[DTI356]

Hey All,
Well, I removed the roofwalks, cut down the ladders on the corner without the brakewheel - I left the brakewheel high as the railroads did this when the cars first had the roofwalks removed, I removed the 8' door and replaced it with a modified LGB 10' door. I also added the angled reinforcement sheets on each side of the door (my first attempt at putting rivets into a sheet of styrene). The picture shows my modified car (top) and a stock USA Trains car (bottom).

 

[pk]

Howdy,

Looks like I'm not the only one that's done this. Although friction bearing trucks were still around in interchange service in the 70s, I opted for rolling a set of Aristo roller bearing trucks under the Milwaukee car that I did. The 10' door is something that I didn't get into, maybe on the next one. Your car looks good, thanks for sharing it with us.

pk

 

[ConrailRay]

Looks sweet! If I recal correctly, when you take the roof walk off, this leaves you with a nasty gap in the roof ribbing where the walkway supports were. Did you do anything to fill these sections in, to either replicate the missing sections of the ribbing, or replace the area with roof walk supports as if they only removed the walkway sections?

-Ray

 

[DTI356]

pk,
Thanks.
Ray,
Thanks, I did just what you described.
Yes it does leave a hole and gap in the rib and flange.
I hope these pictures help explain what I did. I added styrene pieces to fill in the missing flange base, then added an angle to make the flange rib and roofwalk mounting plate. Then I drilled a couple holes in each mounting plate to look like where the roofwalks were mounted.

Brian B.
DT&I 1980ish

 

[NTCGRR]

good idea......

 

[ConrailRay]

Brian,

Looks really good. I may be able to cast that part with a slight alteration really easy....
I bought a few of these boxcars 2 years ago, in CR or course, and wanted to cut the ladders down, take the roof walks off, and change the numbers. But then I realized how the roof walk was actually connected and leaves this gap to be filled in. So I made a mold of the straight part of the roof rib with the rivets. Then casted a few sections, cut them down to fit in those gaps, and glued them to the roof (pain bending casted parts to the V of the roof without them snapping). This turned out to be a real pain, so I made a mold of this part in place so that the new part should come out the same size as the gap to fill in and already have the V shape, but this is where I left off a while ago... Not sure how they will come out and if a repaint of just the roof may hide any of these seems. But your part, with a slight alteration, may be eaiser to cast as one side can to be totally flat (the top open part of the mold) with all the detail/protrusions sticking down into the mold. Of course I can build all these from scratch, but who has time for that?!?!

Will get to it one of these days (with the other thousand projects on the back burner!)
-Ray