Finally finished building my latest custom 3D printed train car. This one is a MOW car, specifically a Hart Convertible Gondola-- one of several types of rail and ballast laying cars that were used on railroads across the country from 1900 through the 1950s.
As with most of my models, it starts out as a pile of 3D printed parts. This particular kit took about 5 print jobs including about 3 days of printer time. The frame and body are both over 10" long and are just the right size to be printed one at a time in one solid block of ABS plastic.
The Hart Convertible Gondola can carry rail sections or ballast. The car can be configured to carry 40 tons of ballast or the equivalent amount of 40-foot rail sections by moving different doors and hatches. I love operating features on cars so I designed mine to have working floor doors and side hatches. Here's a view of the end of the car showing the trucks I used (good old Lionel Postwar) along with one of the 6 screws that holds the body and frame together.
After cleaning and test-fitting to my satisfaction, I brought it all into my painting booth (a cardboard box in my garage) and applied some appropriate colors. I decided to go with a brown and black "Minuteman" scheme, in this case Rustoleum 2x Kona Brown and Black. The B&M did have convertible ballast cars built under license from Hart; here's a link to a historical site with some photos.
I cut up a sheet of K4 Pacific Minuteman decals for a boxcar and arranged them as best I could on the side hatches. I happened to find a weight and carrying capacity decal that is about right for these kind of cars, so I snuck that in as well.
After spraying everything down with Matte Clear and threading 0.050" rod through all of the hatches, it all came together like this!
Here's what makes the Hart so "convertible". The ends move in, the floor doors open and voila, we now have a center-dumping hopper for ballast. Just have to get some little gray stones and scrap sections of tubular rail to load it up with now!
This car is a natural addition to my B&M MoW train.
Check it out in the video and let me know what you think!
