Frisco 42' Fishbelly Flat Car

Howdy folks,

Indeed, the deck is tan, a wood color. It will be easy to weather with gray, too. I'm going to try one with mineral spirits and gray oils, one with gray acrylics, and one with alcohol/India ink plus chalk. I'll post the results here. Of course, we'll have the wood decks available for purchase, too.

The cars will only be available from the Texas Western Model Railroad Club.
The quantities are limited. and here are the number of items we expect to receive and a tentative price:

RTR: 260 ~$29
Kit: 40 ~ $20
Wooden Decks: 50

These prices are estimates based on IRC/Red Caboose regular pricing.

Hope this helps,
mike

 

Mike - When do you suggest we start placing orders with you?

Ken

 

Will do. ~mike

 

Howdy Ken,

I'll make sure FRISCrg folks have first shot at the kits before we put them up for general sale. We'll be getting them in two batches. Because of a delay in the graphics, we did not get them in November as originally promised. We getting an order air shipped to us for the Plano show, and I'll give Frisco folks dibs on the first batch. I don't know if it will come RTR or RTR and kit.

I'll post an announcement on the forum when folks can order. How does that work?

Best,
mike

 

Mike - Fine. Let us know the details and orders will follow.

Ken

 

Sure. The wooden decks (mine are AMB LaserKits) are sized specifically for the Red Caboose flat car. They are very thin and sit on top of the existing RC deck. It works OK unless you look at the car side very closely - then you can see the red ends of the RC deck below the wood. I didn't bother to try to fix that.

But - a question in my mind is that the yellow color represents a repaint, as these cars were, I think, red when new. Given that, was the deck not painted yellow at the same time? As has been discussed here, many of the pics of these cars in yellow show the deck to be what looks like yellow as well. What does everybody think? Do we want the wood deck on these yellow cars?

The AMB LaserKit deck is not cheap - $5.95 per when I bought them about five years or so ago.

Ken

 

Howdy Bob,

I don't think the kits area easy to remove since they are cast on. I'll recheck one of my red kits to see. Most folks I know have ground them off with course sandpaper, then glued the decks on. It shouldn't be that hard.

Best,
mike

 

The Red Caboose flat car deck is cast on, except for a short center section which is less than 1-inch long.

Ken

 

Re: Frisco 42' Fishbelly Flat Car - Pilot Model arrived...nice

Howdy,

Fedex just delivered the pilot 42' flat car. It really looks nice. I'll post photos in the morning.

Have fun,
mike

 

A revision .....

I was dead wrong in my comment above from my earlier posting - I just finished looking through the various pics I could find of the yellow 42ft flat car in service, and none of them show any evidence of paint on the wood decks. The decks all look like beat up, well used and weathered ..... unpainted wood.

Ken

 

Re: Frisco 42' Fishbelly Flat Car - Finished Models

Howdy folks,

Last weekend, I spotted these cars at the Texas Western's Alamosa yard. How they got up there, I'll never know (tsk, tsk). These cars have the wooden deck applied.

The cars are selling briskly, which is good for the club. You can still pick one up at http://shop.twmrc.org/. Still no word from Intermountain about the arrival of the kits (must be on a slow boat from China).

Car 95523 was the first car that received the wooden deck. I, uh, got better at applying them by the fourth car. The deck weathering technique on each car was different. I wanted to experiment a bit. Hope you enjoy the photos,
mike