Finally got started on the fuel oil car. Here's the thread where this started: https://www.frisco.org/shipit/index...slsf-x-80-slsf-x-81-and-slsf-x-82.7437/page-2 The brake sled just wasn't going to work on my layout so, thanks to Chris and Rich, it's now going to be some sort of oil storage car. The explanation is in the attached thread link. Tom Holley gave me a couple of good ideas today as well, so it's at least underway. First, if you refer to the photos in the link, you'll see that whoever did the stenciling did a horrendously sloppy job. I may replicate that. You can even see the overspray around the stencil outline. These old Mantua tenders used extremely thick plastic and incredibly tough lettering. It took a long time using 90% alcohol to soften the white pad printing so that I could remove it. The thick plastic took ages to cut / sand / file. There's more filing to do, but the majority is done. Some of my models turn into "figure it out as you go". That's not the plan, but rather how it evolves due to whatever is being dealt with in the modeling process. The plan is to make it look similar to what's in the photos Chris and Rich provided. Depending on the difficulty level, that may be modified somewhat. Tom had a pretty interesting idea today. The Mantua tender is a riveted tender. I only cut off the coal bunker on the top and left the rear tender deck. The good old QA&P would most likely not have had the equipment to rivet the top portion, so I'm going to make the top welded and leave the rivets on the sides. This would have been done during the late 40's or early 50's, so welding is feasible. It will look "home shop modified". Thanks, again, to all contributors. A lot of my modeling I view as a team effort. It's fun to pick your collective brains and apply the good ideas that are presented. Please feel free to throw more ideas out there. If any of you knew me in person you'd discover that 1) I speak my mind and 2) I'm not offended by much of anything, so fire away!!!!
A little progress. The opening from removing the coal bunker has been filled. The stirrups were solid so I drilled, cut and filed them to look like true stirrups. The top curved portion of the ladder on the back of the tender was also solid. That also got the drill and file treatment. Got the first layer of filler on top of the styrene that fills the coal bunker opening, so I'm out of a job until that dries sometime tomorrow.
