I have 5 Con Cor ho scale trailers that I would like to sell as a set for $15.00 plus $6.95 for shipping. The Conrail trailers have different numbers.

Bruce

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I've had next to no time to work on the layout so I decided I needed to change that. I finished the benchwork except for a couple of small pieces. This challenge will be to install insulboard for sound deadening and get the track down and with any luck get it wired. I'm going to give myself one week to get this finished.

Big Blue has been successfully online now for just over eight years. We've had a few glitches that our trusty stationmasters have been quick to resolve. We've had a few that didn't go our way, mostly due to our choice in forum software. When we started, we picked a popular open-source format that seemed to fit our requirements, (phpBB), but over they years, it just seemed to lag behind a few others. We had to shut down our gallery a few years ago because of this, we lost our original chat room and had to settle for something no one seems to want to use. Updates and backups are a real chore for our stationmaster to do and become more difficult as our database grows. One time it resulted in our losing a good many of our embedded photos when an update crashed us big time.

The point is that we admins have discussed changing to a different forum software platform, one that will bring us up to date with the times and keep us that way without risking losing what we already have. Right now, we can't interact with many social sites and we'd like to be able to do just that. Many forums can and so we're struggling to keep members that count on it. We can migrate to this new platform without loss of anything we already have, all our posts, member lists and photos can be moved intact. We will spend time testing this before we go live, but first we want your feedback.

What features is it that you like, dislike, want to change, add or delete from what we already have here at Big Blue? The sky's the limit, we want you to be honest; our new software choice will allow us a lot more flexibility in what features we can add or change. Please, don't be shy, we won't be offended, Big Blue is a bit old and worn and it's time to get a new look if that's what we need, or at least add or change some of the features we've been use to using all these years.

Please, post your comments here, we will listen. Tell us if you want something left alone, changed or deleted. Tell us if you hate or love some feature or suggest that we add something you'd like. Want to add a new sub-forum, or don't like our color choices or format, just tell us. Is doing something too difficult or do you think there's a better way of doing something here, just say so. It's that simple, so please, we need your input, we're here for you and want to give you want you want the way you want it. Oh, if you do or don't like the way we are running Big Blue, let us know too. No, we're not going to quit or fire anyone, but if we have room for improvement, we're open to changes there as well.

We all thank you....

• ngauger, (Mikey),
  ezdays, (Don) &
  Packey, (Pat)

The increasing load from the iron and steel industry demands more power for the locals.

Update 30 minutes later:

It is Friday 13. .... I put the wrong patches on the engine This former CR Quality model is supposed to become the CSX 5960 with the old Q painting. The NS patches shall go on the former CR 5076 without Q painting still on order.
Got the decals quite well removed. The CSX decals will be applied soon.

IMG_5309 by faraway52, on Flickr

Some hours later

IMG_5310 by faraway52, on Flickr

My original intention was to group all of my freight car projects into Part II of my Challenge, but I think that these scratchbuilt cars might be dealt with better in a thread of their own.
My plan is to build four freight cars pretty-much from scratch although I'll use commercially-available stuff where I think it would be better than what I can do on my own, or where it's more convenient. Trucks and couplers fit into those categories, as do detail parts. My aim is to create four cars for layout use...perhaps a bit more detailed than most of what I have done, but this certainly won't be a "plant-the-tree-wait-'til-it-grows-then-cut-it-down-and-hand-cut-scale-lumber-cast-my-own-trucks-make-working-brake-gear-and-put-everything-together-with-handmade-bolts-and-rivets" kind of scratchbuilding.

Two of the cars are being built simply because I have the proper lettering for them. Both are available as either kits or ready-to-run, but I want to try a couple of techniques I've not used before, and I think that I can make them as good as, or hopefully better, than can be bought.
The other two cars are both from the same railroad, (but different from both of the first two) and their prototypes are therefore very much related. I do have lettering for them, too, and while at least one of them is available as a craftsman-type kit, I want to see what I can do. The real ones are a bit unusual, but were built in fairly large numbers and many lasted into the diesel age.

