@jhz563 posted:

How many forum members know this feeling  !!?!!   😉

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

I really admire you folks who, after spending good money for a model, have the guts and skill to modify it to make it unique or otherwise more interesting. My fear is that if I tried to do that, I would just turn it into a piece of junk.

Hey Arnold ,  "  one man's junk is another man's treasure. "

Don't keep yourself from having a little fun  .   Once you start an idea with step A , figure out what step B might work and then when that is done go to step C and when that is done ......................🤔🤓

This forum post has really opened my mind to possibilities for the layout. 🙃

It's only September ......but........

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

I wanted more cars for my WILLIAMS GG1 girl's Freight Set so I found a seller of PINK flat cars on ebay.

made several additions for my girls set.

1. Log car with Williams Trucks Lionel stakes and K-line logs

2. Wheel car with Williams Trucks and Lionel parts

3. Trailer car with Williams Trucks with white Lionel vans and a metal Lionel frame to hold them.

4. Williams triple dome tank car with custom Lilac paint and water slide decals

5. Williams Stock car with custom Lilac paint and Western Pacific decals. 

6. Lionel depressed center flat with transformer pastel.

Undecorated Atlas PS-1 boxcars became QA&P proto-lance cars.

Custom Williams brass NYC hudson.

Custom Lionel Alco PAs.

Homemade Lionel 6805 Atomic Energy Disposal Car

I have made a homemade Lionel 6805 Atomic Energy Disposal car,  a red flat car with flashing light radioactive canisters.  This was a easy job but I had to make a homemade electrical pickup.  I stared with two flashing light canisters purchased at a train show.  I had a spare red flat car body and two trucks.  Two track pieces of O27 track were used also.  The two pieces of track rail were glued to the flat car body with E6000 glue after soldering a piece of wire to each.

An electrical pick up was made for one of the plastic O gauge trucks.  My method using a piece of thin brass shim to make an electrical pick up was used.  I have made over 10 of this hard to find pick ups for my train collection.

The pickup proved to be too wide and shorted out on the Remote Control track sections.  I had to narrow it down.

Picture of outside rail pickup, simply wires wound loosely around the axles

Picture of newly build car with my Lionel 16666 Toxic Waste Canister car.  The canisters on the 16666 car are not removable.

Charlie

I painted these for my rainbow train. I waited years for MTH to make these in RailKing size but gave up and painted a couple of junk cars. I know there not supposed to be ribbed but they will work for me. The paint came out well and I used Testors dull coat to hide the decals.

Ok. I’ll bite. What is a “rainbow train?”

@CoolHand

The consists of passenger trains assembled by Burlington Northern (pre-Amtrak) with a mixture of cars from the 3 "Hill Lines" roads...or the even greater variety of cars assembled for Amtrak trains were often referred to as "rainbow consists".  Passenger trains from that era in the early 1970's were quite interesting.

Search this post.

in the beginning : AMTRAK

Homemade Transfer Caboose    12-23-2020

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to All

Transfer cabooses are smaller and cheaper than road cabooses and not as good looking as say a Porthole N5C caboose.  They are usually made from flatcars with a cab attached, to provide minimal shelter, and railings to keep workers from falling off.  I was not aware of them until recently viewed in some later Lionel catalogs.

I have been in a build and fix caboose stage lately, with more to come.

I made the Transfer caboose cab from a junker Southern Pacific caboose by cutting it up with a band saw and hand X-acto saw.  See crack in the center section.

I glued the end of the SP caboose to the other end to make a cab.  I added support along the bottom of the flat car deck to my cheap flat car that was missing the wire bottom reinforcing.

I made the hand rails from solid 16 gauge copper wire which is about 1/16th of inch in diameter.  Solid copper wire is strong enough for this job and easy to solder and form in homemade jig shown below.

End of car railing in jig below

Flat car top side railing in jig below

1/8th inch plastic pieces were glued below the spots for the hand rails to add support and 1/16th inch holes were drilled to hold the rails in place without glue.  I painted the hand rails yellow so they would stand out better and for safety.

I had an old set of Rock Island decals.  They dissipated in water and I had to spray the decal sheets with a couple of coats of clear spray can paint to hold them together before applying.  I had three larger spaces between side flat car supports and added three letters, R I L which stand for Rock Island Lines, a common name for The Rock Island Rail Road.  I added a ladder made from N scale track ties.

New Rock Island Transfer caboose with Rock Island Homemade 6 wheel Vanderbilt Coal Tender

I plan to add a small, short smoke stack on the roof of the transfer caboose.  I have a 12 volt mini Christmas tree light bulb and socket with pig tails installed in the cab and plan to make a track pickup for one truck from brass shim stock as I have done for a dozen or so homemade cars.

I think the Rock Island Transfer caboose has turned out well.  Lionel did not make a Transfer caboose for the postwar era but has produced and sold several in the last 20 years.

