caboose stuff!!!!I went down into my garage, found my stash of Styrene scraps, and brought some up to start rebuilding some smaller bay windows on my boxcar caboose. I also used my hand nibbler to make the side doors both wider and taller. I have one of the bay windows 2/3rds done, I still need to do the roof of the bay window which will be tricky.
This is a hard rebuild, as much of the rickety charm of this caboose's previous incarnation was due to poor craftsmanship, which can occasionally make an interesting model.
Speaking of i just uncovered another caboose. #218 is a brass model, which was imported by Northwest Short line back in the !970's . It was their first attempt to use a Korean manufacturer instead of the Japanese firms they had worked with previously. The model that was delivered was not up to their standards. They did not want to have the NWSL brand sullied by a poor quality model, so they sold it under the brand Far east distributors, or FED, which they later used to sell the $38.00 Hon3 4-4-0 and 2-6-0's that had horrible electrical pick up problems, and were universally panned. I have rebuilt two of them, with better electrical pick up they run well, and with a replacement motor they are fantastic. I wish I had picked up five of each when they were first offered , had I done so My RR would probably have a lot more narrow gauge. See the HOn3 engine shops thread in the narrow gauge section.
In any case here are photos of the beginning of the new bay window. the details are obscured as the white styrene doesn't have enough contrast to show the scribed details. Much of the charm of the last version came from the difficulty of attaching wood pieces to plastic. many of the components moved as the glue dried, which somehow came out looking like sagging due to age.
so here is a picture of the first step in the new bay window, and a photo of the Infamous FED disaster series caboose, had I not repainted it, and discarded the original box; this severely ugly caboose would be a valuable collector's item.
check out the circular logo, my old bent river route logo. I used typing correction paper. that I would put on the side of the car, and then trace my logo over it. i'd shoot it with dulcote to protect the design.
Note the number. in the dark ages each of my cabooses was assigned to a particular crew, as was the locomotives. locomotive numbers are two digits. The caboose assigned to that locomotive/crew carried a three digit number starting with a 2, indicating it was a caboose, followed by the locomotive number.. the disaster series caboose is made out of very thick brass, and is really heavy. It was assigned to #18 a two truck PFM Shay, which was the only locomotive I had at that time that had enough extra pulling power to tote this heavy, ugly piece of **** around. the caboose did not come with trucks. i put a very rare set of central valley fox trucks on it. in 46 years of modeling I have never seen another pair.
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