Finishing up Rio Grande Automobile Car

always nice to read your blog Gene. a real craftsman.

I second Chris's comment, your workmanship is a benchmark very few will ever achieve. Outstanding!

Bob

Incredible job Gene and  I think this is one of your best.  Just looks perfect in every detail.  

BH

That's a very elegant model. I have an All-Nation Rio Grande 50' auto car of similar design, but of course it lacks the beautiful detailing of this one.

Thanks.

I had no idea All Nation make a kit of this car. Rails Unlimited had a resin model of the earlier series.

. Two thumbs up.  Looks great

Larry

I'll post a photo of my All-Nation car, if I can purchase a simple digital camera somewhere. The last camera I bought at Costco was too complex for normal human use, so I returned it. The All-Nation kit is really pretty nice when carefully built.

Here's the All-Nation version the auto car. There's also a photo of my Atlas an F-3 unit rebuilt with a new frame and a lower tank, and with P&D trucks and CLW drive. The third photo is an Atlas F-3 A-B-B-A in freight service alongside a brand-new DM&IR M-4 Yellowstone from Baldwin that has just arrived on the property in the winter of 1943, where it will work until the Great lakes thaw in the spring. On my layout, the F-3s are sort of a stand-in for all the Rio Grande F units that were painted in this handsome early scheme.

Thanks for sharing the pictures.

Gene

Was the Rails Unlimited resin kit a model of an outside-braced car? 

Pure fabulous Gene!!  

So wonderful! I really appreciate HQ pictures where I can take all the amazing details in!

The Rails Unlimited 50' D&RGW boxcar looked exactly like Gene's except with 1 1/2 side doors and different ends.  A different series of cars.

D&RGW outside braced 50' boxcar?   Don't think that animal existed.

The reason I asked about the outside-braced D&RGW automobile car is that I have a very nicely done resin model painted in this scheme (which may not be accurate). I'll post a photo of this one, too. Over the years I have picked up various cars painted for Rio Grande that may or may not be correct. It's hard to find Rio Grande freight cars, accurate or otherwise, so I've settled for what I could get in order to have a reasonable number of company cars between my D&RGW engine and caboose.

The version of this 50' Rio Grande car that Rails Unlimited sells is still available. Grande had a 40' outside braced series of cars but they were rather plain looking, but no 50' outside braced steam era cars that I know of.

Thanks for letting me know about availability of the Rails Unlimited car. Rio Grande took delivery of 1500 Fowler "clone" 40' outside-braced cars in 1916 and there were still about 1300 of them left in 1948, so that would be a good choice to fill out a train. San Juan produced a plastic kit for this car, but I have not tried to build one yet. 

I'll post my photos of other O-scale Rio Grande cars in a new thread, so as not to take up space here and get too far away from the original topic.

They had a door and a half outside braced car also...

I was wrong about my outside-braced 50' D&RGW car. It was actually built from a wooden kit, not resin. I posted a picture of it on a new thread.