feet posted:mwb posted:feet posted:Stupid question but i have to know. Can these cars run on 3 rail track? If they can i might just start buying and building some.
Most can; depends on the truck being used and clearance with the car underbody
Thanks MWB. What trucks would you recommend ? I would like to use friction bearing trucks with Lionel style couplers.
Couldn't begin to hazard a guess. I almost exclusively use Athearn trucks with Intermountain wheelsets under my cars.
feet posted:Stupid question but i have to know. Can these cars run on 3 rail track? If they can i might just start buying and building some.
I have a bunch of kit built cars converted to three rail by putting three rail trucks under them. To get them down to a better height, the bolsters and some of the under body detail need to be removed.
The problem is that two rail cars have bolsters on the frame. Three rail trucks have built in bolsters. Two bolsters (one on the frame and one on the truck) make the car sit too high. The truck needs to be close enough to the body that the wheel flanges just barely clear the frame.
The lowest bolster three rail trucks come from Atlas, Pecos River, and the Lionel ones with the sheet metal top/bolster.
Old kit built cars with age patina look great running behind a scruffy, weathered steam loco.
RoyBoy posted:feet posted:Stupid question but i have to know. Can these cars run on 3 rail track? If they can i might just start buying and building some.
The problem is that two rail cars have bolsters on the frame. Three rail trucks have built in bolsters. Two bolsters (one on the frame and one on the truck) make the car sit too high. The truck needs to be close enough to the body that the wheel flanges just barely clear the frame.
The lowest bolster three rail trucks come from Atlas, Pecos River, and the Lionel ones with the sheet metal top/bolster.
Or, you can just put 3-rail wheelsets in Athearn trucks - I've swapped enough of them back to 2-rail to know it can be done.
mwb posted:RoyBoy posted:feet posted:Stupid question but i have to know. Can these cars run on 3 rail track? If they can i might just start buying and building some.
The problem is that two rail cars have bolsters on the frame. Three rail trucks have built in bolsters. Two bolsters (one on the frame and one on the truck) make the car sit too high. The truck needs to be close enough to the body that the wheel flanges just barely clear the frame.
The lowest bolster three rail trucks come from Atlas, Pecos River, and the Lionel ones with the sheet metal top/bolster.
Or, you can just put 3-rail wheelsets in Athearn trucks - I've swapped enough of them back to 2-rail to know it can be done.
Looks like the perfect solution MWB, never thought of swapping wheel sets. Thanks.
Those 1950s railroad modelers must have been a lot more accomplished and persistent than I. I've really struggled with the All Nation tank car kit. The engineering is poor because of the open bottom tank shell. Parts fit is poor.
The supplied running boards are too short for the center sill. I replaced. The center sill itself is too short to allow the predrilled holes to align with the cast ends. I filed the holes oval. Several of the punched holes in the shell were double punched and off center. The holes themselves are too big. They were filled and redrilled. There were probably thousands of these built up over the years, but I'd rank it at about a 3 on a scale of 10.
It's now in prime. I've yet to make up the hand rail brackets. The plan is to paint and decal the tank before adding the hand rails.
Notwithstanding, it looks like you're making a good fist of it, JJ.
Yes - beautiful work. That is the joy of kit building - makng a model that is better than most.
mwb posted:RoyBoy posted:feet posted:Stupid question but i have to know. Can these cars run on 3 rail track? If they can i might just start buying and building some.
The problem is that two rail cars have bolsters on the frame. Three rail trucks have built in bolsters. Two bolsters (one on the frame and one on the truck) make the car sit too high. The truck needs to be close enough to the body that the wheel flanges just barely clear the frame.
The lowest bolster three rail trucks come from Atlas, Pecos River, and the Lionel ones with the sheet metal top/bolster.
Or, you can just put 3-rail wheelsets in Athearn trucks - I've swapped enough of them back to 2-rail to know it can be done.
Do you use the scale couplers already on the car? One of two of the old manufacturers made couplers that were compatible with Lionel lobster claw couplers.
I'm new to the O scale scene although I've been buying kits off ebay since about 2003, when I found a couple of All-Nation boxcar kits at a flea market. They piqued my interest.
