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Project Builds, Detailing, Painting, Weathering

From a sow's ear...a polyester purse


CraigZ

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A pig's ear into a polyester purse, or...taking a Broadway Limited NYC steel box car and thinking it would be a simple repaint into a DL&W car. Except that it wasn't. The ends are not a dead match for the DL&W - knew that going in and decided to live with it as nobody makes those ends. Plan was to strip the paint, change the running board to wood, and decal. Then noticed the grab irons were different. The DL&W cars had vertical brake wheels. The doors were coarsely thick. The BLI trucks were as flat as Kansas and had some weirdo mounts for the trucks. Oh, and the wheels are supposed to be rib backed...BLI *stenciled* the 'ribs' on...the wheel itself was flat. Wow.

 

So...wood running board. Tichy parts for the vertical brake wheel. New grabs all the way around after plugging all the existing holes with .020 styrene rod, trimming and drilling anew. Sand half the thickness out of the doors. Chuck the complete floor and trucks in the trash and replace with Tichy USRA underframe. Add paint, decals from Jerry Glow, weather. It came out better than I hoped.

 

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Cheers Craig - "vertical brake wheel" makes sense now, for one thing!! I'd forgotten how earlier cars often had the brake wheel fitted!!

 

Some will call the vertical brake wheel a 'power brake', eg, with a device that multiplies the brakeman's efforts. However there were vertical staff (horizontal wheel) power brakes.

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Craig,

 

Looks good. I noted the BLI car as it comes out of the box tracks horribly - I haven't done a lot of checking into the "why" but you're right - the truck mounts are some sort of weird "peg" assembly.

 

Marty

 

Thanks...the Tichy underframe is precisely .040" too narrow - there's a rabbet in the shell that's 0.020 deep. Shimmed it out with .020 on either side and it's a nice fit for the Tichy underframe.

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