Charlie

nice....

Very nice Choo Choo Charlie.

So far I've made 14 custom cabooses to match my Post-War diesels, but none like this. Thanks for the tutorial pics, I might just go to my junk box to see if I have the makin's for one like yours

Lionelski

Custom paint jobs on cabooses to match Locomotive was the start of my car modification addiction.  I then started customizing a few of those black coal tenders.  These are two easy ways to get started and fun too.  It helped that later on I purchased a box of junk coal tenders and one of junk cabooses, mostly shells, from a local big collector that was selling out his trains.  I also got a couple boxes of track, and one box of junk switches, all for $5 a box if I remember correctly.  He had free to the public on Saturday mornings, a large train layout in a commercial building he owned and later had 3 or 4 garage sales at his house.  He died a year or so later.

Charlie

Outside temps have stopped me from adding to my sawdust collection and turned my attention to upgrading my rolling stock.  My searchlight car didn't quite make sense without a fuel supply.  I also created a muffler and painted dials and indicator lights o to the control panel.  Simple, but a start.

C V

I love the search light car with the new muffler and fuel tank.  That search light car has 6 wheels trucks so it can handle the added weight of the fuel tank too.

Charlie

Homemade Bobber Caboose

Happy  New Year to you and yours.

I recently built a homemade transfer caboose and posted on it.  Caboose time is still in full play here, with cold winter days keeping me in, so here is another caboose project with few more coming soon to your favorite train forum.

I have a cheap Lionel Rock Island 8078 Bobber caboose that works well with a Lionel General 4-4-0 locomotive freight train.  Lionel even has recently reissued this Bobber caboose in several more railroad names and is sold with more expensive sets.

I have three General locomotives and coal tenders and would like to have a second Bobber caboose.  I also have several Lionel SP type caboose shells, many in poor condition, so it is time to make a second Bobber caboose.

I picked a caboose shell with a good cupola section and front and back roof overhangs.  I then cut the caboose to use the short end with cupola and cut the roof overhang end from the other end and glued the two together.  I made a base from 1/8 inch Masonite and made brackets to hold train wheels axles.  I used four wheels from old Marx metal wheel trucks and made two axles from a heavy coat hanger wire.  A Lionel coupling was added to one end of the car.  Hand rails were made from 16 ga solid cooper wire with a jig.

The area below the end platforms was strengthen and the hand rails were installed.  The car was painted with spray paint, silver on the ends and roof and yellow on the sides to be a Rio Grande Railroad Bobber caboose.

A small smoke stack was added to the roof and old Rio Grande decals were over sprayed with clear paint to ensure they held together when wetted.  They were then applied to the car sides and over coated with Matte clear spray paint.

Picture below with the Lionel  8087 Bobber caboose

This was fun little easy project.   I now have two Bobber cabooses to allow running two General freight trains.

Charlie

Great little project.

Coach Joe    Thanks for the kind comment.

I might paint the rear and forward platforms and steps silver like the Lionel Rio Grande SP caboose which I copied.  I am working on painting an old SP caboose to Rio Grand silver and yellow.  Most of my SP cabooses are brown or dark red and I need a few more colorful cabooses.

Charlie

Would this count? 

https://ogrforum.com/...hted-tubular-lockons

Mitch

Mitch

Thanks for response and question.

Amended answer

Your modified lockons are not engines or cars.  I would suggest you post in the topic below:

Let us see your Scratch Built, Homemade or Kitbashed Layout Buildings or Accessories you have Built

https://ogrforum.com/...8#149239177033470108

Charlie

3rd rail y6b converted to a y6a. Home etched parts. Complete scratch built smokebox and feedwater piping  I have a thread on it here  

I  don't do any modifications to engines, just trying to keep them running is enough, but I'm working on taking a number of Lionel's bobber cabooses and turning them into ingot buggies. The work is still in progress but looks  promising.

I still need to add sides, ends , a floor ,and some means of coupling cars together.  Might go for Kadees or a link and pin. They'll be pulled by my 0-6-0 tank engine.

Verrrrry Interesting! Looks great and you fit Mitch's "Scrounge" and KitBash profile so that you have inspired me to bash and paint a couple of cabooses (sp?) in the scrounge box so that they might run as DMIR Thanks for the share.   (One must start simply...)

First off, Choo Choo Charlie, I really like your custom bobber caboose, even more I think, than the as is MPC era version. Though I am very thankful for the new tooling that was done during the MPC years.

I was going through some old train magazines and I never really never noticed or paid attention to it before. There's another train magazine with the motto "Model Railroading is Fun." Not "scale" or "prototypical," but FUN. So I guess that makes me a bona fide model railroader, because this project was fun. And the car is FUN to operate.

