#52 started life as a mail-baggage car built in 1910. It was rebuilt in the Frisco shops into a steam generator car in 1953. The car was equipped with 2 steam generators, a Diesel engine/generator, an air compressor, water tanks and a tank for diesel fuel. In it's life it served as a standby boiler/generator, a provider of steam when freight units pulled passenger trains and business cars, and in one instance provided air/steam for a derrick cleaning up a wreck. An identical car (#51) was built in 1956. #52 lasted until 1979 when it was cut up. While researching this project every photo I ran across showed a smooth sided car (eye sight or poor quality shot?) so I went on that assumption and bought a smooth sided Walthers baggage car. It was about this time Richard Napper posted a b/w photo taken in bright sunshine of #52 and everything went out the window. Not only did it have battens but it also had rivets-- lots of rivets. It was then I decided it would be easier to make new sides out of styrene. I down loaded the drawings of the car from the FIMG article and while it didn't have a lot of dimensions the drawing was close enough to 1/8th scale to get window and door locations. I cut out the car sides and laid out the all the openings and cut them out. Using the photo to locate the battens I cut them out of thinner styrene and glued them on. Also from the photo I could get the rivet patterns and using Micromark rivet decals proceeded to finish the sides and then glued them to the car shell. I primed the car because I found out the hard way that the decals are fragile. For the roof work I got 2 Detail West steam generator kits along with 2 of their spark arrestors and glued them on. I built the framework for the weather plate over the exhausts and cut a slide plate and glued everything on. Grab irons and exposed under body details rounded out the model. I then sprayed the car with a gloss black and let it dry. Rather than masking the yellow I decided to cut them out of a solid yellow decal sheet--much, much easier! I then sealed the car with car with dull coat. A really fun experience. Larry F.
Larry, great model work!!! Your description of the assembly process is also great. Keep up the good work. Joe
For anyone who would like to try their hand at a SG car, somewhere in the archives of the FMIG newsletters is a plan and HO diagram. Sorry I can't recall the volume and number. Tom G.
Nice work, Larry-thanks for the close-up and construction details. It's a superb model of a unique Fresco prototype, albeit a rather poignant one when I think of it's purpose, i.e. no more boiler equipped passenger units on the road. Looks like FMIG newsletter 23 has drawings, photos and modeling info; FMIG Second Section #4 also looks to have photos.
