[SailorDon]

It's not much effort to improve the appearance of the Bachmann UP stock car. Basically snap the sliding doors off the body and snap the body off the frame and paint the inside with a wood color paint. It makes the translucent yellow molded plastic look less "toy-like".


I had to put two coats of paint on mine to get the desired result. For an A-B comparison, I photographed my altered stock car alongside a new "straight out of the box" UP stock car.

I know it doesn't approach the quality of Accucraft stock cars, but I think this came out pretty good for $38. ($65 list price).

 

[Dave F]

I gotta say, I run a lot of Bachmann cars and they really give a lotta bang for the buck. With a little elbow grease and ingenuity (sp?) they do a fine job. I have an entire coal train of Bachmann hoppers, I've added a few minor details and tweaked a few things, but they are largely unchanged and look just great rolling by behind my USAT GP-30 at 35 scale miles per hour. Metal wheels too... how can you argue at less than $40.00 ??

Great idea to paint the interior of the stock cars, they looks geat ! Nice job.

 

[San Juan]

Very nice improvement. Fairly simple too. The painted interior looks so much better then the yellow version and even adds some depth and shadow effects. Nice job.

Stockcar repaints are fun to do. I've never liked the green body color of LGB's 4068 D&RGW stockcar, so I repainted our three cars with Scalecoat II loco black. The roofs kept the original factory weathered color which I really like. Robert Dustin decals and some heavy Krylon matte finish coats finished off the trio nicely. I even added a double deck out of styrene for the center car in the photo below to make it into a sheep car.

If you're up to a little painting and lettering there's no need for overly expensive cars...especially if that's not the scale you run. However in today's large scale, staying stuck in the 1:22.5 world means you'll be doing a lot of custom painting. But I enjoy it.

 

[TheLordsServant]

I agree with the above posts, an excellent job! Looks great!

 

[trainbuffjr]

Great job Don! It looks much better that way. Matt, Where did you get the tractor that is in your picture?

 

[San Juan]

Posted By trainbuffjr on 07/11/2008 10:17 PM

Matt, Where did you get the tractor that is in your picture?



The manufacturer of Just Plain Folk used to sell these. I'm not sure if he has them any more as it was a few years ago. There were three styles to choose from. A green and yellow model (likely John Deere), a gray and red model (possibly a Farmall), and then the orange version I have (possibly Allis-Chalmers). All three were different body style tractors too.

 

[todd55whit]

Matt,
I love the tractors. Do you know anything about the Just plain folk link you posted? Went to the site looks to be under construction? Todd

 

[altterrain]

Posted By todd55whit on 07/16/2008 12:43 PM
Matt,
I love the tractors. Do you know anything about the Just plain folk link you posted? Went to the site looks to be under construction? Todd




They are being distributed by silvergate now -
http://www.shopatron.com/index/394.0.27701

-Brian

 

[todd55whit]

Thanks Brian..