It started off as a junk flat car that came from under the table at a train show. By the holes in the car, it was most likely an lower cost unnumbered helicopter launch car. Though whatever it had been made as, those parts were now missing save for the flat car itself. I figured I would fill in the holes and use it as a normal flat car. Then I got this idea.

So I masked the car and painted the underside black to help reduce the translucent appearance of the unpainted red molded plastic. Then I added the maintenance/searchlight car part, albeit now modified to take a DC motor. Since I have the option of running my layout on DC current, this is no big deal. There's a switch between Porky Pig and Marvin the Martian that turns on or off the motor. Track power determines the speed which the turbo propeller launches. If I give it full throttle, that propeller is going to really fly and slam into the ceiling. For optimal operation, far less than full throttle is more than sufficient. Of course, obviously the direction switch for the track power needs to be the correct polarity for the turbo blade to actually launch upward.

Brianel027

Great job on that turbo launching car.  I like it that higher train speed (voltage) will launch it.  What did you use for the turbo flying thing?

You are really into painting and modifying cars and do excellent decal and painting work.  I am mostly living off a couple of old decal sets which limits me to Rio Grande, Rock Island and Santa Fe.  I need to get some more decal sets as I do not laser print them (I only have a HP toner Laserjet printer as I got tired of ink jet printers).

Charlie

Just finished a two-weekend project, converting an MPC covered hopper into a Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo slab-side hopper. One weekend to sand the sides down and fashion new ribs out of plastruct and sides from sheet styrene, painted during the week, and decaled the second weekend. Flat clear coat was applied last night. Third photo shows the slab-side construction. The postwar 4-bay hoppers look good lengthwise and heightwise with scale equipment, but are noticeably narrow - the slab-side construction effectively makes the hopper wider, so it now fits in well with my scale consists. Last photo shows it next to a custom 50' boxcar I also recently finished.

Decals are from Highball Graphics.

~C.Vigs

Very nice job on the hopper C

I just finished a project I’ve planned to do for a while. I am a fan of the Lone Ranger, and the Lionel Lone Ranger Sheriff and Outlaw car gave me an idea. The figures are way out of scale and I was able to find O gauge-sized cowboy figures on a western gaming website, Knuckleduster Miniatures.

I had to make one small modification and that was to drill and tap for a small screw to attach the figures and trim the base of the figures to better fit inside the car.

Next, I painted the figures.

The car was then reassembled.

It was a fun project and I’m glad I was able to finish it. Here’s a short video of the car running around my layout being pulled by the Lionel Lone Ranger 4-4-0.

Rob:

That turned out very nice. I like the authenic painting too. Very Cool!

C- awesome job on the TH&B hopper- one of my favorite roads!
Rob-  cool Lone Ranger modifications! Hi - ho silver!    JohnA

Where's Tonto?

Rob

Great job on the Lone Ranger getting best of the bad guy, LR was always my favorite cowboy on the radio.

CVigs  Another great job on the  box car full of decals.  I have trouble putting one or two on a car.

Charlie

@C.Vigs

That is GREAT modeling work on your hopper. I have used Highball Graphics for custom decals. They provide superb decals with a quick turnaround time. Their customer service is second to none.

On my current caboose effort I have painted two more colorful Rio Grande cabooses.  I really like the Rio Grande silver and yellow color scheme for cabooses since I have several black and brown Penn cabooses.

First I painted the previously made Rio Grande bobber caboose steps and platform silver as it was black.  Then I made a Rio Grande work caboose.  Both are shown below.

I used a regular Lionel work caboose without tool boxes or a search light.

The Rio Grande work caboose is shown below with the Lionel Tie ejector.  A work caboose is needed to hold a load of ties to feed the Tie ejector.

Another repainted caboose is a Lionel SP style one as a Rio Grande Lionel 6-9166, mine shown below.  I added a D&RGW decal where the Lionel has some other Rio Grande symbol.  I got three cabooses from one and a half sets of Rio Grande box car HO decals.  I made smoke stacks for all three Rio Grande cabooses from plastic sprues left over from plastic model kits.

I made some wooden tool boxes to glue under the caboose and used E6000 glue.  A homemade light pickup was made and installed and windows were cut from plastic milk containers and also glued on with E6000.

Charlie

Here's my 0-6-0T - Modified.

Southern Appalachian ran on the Yancey County Railway in Burnsville NC not quite 3 years 1968, 1969, 1970.  BEDT 15 was the sole power.

I modified an 0-6-0T by lengthening the saddle tank, adding tank steps, generator, air compressor, changing headlight, handrails and fuel tank to oil.

Not perfect, but close(er).  I plant to transplant this body onto one of the new engines that has command control.

I filled in 2 windows with Bondo  to create space on a caboose for my Baby Ruth vintage logo. It's all part of my Baby Ruth Factory and truck theme.