Dennis' car is the color I am looking for - but photo reproduction sometimes changes colors. Here is one of my "good" orange cars:



This may be Milwaukee Orange - it may be also Krylon "Popsicle" - I am checking that. Probably Krylon no longer makes "Popsicle," since yellows and oranges have suffered from lack of chromium.

But here is where I need help - I have Milwaukee Orange in a very short bottle with a huge plastic top, and the label has come off. All it says for sure is Scale Coat.

But I believe the smaller bottles were Scale Coat II - and further, I believe that may have been water-based. I will try a tiny bit with water, and another tiny bit with lacquer thinner, but I welcome any hints - I have very limited experience with water based paint.

[sarge]

If it helps, Bob, Scalecoat 2 is solvent based.

I'd still suggest giving Trucolor a look. It also is solvent based so should be familiar ground. If you are trying for the first time, rather than one of their big bottles of thinner you can get a little bottle (same sized as the paints). The brush can be cleaned in acetone but I'd actually thin (if necessary) with their thinner which does have a bit of toluene in it. Shoot it on a piece of sheet or a scrap carbody to get a quick calibrated feel, then go for the real thing.

I'm with you on shooting water-base. I have little experience and less success with it, but I'm sure the latter is because of the former. The day might come I have to learn it; the IPMS guys use it to great effect and have several ranges to choose from.

[up148]

Color looks good and one thing about yellow or orange, a little weathering can really change the color or hue of the paint.

[bob turner]

I have a caboose painted Krylon Popsicle, and it is very close! So a can is on order - 57 cents an ounce, and free shipping!

The new model paints seem to be around $10/oz, with ten bucks shipping. Granted, that is the cost of a single Margarita at the airport bar, but it hurts something inside to be so profligate. I really should support TruColor's efforts, but somehow . . .

Let me see if that caboose is around:

Yeah - here. Built by Hal Sharkey, painted by George Wilson, admired by me -

[Chris Webster]

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.

FWIW, a thread on the P:48 list recommended using the height of the floor to determine how much a boxcar needs to be lowered. This makes sense to me - there is a standard height for loading docks and boxcar floors have to be at that height so that forklifts can drive in and out of the car.

This page on Sarah's Train kitchen website has a drawing of the A.A.R. 1932 design standard 40-ton and 50-ton steel sheathed wood-lined box cars. If you right click on the diagram and enlarge it you can see that the floor surface is 3 ft and 7 and 3/4 inches above the top of the rail. Modern cars have a similar floor height -- this page about the Greenbrier 50′ Plate F Boxcar says its door threshold is 3 ft and 7.625 inches above the top of the rail.

The TL;DR is that the floor of O-scale boxcars should be 0.90 to 0.91 (actual) inches above the rail top.

[sarge]

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.

FWIW, a thread on the P:48 list recommended using the height of the floor to determine how much a boxcar needs to be lowered. This makes sense to me - there is a standard height for loading docks and boxcar floors have to be at that height so that forklifts can drive in and out of the car.

This page on Sarah's Train kitchen website has a drawing of the A.A.R. 1932 design standard 40-ton and 50-ton steel sheathed wood-lined box cars. If you right click on the diagram and enlarge it you can see that the floor surface is 3 ft and 7 and 3/4 inches above the top of the rail. Modern cars have a similar floor height -- this page about the Greenbrier 50′ Plate F Boxcar says its door threshold is 3 ft and 7.625 inches above the top of the rail.

The TL;DR is that the floor of O-scale boxcars should be 0.90 to 0.91 (actual) inches above the rail top.

There is arguably such a thing as being too neurotic, a case of believing the drawing as gospel without thinking it through from a practical standpoint.

The notion that Greenbriar car is set to some height precisely to some number of thousandths on an inch and will maintain that dimension in use over its lifetime doesn't hold up in practical terms. Several factors affect a car's height off the rail to some number of whole inches; spring compression under load, and spring condition come to mind. Smaller deviations from wheel wear need summed in if you're really concerned about decimal or fractional inches. There is no way that car will maintain that height over its lifetime to the inch, let alone decimal inches to three places, and the same is true between a loaded state and unloaded.

I'll give that 0.9" number the role of being the maximum height off the rail, but it cannot be considered an absolute in service. BTW, forklifts use dockplates for this very reason; variations in car height and in the relationship between dock-height and rail height over time (track wear, rail replacement, bed sinking, ties collapsing, &c.) No-one in reality is building a loading dock or laying rail alongside it even to the inch let alone maintaining it to that precision.

