Tag Archives: Resin kit builds

Missouri Pacific/International-Great Northern Howe Truss Boxcar

August 17, 2015Models, Resin Freight Cars, Techniquesmodels, Resin kit buildsRCWadmin

Charlie Duckworth joins the blog with his build summary of a classic Sunshine Models resin box car kit. Click on any image to review a larger size. Here’s Charlie’s report.

History
The Missouri Pacific and its subsidiaries purchased or built some 4,439 Howe Truss boxcars. The cars had a capacity of 2,926 cubic feet and used a Murphy radial roof. All of the 2,750 MP 46000-48749 series and the first batch of 1,569 cars for the International-Great Northern 6201-6950 were built with indented Murphy ends. These cars were built in 1926 by ACF with a few coming from Standard Steel Car Company. The I-GN 9401-9900 group was built by ACF in 1927 and used the indented Dreadnaught ends. The final 100 cars used Creco door hardware, whereas, the rest of the fleet used Camel hardware. Prototype painting was initially boxcar red with black underframe and trucks with the car body shade being modified over time to a medium brown. Stenciling was white.

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Re-Creating an Over-Spray

August 3, 2015Models, Techniquesmodels, Resin kit buildsRCWadmin

photo_lead_NP5966xa — Northern Pacific 5966, a 50-foot, single sheathed automobile box car built in 1926. Photo from the Jim Gerstley Collection, courtesy of Dan Smith.

Bill Welch is back with more tales from his workbench. Click on any image here to review a larger size. Here’s his latest report.

As a part of building freight car models, I enjoy collecting photos for car kits I already have or hope will be produced. I have found several photos of the big 50-foot Northern Pacific single sheathed cars that I used to aid in building an HO scale kit of the car offered by Speedwitch Media. After I had finished my assembly, I realized I have a colour photo from circa 1956 on my computer showing the galvanized roof panels devoid of any paint except for some misting of overspray along its edge from the last time the body had been painted. The roof ribs did appear to be painted or perhaps coated with a “freight car red” car cement. I decided I wanted to try and recreate this appearance, which meant I needed to mask the roof, a chore made more tedious because I had already glued the Running Board System in place. Oh joy!

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Oopsies

July 27, 2015Details, Models, Tank Carsdetails, models, Resin kit buildsRCWadmin

20150727_greytank_oops — It all looks great until the decals don’t fit!

I present for you a fine illustration of not paying attention to what you’re doing. In this example, I forgot to follow the measure twice cut once rule.

I was working on a build of Resin Car Works Kit 1.04. I painted the grey and masked that area, then painted the rest of the tank red. The lower tank, frame and trucks were painted separately then the car was assembled. When I went to place the decals, they did not fit.

You did read that correctly. The decals did not fit.

I had made the grey area too wide. This grey band shouldn’t be any more than the width of the platform. I would have known this if I had test fit the decals to the area before masking the car. So I lost some time on this build. I’ll just repaint the car in black, which is appropriate for my era.

It’s a lesson learned on this tank car paint job. I know I’ll get it right the next time!

Frank

Fun Builds – 1

June 1, 2015ModelsResin kit buildsRCWadmin

I need to get into the habit of posting stuff. Recent events around the home have conspired to make me completely forget about the blog. A big distraction has been the garden while a smaller distraction has been this Nickel Plate Road mill gondola.

The prototype for the model. Joe Collias photograph from the collection of Frank Hodina.

I wanted something to build that wouldn’t take more than an evening and had this HO scale Chad Boas kit among the stash. This is a very nice, very simple kit composed of a resin underframe and sides, resin side braces, and laser cut wood deck and sides.

Prototype info
The Nickel Plate installed 500 of these gondolas in 1923 from the Standard Steel Car Company in the 70000-70499 series. These were the first 48-foot long mill gondolas on the Nickel Plate. Many were converted to all steel cars in the late 1940s.

My build
I replaced the resin ends with plastic ends from the extra parts bin to get a thinner part. As this is an operating model where the brake gear can’t be seen, I did not install any brake system. much of the underframe space was packed with weight.

The fish belly side sills would obscure any view of the brake system, so why not fill the area with weight?

The model was ready to paint in about an hour! I don’t believe I have ever built a resin car that fast. I think it took maybe ten minutes to paint. The most time was spent waiting for the Scalecoat l paint to dry. The decals are scraps from used NKP sets and the weathering was done with Pan Pastels.

This gondola build was so much fun I think I’ll get a couple of Chad’s flat car kits! Check out his current model list.