TCA Quarterly, Herkimer/Kasiner

I think you're talking about OK Engines, correct?

Here's 2 Budd cars I had them make:

Lousy photo but that's all I have at present.

Here's their website:

http://www.okengines.com/

When I bought these the ends were just pieces of thin sheet aluminum bent to shape.  The owner told me he was working on new, more detailed ends.

The trucks were made from a soft cast metal and not easy to keep together.

The main body is an aluminum extrusion, they can cut windows anywhere you desire and have data sheets on the various Budd cars to make any one you want.  The window "glass" is a sheet of clear plastic that hugs the inside shape of the body, sitting on top of 2 rails down each side.

 I made new ends for mine out of 1/4" plexiglass, but I want to make new ones with more detail.

I replaced the trucks with trucks from GGD.

I also made a new floor (the old one was too thin) from 1/4" plexiglass.

These come without any interiors or decals, so you have to make your own.

If I was to do it again I'd JUST buy the aluminum body and clear plastic window material, a bit cheaper than the whole kit.  The money saved can go towards new trucks (I don't know if Scott Mann at GGD has the trucks available or if he simply did me a favor).

PRR Trainguy (aka Mike) also has some of the OK Engines cars, you can see them here:

https://ogrforum.com/d...ent/2415514336490480

What I like most is that FINALLY I have cars with the correct window placement that Seaboard Air Line had on their cars.

OK Engines is suppose to be doing Pullman cars with the fluting (different than Budd fluted cars) but I haven't seen or heard anything lately.  I think the owners name is Ted Brebek.

One manufacturer that was also making some custom O scale/gauge streamline passenger cars fairly recently was Phoenix, who did a Rio Grande RPO for me several years ago. (there was a period when head end cars were not included in passenger car sets... which has now ended, fortunately) I do not think Phoenix is any longer in business.

As for Keil-Line, I discovered years ago, that if I wanted to kitbash and scratchbuild

structures and rolling stock that was not "me too", and was different, I had to attend

O scale shows and track down O scale sources, and I found Keil-Line set up at the large Chicago March O scale show and others.

I kitbashed some old Walther's heavy weight cars, and those of All-Nation, the company that followed on, producing those kits.  I think All-Nation was for sale.  Did

anybody acquire that and continue to produce those kits?  All-Nation I also discovered

at the Chicago show.

Somebody in Florida once produced a kit for a scale length, not a shorty, Budd RDC

car, that I was never successful in tracking down so I could model an RDC-3.  3rd

Rail did produce RDC-1's of scale length, but I wanted a jack-of-all-trades one car

train, like the gas electrics used to be.

I have the OK Engines catalog in a pdf file.  If anyone wants it I can send it via email.  The file I got from OK Engines was in a Microsoft Publishing format and I don't have MS Publishing (but I do have a nephew who is a computer geek ).

Keil Line and PSC offer some nice seats, tables, and chairs to do most interiors.

It gets me though when we say "It was the old so-and-so line".  Unless your 100 years old I would guess most people don't know what the "old line" even was.

We all do it, so I'm not picking on anyone.  I vaguely recall the Walthers O-scale catalogs, I think they stopped making them in the 90s.

I personally have used Keil Line, Precision Scale, and OK Engines, Atlas, Kadee and last but definitely, not least Golden Gate Depot, and have found them all to be easy to deal with and very helpful. 

As a side, OK Engines with input from me, was able to provide all three versions, scale length, of the Metroliner cars. 

Mike@IHP is working with me to "collaborate" on operator end and underbottom details for Metroliner cars. 

In "Budd Metroliner Set" blog, are pictures of all three Metroliner shells with correct window placement, courtesy of OK Engines. 

There are many helpful and courteous people out there to help.  Just ask and the amount of help and information is amazing. 

mikeg

Does OK Engines have a presence at York?  I was hoping someone would have some of their Pullman streamlined cars by now.

I was told the fluting on them is the same for sides and roof, too bad as the real cars had smaller fluting on the roof.  Still might be worth getting one, so I can have a close copy of the Seaboard 10-6 "PORTSMOUTH":

Bob, assuming the Portsmouth of which you speak is  the same as the one in the photo, it has a smooth roof, like all Pullman streamline cars.  The Kasiner extrusion is 

pretty close for that one

Bob,

I thought the car had a smooth roof too, but when I enlarge the photos (I also have a photo of another ex-SAL sleeper in Amtrak paint) you can see the fluting, or at least what appears to be straight lines that look like fluting.

In "By Streamliner, New York to Florida" by Joseph M. Welsh, page 80, indicates these (16) P-S cars had fluted roofs, to match the roofs on their Budd cars.  Budd also built (6) 10-6 cars for Seaboard.  All questions I had concerning this (posted on the ACL-SAL Yahoo forum) also indicated these had fluted roofs.

Ted Brebek, owner of OK Engines, said the aluminum material he uses comes with the large SMALL fluting on the roof.  I suppose the large SMALL flutes could be removed by a milling machine (or even a file or Dremel) to either leave a smooth roof or could then have small LARGE, 1/2 round pieces of styrene applied to simulate smaller LARGER fluting.  That would be a lot of work though and I'm still not sure the final result would look good.

