So this is clearly not a project for the layout, but its a bit of a case study in how a “cheap” kit can be made into what I think, is a fairly nice model with a bit of work and some patience in carving away cast in decals and adding basic detail parts. This will never win any contests, and that isn’t one of my goals. A while back, I mused about modelling what you saw growing up, and while I may never build that diorama (who am I kidding, health and time willing, of course I will), I did recently acquire an Accurail 50′ combination door boxcar kit for $30 Canadian, so lets see what I can do with a fairly basic kit to make it a good looking model.
Where we started, a nice kit, but everything is cast on and just looks blobby. Starting to carve away detail on the B end.
Looking at the car, my photo sucks, but fortunately, others share their knowledge on the internet. In this case, noted Kingston railblogger/railfan/author Eric Gagnon has a post on his Trackside Treasure blog with pictures of CP Express Combination Door boxcars in Kingston in the 1980’s, matching the era I needed for this car. It takes a community, and sometimes its people you’ve never even met as in this case. Eric’s blog has a huge range of pictures that can help modellers with details and weathering. In this case, I’d have never done a lot of the things I’ve done without the pictures he shared to show a lot of the details sometimes overlooked, that even I am guilty of overlooking when I’m out shooting, as I don’t picture myself ever seriously modelling “modern” railroading, but I bet I’ll regret things I’ve missed down the road, but hopefully what I see and share on the internet may help someone down the line too.
So, a laundry list of things I wanted/needed to change and do for the car:
- Cut off all the cast on details, ladders, brakes, grabs, tack boards
- Clean up the roof and mounting holes for plastic roof walk
- Remove 6′ plug door and add 8′ plug door
- Install short ladders on A end and full ladders on B end
- New Brake Gear
- New grab irons
- New tack boards
- Extra long end grab iron
Cutting out the 6′ wide Plug Door and adding an 8′ plug door.
First up, a lot of careful chiselling and scraping away of the cast on details. Once that was done, the CPR cars had double 8′ wide doors, so I had to mark out a space to remove the 6′ plug door cast in the model, and a panel of the side. Accurail makes 8′ plug doors, and I was able to find a set of them. To cut the door, I drilled a series of small holes, and used a knife to gently cut between them. I left it short, as I wanted to clean the cut and take the final bit of material away by sanding and filing. Important modeller lessons I learned along the way, cut short and sand, its really hard to re-create material when you make an opening too big! Once the wider opening was in place, I used styrene strip to create supports for the new 8′ plug door, and the 8′ standard door from the kit. This was one of the few times where a door being cast into the body rather than a separate part would have been really handy! I also used some of my stock of Archer Decal Rivets to add the rivet line where the door meets the body that I had cut away. Once all the cutting and hacking was done, a quick coat of Tamiya fine surface primer let me see any bad gouges and areas that needed sanding and filling to get a decent surface finish. Once I was happy with the surface condition, a quick re-prime to confirm, and on to the details.
By the 1980’s, cars no longer had roof walks. These cars were actually built in the late 1950’s and had roof walks originally, this meant, that the ladders were cut down at one end of the car, but not the other as the brake gear was still mounted at the top of the body. To model this, I dove into my stock of Yarmouth Model Works ladders and cut a couple down to be four rungs for the shortened corner. For the other corner, I needed 9 rung ladders, for which I had a set of Black Cat etched stainless steel 9 run ladders with stirrup steps. These were a pretty close match, though truth be told, I prefer the etched brass folding Yarmouth ladders to the stainless steel, but your mileage on that may vary.
Ready for paint. A variety of detail parts from Yarmouth Model Works, Black Cat, Detail Associates, Cal-Scale, Kadee and brass wire to achieve a better looking car.
For the brake end, I had leftover Yarmouth brake platforms from resin kits (another lesson, don’t throw out all those extra bits on etches, keep a spare bits box/tub!), a Cal-Scale Ajax Brake unit, and used brass for the other parts. My favourite weird feature is the almost full width handrail the cars had. To model it, I used a flat brass bar stock between the ribs, and brass wire for the rod. It looks very much like the end pictures Eric had on his website. I painted it using Badger Model Flex Action Red, because its what I could find. I have always had decent success spraying Badgers paints, and I did again here. I had CP Boxcar decal sets from Black Cat and Microscale. I wound up doing about 95% of the decals from the Black Cat set, and the Reporting marks/numbers from Microscale as the Black Cat set didn’t have enough 2’s!
Taking to the dining room table on a Sunday afternoon to watch sportscar racing and model trains.
The car’s not quite done. I can’t find the right numbers for the ends of the car, but that’s not a big deal. I know I have white generic lettering, I just have to find it in the decal drawer! This was, a fun little distraction, and after the finishing decals are on, I can get it sealed and give it some weathering as by the late 1980’s, it needs to look a lot more tired than it does right now!
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 