As a generalization the kits with cast metal end beams have some sort of scale-like coupler pocket built in. The All-Nation tank car I'm now working on was of very late manufacture. It had cast ends which accepted a plastic dummy coupler. On my car I filed away the pocket to accept a Kadee 805 coupler box. I also had to lower the bolster (file) so the old Auel trucks I plan to use make everything sit at the right height.
I also have an early orange box All-Nation PRR hopper. It has wood end beams but includes a metal end casting just wide enough to accept a metal dummy coupler. The coupler is stamped "All-Nation". While the metal and plastic couplers can be forced to mate, they wouldn't function without alteration on an operating layout. Neither of these couplers mates with a three-rail coupler on a PRB tender.
I've found the All-Nation and Athearn boxcar kits don't really have an end. The body end stamping just ends at the bottom of the floor piece. It's up to the builder to decide what to do about couplers. I've seen short dummies just screwed to the bottom of the floor. It would be simple to add Kadee's (or whatever) for two rail or use truck mounted couplers for three rail. On the Rock Island Scale Craft reefer I used Atlas metal two rail trucks. The truck bolster was modified to sleeve down the center hole so a small wood screw could be used for mounting. IIRC for three rail use the Atlas trucks have a built in body bolster; this is removable for two rail.
Any of these parts can be made to work. It just takes some hacking or shimming.
jjscott posted:.... the old Auel trucks I plan to use.....A lot of those are 17/64th's scale and a lot are not insulated either.
I also have an early orange box All-Nation PRR hopper.
I'd like to see that one, please?
Any of these parts can be made to work. It just takes some hacking or shimming.
Yup! Hacking and shimming and doing what it takes to make it work. 
Oops. Senior moment on my so-called All-Nation hopper; when I looked it's actually a WALTHERS PRR hopper in an orange box, maybe an H30 (?). I'm not really conversant on the prototype model numbers. It does have cast metal ends with slots for scale dummy couplers. The metal All-National couplers I mentioned above are loose parts.
Yes, I checked and the Auel trucks are noninsulated and appear slightly larger than some other Bettendorfs I have. Thanks for tipping me off on this. I think I'll use them anyway. I don't have a layout.
I've also just discovered the Walthers decals I planned on using for the tank car disintegrate when placed in water. I thought I'd better check before putting paint on the car. It was a Deep Rock set that covered the inner grab rail mounts. I had planned to add the inner mounts after putting the decals on. These old decals are a problem. While they can be overcoated with clear, the film thickness goes up even more. I'll have to order some modern decals from Protocraft.
Update. The All-Nation tank car has received a coat of black paint. New decals have been ordered via US mail, so expected ETA may be in 10 days or so. The Labelle Omaha reefer has had decals applied and is receiving multiple coats of decal set to bed them in. Then some flat clear and final assembly.
Next up is an Athearn 40' wood side box car. This was an incomplete kit purchased on ebay. It was missing the entire under frame, the wood sides and some other minor parts. Back when I started this adventure in 2003 I assembled the box using the supplied paper (card?) inner sides. I fabricated outer sides from some 1/64 aircraft ply. My plan was to make a wartime Great Northern plywood side car. Figuring the panels were 4x8, vertical lines were scribed at the 4 foot mark. Unfortunately the actual panel layout was different, so my sides were not prototypically correct. The kit was put aside, and has just now been restarted, with the comment that I'm building for fun with no attempt to make this a correctly scaled model. Shown is a Scale Craft cast frame (which I won't use) and a pair of cast doors, which I will use.
jjscott, You do very nice work.
Reading about how you do decals, have you considered using dry transfers from Clover House? I've been very pleased with the quality of their dry transfers, and it takes a lot of the work out of lettering a car.
Here are a couple examples on a pair of Ye Olde Huff-n-Puff boxcars:
BRR, your cars are very well done. Thanks for posting them.
As to the decals, I would prefer dry transfers if they were available for the cars I am building. The NP hopper posted earlier used dry transfers. And, the Great Northern plywood boxcar will be lettered with a CDS dry transfer set I must have bought when I bought the car. It's not strictly correct because the lettering is all black. The lettering and logo should be green; Protocraft has the correct markings in decal form.
