Passenger Car kits

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Harold Oakhill sent an update on recent passenger car projects from his workbench. We haven’t touched on passenger car models, but they were an important element of the railroads into the 1940s. Harold models the Ulster & Delaware in 1924 and passenger cars were extremely important to move people to the Catskill resorts. Here’s Harold with his update.

I recently finished a project I have been working on for several months. These passenger cars are a trio of Ambroid coach kits from the 1950s that my father began building in the early 1960s. I don’t know why he never finished them, but I remember taking them out and looking at them from time to time as a kid. Mom sent them to me a few years ago (Dad has been gone ten years now) and I decided it was time to finish them.

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Truck Installation tips

A portion of my truck farm.
A portion of my truck farm.

This sounds pretty simple, right? I mean, you just turn the screw until it’s tight and then turn it back a quarter or a half turn so the truck pivots and rocks side to side. Sure, that is the way I had installed freight car trucks for years until a truck wouldn’t pivot well or I stripped out the threads in the hole.

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Beyond the Box

We wish it were as easy as opening a box to add a new freight car on the layout. Here are a few processes to transform a kit to a completed freight car ready for service.
We wish it were as easy as opening a box to add a new freight car on the layout. Here are a few processes to transform a kit to a completed freight car ready for service.

Readers may have noticed most of my freight cars go through a few phases as they progress from parts in a kit box to layout use with a weathered patina. These construction phases are common for many prototype modelers as we customize basic freight car kits, or ready-to-run models (RTR), in order to reflect a specific prototype or era. Let’s take a look at these phases.

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Model Progress

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Some of my projects are long term affairs but they eventually move forward. Here’s a peek at one of those projects. This freight car started about five years ago when Accurail released their very nice 41-foot steel gondola. Except for the ends and a couple of small details, the model is a close match to a Wheeling & Lake Erie prototype. 2000 of those gondolas were built in 1921.

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Resin Freight Car Kit builds – part 7

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One more freight car for the fleet!

I found another unfinished model last week and I can’t recall when I started on this build. I’m pretty certain it’s only been sitting for a year and I remember why it was put away. I stopped this build because of the non-standard sill steps that needed to be bent from a flat piece of brass shimstock. I did one and put the model away. But it’s back and I finished it this past week.

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