Freight Car Models – Page 4 – Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads

Iron Range cars

Bob Hanmer sent several photos and details on a few neat projects that he recently completed. Here’s his story.

I spent last summer working on older, pre-1920 cars for service on my HO scale model railroad. The DM&IR continued to use some of these old boxcars and ore cars into 1958, the year I model. Since Dan Holbrook’s Signature Press book, “The Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Equipment: 1883-2004,” came out at the end of 2019, I was able to find information and photographs of the equipment and complete the projects.

Extras

I’ve almost completed a special resin kit build and noticed I need a detail part. I’ve saved the extra parts from all the resin freight car kits I’ve built, so it was time to check the stash of extras. I’ve kept many extras organized in old kit boxes.

Coal hopper details – pt 2

Let’s dive into more hopper upgrade ideas. Part one in the previous blog post covered end post replacement, and grab iron and hand hold replacements. Are you ready for more?

Coal hopper details

The last blog post covered upgrading hopper brake hardware from AB to KD brake components. The example was an HO scale plastic Bowser GLa class hopper. Let’s take a look at more upgrades you can make to hopper models.

Installing KD brake hardware on hoppers

A few steel hopper models have been progressing on my workbench. Each of them requires KD brake components. As I worked on these, I realized it’s been a while since a step-by-step illustration of the process has been published. This post will summarize the three methods I’m using on these models.