I'd forgotten about Clover House. If anything is applicable to the kits I have I will be certain to order them. The modern thin film decals do go on well. They require more work and more time, and sometimes the film does not fully disappear. The old decals are terrible and to be used only as a last resort.
There has been a bit of progress on the Athearn boxcar. A basic underframe has been fabricated. The metal ends and plywood sides have been added to the body.
I'm having some difficulty getting the decal film to disappear on one side of the Omaha reefer. I'm up to about 6 applications of Micro Set. Tried Solvaset on some test pieces and it seemed to be about equally (in)effective.
Finished. My version of LaBelle's Omaha reefer.
Nice job, JJ 
An interesting car. Heated and refrigerated?
Strange bedfellows. 
Well, the All Nation 8,000 gallon tank car is finally finished. It was a long and arduous process hampered by a poor kit, my lack of skill, and lots of missteps along the way.
I did a fair amount of redesigning of the structure to get the thing together. My Scalecoat I paint went on too rough; I had to sand the tank with 3000 to 12000 sandpaper before I could apply decals. My attempt to apply the 1st Protocraft DEEP ROCK decal was a complete failure. I had coated the surface with the blue label Microscale decal solvent, which not only destroyed the decal but welded it in the wrong place. Off it came requiring more fixes to the paint.
The loss of the Protocraft decal meant I was forced to use the old Walthers decals I had rejected earlier because they were disintegrating. I sprayed the DEEP ROCK decals with one coat of Testors gloss to hold them together. One went on OK. The other broke up. I was able to piece it into position but lost the top part of one of the "E"s. I had to mix and match some paint to fix it. The Walthers "DEEP ROCK" is bigger than the Protocraft which made it more difficult to fit the lower letters to the tank side. I did the decaling before mounting the tank to the frame.
The side ladders were missing from the kit. These were made up from brass. It was extremely difficult to get everything straight and level, from the frame, to the ends, to the tank walks, to the handrails and to the decals. So many compromises were made. In summary this was one tough project, and I can say I'll never build another one of these.
I've been slowly working on the Athearn boxcar. Details, such as they are, have been added, and the construction is basically complete. It is in a coat of primer awaiting black ends, roof and bottom. Then, after drying a few days, the orange paint will go on the sides.
Here is the All Nation EJ&E 40' steel box car. Almost ready to paint the roof/ends/underframe. Need to finish up brake rigging on the one end and a few under side details. Need a pair of sprung Timken trucks as both sets that came in the box were broken from zinc pest. I will get some Kaydee's at the shop in Indy this weekend after the Danville NMRA show we are going to tomorrow. Mike
Scotty - that is as good a tank as I have seen, and the decals look great! As I recall, the AN tanks are just Thomas, repackaged. Mine needed interior reinforcements, since the brass was so skinny.
Very nice!
jjscott posted:Finished. My version of LaBelle's Omaha reefer.
Why would the ice bunkers be over the main door? Wouldn't that make everything more difficult, like loading/unloading the produce and the loading of ice?
The Moore's patent refrigerator car never caught on, perhaps for the very reason that the center ice bunker wasn't convenient for loading and unloading cargo. The patent is on line and it shows the car to be higher than a conventional car - to allow room for the ceiling hung ice bunker. LaBelle did not duplicate the extra height in their kit. I lowered the door a bit to create the illusion of some space above the door.
There were internal passages to direct warm air from the heater positioned below the floor to the cargo areas. There were also blades that moved as the car went down the track to help air movement - like a fan would do. It seems doubtful this would be very effective. In all an interesting concept, but probably not effective. It does make an interesting model.
Thanks for the comments and likes. Posts of other's builds are certainly welcome.
One more vintage kit is finished. This Athearn boxcar was missing its metal sides and underframe. I made up some plywood sides and built a simple frame. The doors are from Keil Line and use the kit slides. Simple hardware and tag boards were added. The kit ladders were shortened; wood roof walks replaced the metal kit items. Paint is Floquil reefer orange and weathered black. The orange is so old it's in a square bottle. Dry transfers are CDS. They went on beautifully.
I've started an Ambroid Lehigh and Hudson River flanger. If I can keep my enthusiasm going, I'll post progress.
Beautiful. You are a master car builder.
I think these cars look great!
Posts of other's builds are certainly welcome.
