Ed Rethwisch shared his methods of bending wire to make grab irons. Here he is with some great tips.
I have found over the years that many modeling projects require odd shaped or odd length grab irons. The lead photo shows a portion of an HO scale RTR Intermountain CB&Q covered hopper model that I want to upgrade.
Continue reading Bending your own grab irons
George Toman sent details on one of his recent model builds. Here he is with the details and photos!
One car that caught my attention was a Gulf, Mobile and Ohio 40-foot automobile boxcar. The prototypes were built in 1942 by American Car & Foundry (Lot # 2345), and had a 10-foot, 6-inch interior height.
Continue reading GM&O 40-foot ACF automobile boxcar
I noticed Jay Styron’s carbon black hopper car model progress on a Facebook group and asked if he would share his build. Here’s Jay with the details.
After taking a long pause from model building, in the spring of 2020 when Covid hit, I opened the kit closet and started building again. I did a few plastic model builds and kitbashes, and when I felt my modeling chops were good enough, I started in on some resin kits. I told myself I would build in whatever order they came off the stack.
Continue reading Carbon Black hopper
Jerry Hamsmith sent the final installment on building the Resin Car Works New York Central gondola kit. He and his Gondola Group cover floor details, painting, and decaling in this post.
The next step in the build was to prepare the floor to insert into the car. Two options exist for a 751000 series car: a temporary wood floor, or a steel floor. As the modifications to these cars were being made during WWII, the resultant steel shortages caused the railroad to replace many of the drop-bottom floors with wood versions.
Continue reading NYC 50-foot, drop-bottom gondola, part 5