I'll stick with the draught-gear being placed vertically on center with the rest of the frame, then the trucks adjusted to get the car height such that the couplers make the height gage within some allowable variation (a nominal +/- something) as a perfectly valid (albeit more crude perhaps) metric. When all is said and done, though, I think we really are accomplishing the same result or very close to it, the visual improvement is worth the effort no matter the methodology.

[Dennis Holler]

I must admit, I do respect the efforts and skillset used on modern models and yes they certainly are more "perfect" in most senses, but I am caught in that silliness of over appreciating what was "top notch" in the 30's or 40's... and I purposely stay away from modeling in plastic at least for old trains and such. That said, those builds certainly can provide inspiration to improve old wood/metal kits to some extent. Maybe it is more of me just admitting I am happy enough where I am at lmao.

That said, at one time I was contemplating modifying some Railcraft rib side hoppers to be more inline with PRR 55 tonners, which meant cutting about 8" off the top and sinking the frame in about 12" to lower the body plus adding the extended beams on each end....I started one car, maybe I'll finish it, but it's probably not worth the effort considering how many other details are still inaccurate! It is what it is...

[sarge]

Dennis, you don't have to justify what appeals to you, and I personally get it and enjoy seeing it.

For me, I am trying to replicate a piece of history in miniature with my models. Your models are pieces of history onto themselves.

What's not to like?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This one is (shocking!) a kit...Juneco kit that's been on the shelf for well more than a decade.







Built just for fun!

[Chris Webster]

The notion that Greenbriar car is set to some height precisely to some number of thousandths on an inch

The 0.625" comes from 5 / 8 = 0.625.

5/8" is a standard thickness of a steel plate in the US: American Institute of Steel Construction: Plate Availability

I assume that the dimensions quoted on Greenbriar's webpage come from the CAD files used to build the prototype cars.

Several factors affect a car's height off the rail to some number of whole inches; spring compression under load, and spring condition come to mind. Smaller deviations from wheel wear need summed in if you're really concerned about decimal or fractional inches. There is no way that car will maintain that height over its lifetime to the inch,

I don't disagree with you. However, if a prototype boxcar floor is 2 inches lower than factory spec then a model of that car needs only be 0.04" inches lower, which happens to be the diameter of a #60 drill bit. I'm not that good of a modeler.

When all is said and done, though, I think we really are accomplishing the same result or very close to it, the visual improvement is worth the effort no matter the methodology.

I concur.

[sarge]

Chris, we're making the same point, yes. All this is not only precision that doesn't exist in the prototype world but is far too neurotic a precision in the modelling world (at least in mine).

Plate thickness doesn't come into this as far as a dock plate, if thats what you are referring to. It sits atop at both ends. If you really want to get into that detail, aluminium plates were what we saw and they have a bend in them so the ends have a down-angle to both surfaces because of the variations in height and the imprecision of construction of the roadbed in relation to the platform height. In the days before aluminium was such a common material, lots of photos from the steam-era show wooden planks used for the purpose; I suspect a steel dock plate might be a bit heavy for two guys to sling across.

Still, we're talking about what is "good enough" for our individual purposes. While I might think the P48 crowd you're citing are being overly concerned about a precision that arguably doesn't exist in reality beyond an erection drawing, they just as easily can say (and be perfectly correct) I'm being less concerned than I should simply because I'm gaging to an appearance (draughtgear aligned with frame) rather than a dimension.

In the grand scheme of things, we're both after the most obvious clanger that hi-rail cars universally possess.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

This started out as an old Huff 'n' Puff kit.

[up148]

I assume those are dry transfers? What Mfg? They look great as does the car.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I assume those are dry transfers? What Mfg? They look great as does the car.

No - actually a rather big and ungainly decal that I was very lucky to not mess up any more than I did -- source? Unknown. But I sort of wish I had 2-3 more.

[bob turner]

Decals used to be fairly easy. I am not aware of anyone doing them right now, but I believe there are still a few - Rail Graphics comes to mind.
Jim Wilhite did mine with an Alps printer. They were fragile, but really good, and typically inexpensive. We started with the Baldwin 60000, which still has gold leaf on black in the Franklin Museum - we just sort of copied photos. I forget exactly where, but I have posted photos here.

Later on, I would send him a photo of an HO lithographed car, and he would return three car sets of really good decals for $25. Bargain, as far as I was concerned. Jim left us, and his setup is now with LaBelle, including all my artwork. I rather suspect they are not interested in actually selling anything, but I could be wrong.

Here is the first really complicated set of decals Jim did for me:



Copied right off a photo of the Varney metal car of the 1950s. By the way, Bob Stevenson cast some brass underframes for these cars, which really helps keep them as true intact antiques for the HO crowd. The photos, of course, are of the O Scale duplicates in my collection.