Ok, here's my current escapee from the Closet of Horrors: an All-Nation C&O hopper car kit.....
Well, that hopper certainly looks to be a challenge. I'll be interested to see what glues you use. My L&HR flanger cupola has been glued with epoxy; for that small assembly it seems to be working OK. Epoxy does provide a little adjustment time.
jjscott posted:Well, that hopper certainly looks to be a challenge. I'll be interested to see what glues you use. My L&HR flanger cupola has been glued with epoxy; for that small assembly it seems to be working OK. Epoxy does provide a little adjustment time.
It's a mess but a challenge to make something out of what there is will be answered. May take a bit of time and more than a bit of compromise, and a bit of creation of missing parts....
Curious to see what you do with the flanger - got that same kit on the shelf to tackle - hope we get a lot of snow and soon!
Shown is the start of the Ambroid flanger.
The plan is to build this essentially out of the box. I puzzled over what to do about the interior. I decided to use tinted plastic for the windows. A couple of coats of Tamiya transparent yellow were sprayed on clear plastic; then followed a couple more coats of Tamiya smoke. The dark rectangle in the photo is the finished piece. Held up to the light it's still pretty easy to see through. The inside of the car is painted with that medium green. My hope is that when finished the effect will be a see-through look with no clear inside detail. Time will tell.
The window frames and doors were painted with the yellow exterior color. They need to be glazed before the body is assembled. The window cutouts have been made and the side pieces glued together. The cast metal cupola pieces were assembled with epoxy glue. The cupola roof is bass wood. I did cut out the main roof for the cupola.
The flanger body is now assembled. To the inside of the sides I added a horizontal strip below the windows and reinforcing strips to the vertical joints before assembling the box. This stiffened the sides and will hopefully prevent future warping and splitting. The end doors got .60"x .100" framing to inset them back from the siding. The prototype pictures show this setback. The kit instructions have the doors glued directly to the siding. A door header is yet to be added. I should have replaced the cast door handles.
My experiment with the tinted glazing didn't come out as I hoped. The Tamiya paint on the butyrate (or acrylic) clear glazing remained tacky and was damaged by the slightest touch. Light does show through; the lack of interior is hidden; but, I'm not sure about the look.
Quite a few pictures of the prototype flanger are on the internet. The color pictures show either no roof walkways or what may be a walkway on the cupola. One black and white photo - which may be the earliest - shows a roof walkway but no cupola walkway. The color pictures also show significant overhang at the eaves. The kit has this. I'm wondering if plywood sheeting was added at some point to protect the car from a decaying roof. The black and white photos show conventional overhang at the eaves.
At any rate I've decided to reduce the overhang of the roof sheeting. I also replaced the 1/31x1/16 facia with a 1/8" styrene strip. I think it matches the photos better.
Nicely done - I guess I'm going to have to pull out my kit of this car when I get some open bench space after I get done doing battle with that A-N hopper.
I'm glad it's you and not me owning the All Nation hopper. I'm finding the soft metal castings to be problematic. The cupola pieces have mitered ends. Try as I might, I could not get all four pieces perfectly square. The corner joints are also visible. Scratching from wood or styrene would probably give better results. But, I guess that's not in the spirit of bringing the old kits to life.
jjscott posted:The cupola pieces have mitered ends. Try as I might, I could not get all four pieces perfectly square. The corner joints are also visible.
Not too surprising, but forewarned is forearmed,
Scratching from wood or styrene would probably give better results. But, I guess that's not in the spirit of bringing the old kits to life.
Probably /possibly so, but if I wanted to scratch it, I guess I would just copy the plans and sell off the kit.....
The Ambroid kit includes some pretty decent cast hand grabs, but they just fasten directly to the surface - probably with a dab of C.A. I figured the slightest handling would dislodge them. I'm just going to use bent wire grabs; holes are drilled. Installed the side doors and made some hardware. For the roof covering I'm trying 54" strips of tracing paper glued in place with Duco cement. Pictures show that in progress. We'll see how it works out.
Exactly one year has passed since my last post about the Ambroid Flanger build. Bob's great gondola pictures rekindled my interest: https://ogrforum.com/...ild-a-really-old-kit
So, I started dabbling away at it again.
