any ideas for a shortly cars and bobber caboose to go behind the Beep?

Early Post War would work. 9" boxcars, gondolas, cabeese, etc. Also most of the traditional size RMT cars except the ore cars are undersize.

Pete

If you can find them, the K-line Husky line of freight cars would go great with a Beep.

There are three commonly available 4-wheel bobber cabooses available in 0 gauge. MTH has made one in many, many road names, in both Premier and Rail King boxes. The other two are from a long time ago - Lionel and Atlas both made them. The quality on the MTH bobbers is much better than either the Lionel or Atlas, both of which were aimed at the low end of the market. All three can be found on the secondary market: eBay, etc.

I have some of those cheap Lionel bobber cabooses. One of them is a Santa Fe, molded in red.  The others are Chessie System(yellow) and Rock Island(maroon?).   I've also seen a Reading, molded in green.

 Also, some of the cheaper MPC era Lionel cars would work.   Lionel also made some cheap 4 wheel gondola cars.  These are all light.

hello 56f100.......

I am interested in the lionel red Santa Fe Bobber caboose and how much are you asking for it, what condition is it in ?

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678,2003

Tiffany

MTH's Rugged Rails and Atlas O's Industrial Line would also be great complements too. Don't overlook O-27 sized postwar and MPC Lionel too, as these common cars can be an inexpensive way to add to your fleet.

-John

Tiffany,

I ve got an Alaska Beep. True to form they are not Beef Diesels, (Pulling)

They will pull so far,  4 Lionel ore cars ( the 7" size),  2- RMT ore,

2- RMT, depressed flats, and the caboose, look at the size,  this is about

all, I have tried,  They are cute, and smooth,  play value, for sure

Tiffany, I'm saving the caboose for a project.  It's very light-even the wheels are plastic.  The only metal parts are the axles.

If I'm not mistaken, there was a K-line Husky caboose in Santa Fe-red with white letters.  Keep your eyes open--I found my bobbers in antique malls for a couple of bucks.   Flea markets are a good bet, too.

I'm making mine......

This is a IR hopper I cut the center out. I've done this with a gondola and reefer too...

What I would use are, for passenger cars, are the Sierra combine and coach from Walthers...(these are kit built, but built-ups show up in auctions).  The Sierra

cars are shorties, but scale models of prototype cars that exist.  I like what AMCDave

is doing, too, but those are not "off the shelf", either.  I have put Bachman On30

cars on three rail trucks, which demands truck replacement..Bachman has a caboose

for that series.

Either LOTS or TTOS had a short hopper car with "silver ore" in it a few years ago as a "convention car".  They would look fine behind a BEEP.

I pull a couple of RMT Ore cars and a RMT Caboose with my BEEP. I think it makes a nice little consist. A little Lionel Gondola like this one also looks great. Weaver PS2 34' covered hoppers are nice and affordable and a good size for a BEEP.

Gilly

I love it! It's perfect for the Beep or RMT's companion shorty F units!

Bill in FtL

AMCDave, I always love your custom work.  The shorty covered hopper looks great.  I'll have to make a few of those.

Tiffany, some custom cars, like Dave did, would be perfect for the Beep.

Forum member, wbg pete, gave me the following idea...

I made some shorty flat cars to carry half lengths of tinplate track.   I use a Lionel Trackmobile and a MOW Beep to haul them around.  So far, I have made three flats like this and would like to make three more...just need some more flats.  Just cut the middle section out of the car, glue, fill and paint.

Hello guys and gals............

Is it hard to make a shorty SP type caboose such as the very common types used in postwar lionel sets ? Guys I love those shorty hopper and flatcar ,maybe the shorty gondola as Gilly mentioned ?

the woman who loves the S.F5011,2678,2003

Tiffany

 The MPC-era Lionel baby Madisons-the ones with the plastic four wheel trucks-would probably go well with a Beep.  A Beep-combine set would make a neat little passenger train. 

The innermost and tightest loop on my layout was created as "BEEPWorld," with one simple rule: nothing longer than a BEEP runs on it. 

I have cut down a bunch of traditional cars to this criteria.  Here are some of them behind a Union Pacific BEEP.  A band saw helps do the job of cutting then down, but you could do this with a handsaw.  It is straightforward.  I cut about one to two inches out of the length of each, and glued them back together, painted them, etc.  I have both a UP and PRR bobber caboose, which fits the look and the theme perfectly. 

Dave and Keith, great job on those "mini" cars.  The flat cars look super and you can place any load you want on them.  Thanks for posting.

Steve, Lady and Tex

Tiffany, Dave and Keith have displayed nice examples of mini freight cars.  I recommend the Lionel MPC 4 wheel bobber caboose to go along with the Beep.  I believe the MTH and Atlas variations are larger, more scale size.

Steve, Lady and Tex

I have thought about building a train of super short cars, and have the caboose for

it built, and picture, which I can't find, posted on here.  The K-Line Porter, which

is over-sized, worse luck, is possible power, in front of a string of log cars and

short log train cars such as home-built box, gondola, and log loader, all prototypical,

to a log train.  I also have a kitbashed steam dummy and an uncompleted small logging engine that could power it.  All of these are short pieces of rolling stock.

Tiffany,

    You were once looking for a Santa Fe scale caboose to run with your northern. There is one on the For Sale board now:

          https://ogrforum.com/t...cy-santa-fe-northern

    The price is real good at $25.00 plus shipping.

Good luck if you are still interested.

JohnB

Any plastic bodied cars are easy to cut and shorten.  Sorry for the lousy photo here, these are on a high shelf and I had to hold the camera as high as I could to get this. I you want passenger cars, RMT makes some really short little ones, or you can make your own a little longer.   These were made from Lionel Western and Atlantic plastic passenger cars: two were cut apart and used to make these three cars (I added a set of trucks I got from who-knows-where).  

Tiffany,

   On the For Sale or Trade forum, there is a K-line S2 Switcher in a Santa Fe red and silver paint scheme.  It is priced at $40 and is in very good condition.  I thought of you when I saw it.  I'd take it, but right now, I figure I have plenty.  IMO, a nice looking switcher at a cheap price.    

Here's a photo of the TTOS Magma Arizona train set along side a train led by a Beep.  (Please excuse the poor quality of this cell phone photo).  It gives you an idea what the ore cars would look like near a Beep.

Here's another view of the same two trains from the opposite direction.

LOTS had a Lionel ore car with "silver ore" chunks in it for last year's convention.  You can probably still get a couple from LOTS.  There are a couple of photos of them posted here on the OGR forum.

Lee,

One of the pictures you posted of your UP "Beep" sure does look like it's running on the right-hand 3 rails of a piece of 5 rail track. Is it really?

Also, in a later post in this thread, you said you used two Lionel passenger cars to make 3 shorties, but three cars still require 6 ends, and two cars only have four ends, where'd you find the other two ends?

Bill I in FtL

Yes, I made it before I knew there are real-world tracks like it called gauntlet tracks: three, four, even five rails.  

I made the five rail section out of two sets of Atlas flextrack: removed an outer rail for each, intertwined their ties and reinserted one rail.  My BEEPWorld loop has a reversing loop on each end, and a normal one would have cutouts at the Y where each reversing loop comes together to feed back into a three-rail common conector track.  Instead, I used this gauntlet track and no switches.  The middle rail is used as an outer rail for both coming and going traffic.   I had to hand-make the Y- pieces at each end.

Hi Lee,

Very clever thinking, thanks for the explanation. Nice job with the custom frog, too. At first, I thought my eyes were deceiving me Because it looked like it was done at the factory.

Bill in FtL