List of things that would need to happen:
1) Fill in skylights and panels between windows to simulate board-and-batten construction of the top half of the coach.
2) Extend letterboard down
3) Lower the car onto the trucks a bit
4) Lower or replace end platforms
5) Add 13th window to each side, and cut new windows into ends
The resulting model wouldn't be 100% accurate, but the differences weren't significant enough to where I would remotely worry about them.
Progress so far:
The first thing I did when I got the car was to remove the plastic "stabilization bar" that's on top of the trucks. This immediately lowered the car about 1/16", then drilling the brass mounting plate to fit around the kingpin to rest on the plastic bolster pad instead lowered it an additional 1/16" or so. That got me off to a good start.
There are some curiosities with this car that I decided would be addressed during the rebuild. The first one is the underbody detail. normally I don't worry too much about that, as no one ever see it, but the levers and rods as they come on this car make no sense whatsoever, mosty because they don't actually link to anything. Since I was going to remove the air brake equipment anyway (I model the EBT prior to the adoption of air brakes), I figured I'd do new brake rigging as well.
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I had picked up a spool of copper/steel welding wire at Harbor Freight, which works beautifully for handrails, brake lines, etc. It's good and stiff, but not so much that you can't make it do what you want with little trouble. And the $5 spool will last a lifetime! Now I'm sure the geometry on the levers isn't completely accurate, but when viewed from the side, it will be near impossible to tell. They do--at least--move the way they're supposed to. (The chain came unhooked from the adjacent lever in this photo)
You'll also notice the floor is different. I removed the stock metal floor, and replaced it with wood. The car is plenty heavy enough to not need the extra weight, and the wood is sribed on the opposite side for a proper planked floor on the interior. I also cut off that annoying flange on the floor that needs to be forcefully pried away from the sides in order to get the car apart. The floor is screwed into the frame beams, so that assembly is now solid. With that, there's no reason for the beams to have to rely on the sides of the car to hold them in place. The screws that hold the floor to the sides hold the beams as well. My first instinct was to permanently attach the floor and sides and have the roof removable. However, my particular roof has a slight bow in it if not secured, so that wasn't an option. It's not like I'll be removing the roof that often anyway, so this isn't a big issue.
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This shows the modified truck and the enlarged hole in the bearing plage. I added a larger washer to the mounting screw to keep things tight. Some of the details on the end of the truck had to be sanded off to clear the new platform beams. The brass "kingpin" piece extends through the plate, and I filed the plastic bearing surface flat so the truck would have less tendency to rock. The platform is also new, having decided that it was easier to build a new one than to remount the old one lower. The 4 beams supporting the platform are screwed into the plastic beams with small coarse-threaded screws I salvage off of discarded video tapes I get from work. They're about the same size as a 0-80 machine screw, but the coarser thread helps them lock in better.
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The platform steps are built using the same techinques I described in my Orbisonia rebuild, though you'll have to go to the archived log linked at the top to get the descriptions. The railings are made from 1/16" brass tubing, hammered flat along the top.
This is the new end platform along with the new windows I cut into the ends. You can see from the wood underneath the door how much lower the platform is compared to the stock version. I still need to attach the original handrails back onto the car ends, but I need to find them on the workbench first. The windows were cut into the ends using a Roto-Zip rotary saw blade chucked into my drill press, then filed smooth to lines I had drawn on the side. The styrene sheets filling in over the original scribed siding are only .010" thick, so they don't add much of anything to the thickness of the wall.
This shows the new windows in a bit more detail. The side battens are notched so that along the window frame, they're the full width to form the frame, but above the window, they're shallower to sit flat against the existing surface.
The roof had to be widened to accomodate the new letterboard. Some .100" square styrene was glued to the edge then sanded to match the profile of the slope of the roof. The new letterboard is .040 x 1/2" styrene glued directly on top of the existing letterboard. Yes, I took perverse delight in sanding off the "Denver & Rio Grande Western." The grey circle on the roof is plumber's putty which I used to fill in one of the stove vents on the roof. The EBT car only had one stove and one bathroom.
The new car still sat a bit higher off the rails than my combine or business car, so I really wanted to try to figure out how to knock just a bit more off to lower the car ever so slightly. (The coupler is also mounted high, exacerbating the illusion.) The solution was to lower the bolster plate itself on the truck.
A quick run on the belt sander took off around 1/16" of the material, allowing the plate to be mounted more or less even with beams, instead of on top of them. I removed just a bit more material from the tops of the trucks just to ensure they'd clear the end platform beams. The prototype trucks had a shorter wheelbase, slightly smaller wheels, and a tapered side beam. I thought about using Bachmann's trucks under this car as I had on my others, but the extra length of the car makes these trucks more of an aesthetic fit.
While it's a bit difficult to see, the truck now sits nearly 3/16" closer to the carbody than it did originally. I've still got enough room between the truck and the beams to accommodate uneven track. When all three cars (combine, coach, and business car) are coupled together, all three carbodies are the same height above the rails.
I've still got some minor details to add. The roof will get my usual aluminum tape treatment to simulate a tin roof, and other little things. But primarily, the car's ready to to the paint shop. There, I'll disassemble the sides and roof, then flip them over and build a proper stained wood interior on each section before reassembling it.
More photos as events warrant.
Later,
K
That could get you run out of town on a rail, back East! Oh wait, you'd like that ;-)
