Caboose for my coal tram

Here is a shot of my scratch built interior on caboose 24.  I keep posting as progress happens.

Nice job, Rick. Will the roof be removable so others can see your fine modeling?

Paul S

Nice work here Rick, great detail. More pics please and do you have pics of your layout and other equipment?

Sorry for the delay posting! Paul, after a little testing, I was able to build the roof so that it will be removable... maybe! It has a very thin cross section, and is made of wood and paper so getting it to stay flat of its own accord still remains to be seen.  Even so, I intend to fix both side doors open and add a small surface mount LED lantern inside so most of the interior will be visible. This is one of the pay outs of my layout design using narrow scenes and a railhead height of about 60 inches.  The tram railhead will vary from 56 inches to 61 inches high as it drops down to the coal dump above the standard gauge rail head height of 50 inches.  My basement is relatively small for O scale, so a higher track height will help blend the tighter curves (45 inch radius) I will be using.  Of course the narrow gauge will be even tighter (28 to 30 inch).  The cool thing about the tighter narrow gauge is that it allows me to use space that I couldn’t fit standard gauge into.  This amounts to almost a quarter of my total available space!

Joey, thanks for your compliment!  I will try to update my posts over here too, as I have started a thread on my friend’s website that will document this part of my layout.  My friend, David Stewart is the man behind the Appalachian and Ohio O scale standard gauge layout.  My layout will be a feeder to his for coal loads.  My tram is another method to fill hoppers that will move to an interchange on the “mothership” A&O.  A real “beyond the basement” interchange.  As to my layout and pictures, so far my progress has been in the room finishing arena, and have just begun to build bench-work.

Here is the blank canvas I started with.

A bunch of studs, sheetrock, mud, and paint latter...

And finally some lights and cluter and I have a workbench!  The bench-work for the Tram is barely visable at the top of the photo.