First off, the kit supplied bolsters put the car over 1/8" high using San Juan arch bar trucks. I made up some new bolsters to correct the height then started on the underbody. There's a train line shown which I added. No other brake rigging is shown though there is a brake wheel that must be connected to brake rigging. Something's got to be under there somewhere. I couldn't find anything on the internet and just added some old All Nation castings where they wouldn't interfere with the flanger blades.
Ambroid has the flanger blades installed with the top edge glued to the bottom of the body. This leaves no room for any brake rigging - even if one knew where it went. There's also no positive location for the blades. I tried gluing with CA, but the parts broke loose. I ended up inserting two pieces of "L" shaped rod in the car bottom at the leading edge of each blade to provide positive location. I glued the blades with 5 minute epoxy. That didn't hold either since I now have another detached blade. The "Y" shaped hangers have no positive attachment at the blades. Their centers can be inserted in a hole drilled in the bottom of the body. The pictures don't show the mounting very well.
The tracing paper roof worked out pretty well. I hit it with a couple of coats of primer. The grab irons on the sides were bent up and temporarily pushed into their respective holes. I'll straighten and glue before painting the sides. The plan is to do the yellow paint on sides and ends. Then paint the black end stripes; add the end grabs; then I'll paint the roof and underbody.
Jim
JJ, Your work is superb!
Simon
jjscott posted:Exactly one year has passed since my last post about the Ambroid Flanger build. Bob's great gondola pictures rekindled my interest: https://ogrforum.com/...ild-a-really-old-kit
First off, the kit supplied bolsters put the car over 1/8" high using San Juan arch bar trucks. I made up some new bolsters to correct the height then started on the underbody. There's a train line shown which I added. No other brake rigging is shown though there is a brake wheel that must be connected to brake rigging. Something's got to be under there somewhere. I couldn't find anything on the internet and just added some old All Nation castings where they wouldn't interfere with the flanger blades.
Ambroid has the flanger blades installed with the top edge glued to the bottom of the body. This leaves no room for any brake rigging - even if one knew where it went. There's also no positive location for the blades. I tried gluing with CA, but the parts broke loose. I ended up inserting two pieces of "L" shaped rod in the car bottom at the leading edge of each blade to provide positive location. I glued the blades with 5 minute epoxy. That didn't hold either since I now have another detached blade. The "Y" shaped hangers have no positive attachment at the blades. Their centers can be inserted in a hole drilled in the bottom of the body. The pictures don't show the mounting very well.
The tracing paper roof worked out pretty well. I hit it with a couple of coats of primer. The grab irons on the sides were bent up and temporarily pushed into their respective holes. I'll straighten and glue before painting the sides. The plan is to do the yellow paint on sides and ends. Then paint the black end stripes; add the end grabs; then I'll paint the roof and underbody.
Jim
I'm very glad you found inspiration to get back to building kits in my recent thread Jim. The flanger is particularly fitting.
Bob
My Ambroid flanger sits outside on a cold winter day, just as the prototype would have been. It is now finished after a long break from vintage kit building.
I've found that these old kits require the builder to fill in lots of gaps where the instructions, drawings, or parts are lacking. The flanger's major shortcoming was in the design and mounting of the flanger blades. I had to narrow them to fit between the truss rods and come up with a method to hang (glue) them from the floor. The design doesn't really allow for any brake gear, nor is any shown on the plans. It takes some real fiddling to get the blades at the correct angles and with clearance above the tracks. Of note, there are no actual flanger blades that would clear between the rails. A minor omission, I guess.
My car bottom was painted with Floquil weathered black. It's nice paint; too bad it is no longer available. The body was painted with Model Master yellow, lightened with white. It sprays well but chips quite easily from the brass hand grabs. The roof is Model Master flat black altered with some brown; it looks no different than flat black. Testors dull coat was airbrushed on for the final finish.
The original decals wanted to break up. They were saved with a coat of Liquid Decal Film. When soaked, they took forever to free up from the backing, but in the end went on fine. The black stripes were sprayed on. I didn't trust using the stripe decals provided in the kit.
Jim
Jim...you were born to build rolling stock models. I know of very few others who do such a exceptional job. I appreciate you sharing the finished model here.
Bob
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