Workshop Wednesday

Thanks Ken, I thought of you saying chugga chugga as I shot those! Sorry, none of those are from your old fleet but some of your will be appearing near the swamp soon. I have a better spot to shoot pics but ironically it was too muddy. The lead unit is just a Stewart factory unit. The Hi-hood an oriental and the 813 is an old brass alco that I got super cheap at a swap meet years ago that had been dropped. I was able to save it and get it painted, then it got re-dropped during a move to our old house, so up close you could see it needs work again that I have been too last to finish. I have another brass one to repair I found on ebay super cheap, but she is rough. I have a couple I got from you and several more to paint. Never short on projects here! HA 813 is one of my favorites because it was apinted as a GE demo, then, black and yellow, then orange and white and then made it to puke green at the end. It had a full life for sure.
BUT, your old SD-45 will be in next month's issue of MRH. But please act surprised in case I wasn't supposed to tell anyone.

 

Thanks Chris! The insulators are purely dumb luck, trust me. I did paint and weather the entire pole first. I painted them gray primer, then brown wash then black around the bottom. I used the poles on my road for reference.
Then for the insulators I used DecoArt craft acrylics and painted them Turquoise (DCA42) After that tried I put one heavy coat of Testors gloss clear on the insulators with a small brush. I really want to add lines to them, but my first two attempts looked terrible. Bare poles look better than bad wires at this point. Any suggestions guys? Also if I remember there is a thread or diagram here that shows how some poles were marked with stripes. Sound familiar?? Thanks

 

Exactly! Thanks. I thought that might be worth adding to a pole.

 

The second post of telegraph pole spacing standard thread by Karl shows three poles with stripes and a chart with number of poles per mile for the Kansas City Sub. I would be interested in knowing how many poles per mile for the Central Division between Ft Smith and Winslow.

Joe

 

40 poles per mile. (Pretty much a standard, especially the Frisco.)

Andre

 

Steve, Your diorama really is impressive.

If it was not for the bent handrails on the GE, I would have been hard pressed to tell it was a model.

 

Thanks Sherrel. I noticed that too AFTER the pics. Oh well.


Guys, are the stripes painted or metal rings nailed on? Thanks for all the info.

 

Spent the last two evenings working on a few Accurail kits for 36ft boxcars. Still unweathered, but will get to that in time. Two more of these to build from the variety of 36 ft kits currently manufactured.

36ft Box Cars by rjthomas909 posted Nov 28, 2018 at 7:28 PM

The CCC&StL is from the 1300 series double sheath kit (steel ends), the MoPac is a 1700 series double sheath kit (wood ends), and the Nickel Plate car is from the 1100-series Fowler wood boxcar.

There are a number of good tutorials and resources for these cars:

A tutorial for the underframe: http://hansmanns.org/accurail_36ft_xm_uf_tutorial.pdf

An MRH Article on building with some tips on additional details: https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh2018-02/accurail-boxcar

and some good notes here in a more general guide: http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/a-guide-to-1920s-era-ho-scale-plastic-freight-cars/

@Jim James , would like to see your progress, as I will be working on weathering these after I finish up two more that are on the workbench.....I know you posted your work on this one:

36ft-boxcars-MoPac by rjthomas909 posted Nov 28, 2018 at 7:29 PM

Also, Frisco Friends, there are "data only" versions of these cars that are otherwise undecorated. Can anyone say if one would be a good representation of a Frisco prototype and recommend a decal set? If so, I will start/move this to a separate thread and include building some out.....

1632 w/36ft boxcars by rjthomas909 posted Nov 28, 2018 at 8:08 PM

That's it for this Wednesday....hopefully some layout work over the weekend.

Thanks All,

-Bob T.

 

Bob--
I assume you saw Ray Breyer's excellent articles on these cars on Eric Hansmann's site. For everyone else:
http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/accurail-prototype-data/

1150, 1300, 1400, 1700, and 1800 cars are covered. The good news is that many, many steam era cars can be modeled with these kits. The bad news is I didn't see any Frisco in the write ups. Jim James is probably your best source for info on 36' Frisco cars.

 

Thanks Gary,

I must have seen some of those along the way, but had not seen them all!

There are a few additional links in the MRH article. I will definitely add them to my collection.

-Bob T.

 

Yes, there was a posting by Charlie Duckworth somewhere with a super-detailed version of the Accurail 40ft double-sheathed car car in a Frisco scheme on his Bagnell Branch layout. He noted that it was a pretty good match, and added new grab irons, etc. I think he re-decaled it with those decals. For the life of me, I can't find that posting. Maybe it was in print or on the old MoPac BB.

-Bob T.

 

Accurail has several 40' cars that will work; many already decorated for the Frisco. The new 36' cars, though, I don't think they will work.

I have many of the DS cars #4615, SS cars #4318, and SS#7108.

 

Bob, those will be neat. I have a couple but not tried to do anything with them yet. This will revive my interest.

 

Bob,

Regarding a Frisco prototype for a 36' boxcar I posted a photo under the Fort Wood branch tab with a yard shot that in the lower right hand corner shows a Frisco 13000 class boxcar. I had seen this shot many times before at a distance and thought it was one of the high sill stockcars as the construction and details appear very similar. However when I got a electronic version and was able to look at it closely I realized it was a different series and upon looking it up in my January 1943 ORER I realized that in fact it was a 36' car. It lists two series 13000-13247 and 13300-13349 for a total of 298 cars. From the photo it looks like something of a fowler design. This partial shot is the only one I have ever since of this series, perhaps there are others out there. Maybe this gives you a little bit of an answer, maybe it just raises more questions.

Brad Slone

 

Very Nice....It has appeared:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/mrhpub.com/2018-12-dec/online/index.html?page=151

or

https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/magazine/mrh2018-12/yes-its-a-model#comment-366413