DOH!!!  What a DUNCE!

After I posted that last comment it occurred to me that the OK cars have small fluting on the roofs!  It's the fluting below the roof and above the windows that is small and should be the large fluting as below the windows.

Still, same result.  The material OK uses comes that way (do I hear a Lady Gaga song in the background?).  The smaller fluting would have to be removed above the windows and below the roof and replaced with 1/2 round styrene pieces.  A milling machine would make quick work of that, but I don't have one.  I don't know what a machine shop would charge to do a single car project, probably wouldn't take 1/2 hour to do.

HOW ABOUT CHESTER? THEIR CARS WERE FAIRLY INEXPENSIVE BUT WITH A LITTLE CARE COULD BE FINISHED AS DECENT CARS.I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PROTOTYPE WAS AND DON'T REMEMBER WHAT KIND OF FLUTING THE SIDES HAD.

Okay - i concede.  I was under the impression that Pullman did smooth roofs.  I do know that Pullman did about four different versions of corrugated sides in Cor-Ten steel.

Mac Shops did three versions of Budd.  Kasiner did one version of Pullman cars, and Speer did the Daylight version.  I did see the Phoenix version, but regarded it as not to scale.  Chester was advertised as very inexpensive and the photos were beautiful, but I have heard that the sides were pretty thin.  As I remember, it looked like a Budd car.

I have also heard that extrusion dies are very expensive and that extruders do not want to do a run for less than a thousand pounds or feet or something.  So an uncommon car will be difficult to justify.

I was able to mill off one corrugation on a K-Line car, but it took longer than a half hour.  A computer controlled mill might be less labor- intensive, but you still have to pay for the machine time, which is not trivial.

All hearsay and opinion.

Bob,

I suspect Pullman ALSO did smooth roofs, in addition to the fluted variety.  I guess it comes down to what RR that's to be modeled and look at the prototypes.

I really like the OK aluminum shells.  They're a nice thickness and have a lip on both sides that a floor can rest on (as well as the window plastic, making it form to the contour of the inside).

I don't know how the shell could be held tight enough so a mill wouldn't create a bunch of "chatter" while cutting.  Maybe a drum disk on a Dremel could remove the small flutes down enough so the entire surface above the windows and below the roof line would be smooth enough, but man would it take some patience.

A random thought -- after milling off the wide ribbed fluting, how about replacing it with evergreen sheet styrene in the form of N scale corrugated plastic that could be attached with an appropriate adhesive. I made some Budd cars this way on plastic shells using HO scale material for the lower area and N scale for the upper part. I would think a contact adhesive similar to that used for laminate counter tops would work. By using sheet stock slight imperfections in milling/grinding/planing would not show.

jack

Jack,

Fine idea, that would hide any uh "imperfections" created by the removal process.

I'll have to look at the OK shell and see if there's a styrene sheet that matches or comes close.

Seaboard may be one of only a handful that had these types of cars.  I know they acquired cars from other RRs that don't have the same fluting patterns.  Being I'm from Portsmouth Va. getting a good model of the 10-6 PORTSMOUTH has been on my want list for some time.

O-kay.  I could go for just one photo showing a Pullman car with fluted roof.  All of the cars I have seen have smooth roofs.

To mill these things you need a box that bolts to the mill table, and a slide-in floor.  I can get a photo if you want.  I cut my own windows and relieve doors.  The SP Observation car was a complete success - i removed one flute with an end mill, then enlarged the windows with the same setup.  Only problem was the flutes were "outies" and the SP cars used " innies".

PS - as much as I enlarge the Portsmouth photo above, I still see the vertical lines of a smooth roof, and not a hint of longitudinal corrugation.

FYI -- The Evergreen sheet styrene is called "Metal Siding" and is .040" thick.

Part numbers are: 4526 -- .040" spacing, 4527 -- .060" spacing, 4528 -- .080 spacing, and 4530 -- .125" spacing.

Bob,

I looked at another book and found some good photos of both Seaboard cars, those built by P-S and those built by Budd.

According to Paul Faulk's book "Seaboard Air Line Color Guide To Freight and Passenger Equipment", the (13) P-S 10-6 cars (plan 4140-A) were built in 1949.  He says Seaboard insisted the cars be built with fluted roofs and that Pullman did not know how to weld the roofs like Budd did which resulted in roof panels buckling.  Photos of RICHMOND and ATLANTA (page 32-33) clearly show the smaller fluting on the roofs, with larger fluting above the windows.

On page 34 there's a photo of Budd built car MIAMI which clearly shows the small roof fluting and the small fluting above the windows (with larger fluting along the bottom of the car).  There were 6 of these 10-6 cars built by Budd.

My question now is, were the interiors the same?

Not 10-6 cars but Seaboard also had some other unusual cars.  They had some heavyweight cars with fluting painted on them to look like the more modern lightweight cars.  They also had smooth-side coaches, purchased from FEC, one of which is shown in IC colors with the SEABOARD on the letterboard.