Scaling up cars

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,
I'm thinking of cladding one of my freight cars with timber to beef it up a bit and bring it closer to 1:20. I have found a model boat mailorder shop that sells both timber strips and sheets of several different varieties and I wonder if anyone else has been down this route.
Cheers,
Kim
[tup]

[kstrong]

I've done a bit of that, though I'm typically far more inclined to just scratchbuild what I need. I did have a few pieces on hand that came very close to the dimensions of early East Broad Top equipment, so they got a treatment similar to what you're describing.


This is actually two Bachmann box cars spliced together to reach the prototype length. I laminated new wood siding and boards to the outside, bringing the width out around an additional 3/16" or so, laminating new siding onto the roof as well to cover.


This stock car got a similar treatment, with a beefier side sill and end beams glued onto the car. In this case, the car wasn't lengthened, as the length was close enough to a car owned by the EBT--close enough to where I wasn't going to worry one bit about any discrepency, certainly.


This project is a bit more radical than the others, in that I completely gutted the vertical and diagonal bracing on the sides, and rebuilt my own. This started out as a Delton/Aristo wood hopper from their "classics" line. The top and bottom main beams, as well as the 4 corner beams are original, just getting a thin lamination to bring them out just a bit. Oddly, the resulting model will still be too wide! The prototype was a mere 6' wide, this one is 6' 8". Other dimensions are much closer to the prototype (which seemed to vary a bit in dimensions from car to car as well.)

I've found as I've delved into research that there were a number of narrow gauge cars that scale out quite favorably in 1:20.3 to some of the 1:24 and 1:22.5 equipment on the market. The common cry that there isn't 1:20 rolling stock isn't necessarily as true as one could be led to believe. Most commercially available 1:22 stuff can very easily be modified to 1:20.3. Will it be a 1:20.3 model of a D&RGW 6500 series flat car? No. But if you're doing a freelance line or any of the numerous c. 1900 narrow gauge lines that ran all over the country, the equipment will scale out quite nicely.

Later,

K

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that K, agree with you on stuff that is almost there. I'm going to order some timber up and do me a box car.
Cheers,
Kim
[tup]