Has anyone built a livestock car or horse car?? Or would this be a scratchbilt ? Hobby Lobby don't have ( kit cars) or won't . This store is thin on train stuff off the shelf . Jim
P.S. Horses need to be hauled to LVL for the big race.
Y6bs evergreen in my mind
This one is a fairly simple conversion of a Rivarossi heavyweight coach:
Basically, the car's original sides are removed except for the areas that will eventually be the door sills. The car ends are retained, with the windows filled. The new car sides are a laminate of Evergreen car siding over plain styrene, with various sizes of strip styrene to fabricate the letterboards. Doors are built-up from .010" sheet styrene over bits of car siding. The roof/window assembly from the coach was modified slightly to account for the wire grab iron placement, but assembles to the car as it did originally. The original trucks were used, but relocated closer the the ends of the car. The steps under the doors were built-up from brass strip, the diaphrams are from American Limited, and the Garland vents were from the parts box.
Wayne
Dr Wayne, You always blow my mind. Your work is absolutely top notch,
and you make it sound so simple and yet I know the amount of time and effort it
takes to produce a quality model such as the horse car. And yet you do them almost routinely
I stand in awe Sir, of your fine work.
Johnboy out..................
from Saskatchewan, in the Great White North..
We have met the enemy, and he is us............ (Pogo)
Thank you for the kind words.
While it does take some time, the work is not especially difficult. The Rivarossi cars are particularly useful with their removeable roofs (not something I'd care to scratchbuild) and I like to use the ends that are part of the original car, as it does save some time.
The basic procedure is to remove the roof/window piece, then use a razor saw to cut the sides near the ends - make the cuts to the top of the floor. Next, working on the inside of the car, use an X-Acto knife to score along the point where each sidewall intersects with the floor - a couple of passes should allow you to snap off the sides, leaving the floor with the two ends attached. Use various files to clean-up the cuts at the ends, and to level the cut-down sides with the top surface of the floor. After marking out the positions of all doors, use a mill fill to remove the portion of the car's sides that are below floor level, leaving the areas below where the new doors will be located intact - these will serve as doorsills, which were often metal-plated on the prototype.
The new sides should be roughly the same thickness as the original ones, and are cemented to the edges of the floor and to the ends - I used some square styrene strip to brace the joints between the sides and ends. Because the roof/window piece remains more-or-less as original, it still snaps into place, obviating the need for any further interior bracing. I did remove some of the "window" material where it would interfere with grabirons projecting into the carbody.
Any of the Rivarossi cars are suitable for conversion into wooden headend cars, and because the interior is not particularly visible, it's easy to shorten them as required, then add plenty of material to restore the structural integrity of the shell. If you're careful where you make the cut(s) to shorten the roof, the tabs which hold it in place will line-up with the openings in the floor, too.
This is another Rivarossi car:
Athearn cars are also useful for this type of conversion, although it's a little more work to attach the sides to the roof. I usually make new floors for the Athearn cars, then detail them as required.
Here's one done as a CNR car (the CNR cars were all done using prototype photos as a guide, while the free-lanced cars are based on similar practices):
This NYC car was based on a lettering diagram:
Windows (which were still common in baggage cars in my late '30s modelling era) are from Grandt line, while underbody details are from Precision Scale, New England Rail Services, and also scratchbuilt.
Wayne; thank you very much for the pics and details how to do this.
Respectfully, Cannonball ( another Jim)