I’ve had a Funaro & Camerlengo HO scale Illinois Central automobile box car on the workbench for too many weeks. Over the last couple of days, I tackled some of the final details.
The door-and-a-half castings are very nice, but the extended door track pieces are fragile. Fortunately, the kit includes two sets of the automobile box car doors and a set of regular box car doors. Here’s what was in my kit.
The top two castings are interesting. These seem to represent when the half door was sealed. Notice there isn’t a left door track, the door track is missing under the half door, and the half door lacks track rollers. Additionally, the door track casting wasn’t complete on the left casting.
The middle set of doors are proper for the automobile version, but door tracks have broken. The right casting was mostly complete, but the left track was broken. I didn’t see the missing part for the left casting.
The bottom set of doors is for the box car version. The left casting has been cut away from the casting sheet while the right one has had most of the flash removed. I used the door track from one of these castings to use as the track for the middle left door.
Here’s one side of the model with the door casting in place and the full door track. Next up are door stops. After reviewing the instructions and the remaining parts, I didn’t see anything that resembled the parts in the instruction photos, which seem to follow the 1926 built cars. I decided to use the 1923 builder photo that leads off this post to guide the details.
The Tichy box car door hardware for early wood cars (part 3070) includes the door stops applied to the 1923 car. I’ve used this set for a number of kit upgrades. I marked the location on the car side using a pencil then installed the small pieces.
The door track also has a small wedge at the end. I marked the location on the door track below the upper door stop then installed a small styrene triangle. Once the glue had dried, the door tracks were trimmed to the end of the wedge.
Here’s another view with the parts called out. The same parts need to be installed on both sides of the doors.
It feels good to be in the home stretch on this model. Sill steps are next and then it’s ready for the paint booth.
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It’s modeling tests like this that show why you are a first class modeler.
Thank you for your kind and generous comment, Mark. I see all my mistakes on this model and think I have a long road ahead to hit first class! – – Eric H.
Thanks for this post. Detail parts are a focus of mine.
Some details can set models apart from others. They can also be a marker for your modeling point in time. – – Eric H.