Construction for all will be mostly in styrene, but don't expect this thread to have daily updates. When there's been progress made, I'll show it here, and my plan is to finish building each car before starting the next.

First up is a 1932 ARA boxcar for the Seaboard Air Line. Atlas makes (or made) a nice r-t-r version of this car, which is quite different from most of the 1932 ARA-designed boxcars which were built (most were built after 1932 but before WWII). I believe Funaro & Camerlengo offers a craftsman-type kit for this car, too.

After researching the prototype, I began by laying out the floor, sides, and ends on .060" sheet styrene. The photo shows the cut-out tabs on the sidesill of one car side and the other side shows the .125"x.125" interior bracing...



...I cheated on the centre sill: The prototype used two Z-bars with their upper flanges welded together, and their lower flanges sticking out towards the car's sides. I opted for a pair of solid straight centre sills about .155" high by .060" wide. This was accomplished by using .060"x.125" strips on their narrow edges, with strips of .030"x'060" styrene cemented atop them. No flanges whatsoever - I regretted that, but not until I had already finished applying most of the underbody brake gear. In light of that, I console myself with the fact that it won't be noticeable once the car is on the layout, although most of that painstakingly-applied brake gear won't be too visible either.

Here's an over-all view of the underbody:



...and a closer look...







While it's certainly not the calibre of what my good friend Bernhard does, that's about as far as I want to go for a layout quality model.

Here's the sides and ends assembled...



...and with the roof (from Red Caboose) temporarily set in place...



...and the floor/underbody in place...



The roof will eventually be cemented in place, while the floor will be screwed to the heavy bracing already cemented to the lower portion of the sides.

As an aside to this thread, I realised too late that I had neglected to add the 5/8" pipe (prototype size) for the car's retainer valve, which sits up high on the car's end, near the brake wheel.
The underbody portion of the pipe runs from the AB control valve to, and then alongside, the centresill to the end of the car. I had pre-drilled the frame's crossmembers, before installing them, to accommodate the trainline (brakepipe), but had not done so for the retainer pipe.
While I do have a #76 drill bit (.020") long enough to drill through the bolster on which the truck is mounted, it certainly won't reach any of the other crossmembers. Anyway, I drilled through the bolster, then removed the bit and lined it up to make an attempt on the next crossmember, carefully bending it so that its business end was more-or-less parallel to the bottom side of the car's floor and then very carefully turned the pin vise until the bit was about halfway through the crossmember. The bit was then relocated to the other side of the same crossmember and the feat repeated, surprisingly, with success. I had the feeling though, that somewhere, either in the next crossmember or in the crossbearers (the wider members located beneath what will be the edges of the car's doors) that bit was going to break.
For some reason, it dawned on me that I had some .019" stainless steel wire, and I quickly dug out a length of it, and snipped off the end, using side cutting pliers.
That left the end looking like this...



...a mini spade bit, although somewhat distorted. Chucked into a pin vise, the excess length could be left hanging out the handle-end, then simply advanced as needed as each successive frame member was encountered:



...shown here, it's already through the previously drilled bolster and has taken a bit of a dip through the first crossmember, which had been drilled through from both sides with the bent bit. It's also gone on to, and through, the next crossmember...



Here, the tip is already through the first crossbearer, with only one more to go...



The installed retainer pipe, .008" phosphor bronze wire, is just barely visible here, running alongside the centresill where it meets the underside of the car's floor:



...I know....nobody's gonna see it after the car gets painted and is running around on the layout, but at least I know that it's there...well, and possibly there will be a few viewers of this thread that will be aware of it, too.

More to come....

Wayne

As part of the extension to my HO scale switching layout, I needed a yard office building to go along with a heavy metals unloading spur. I've always liked the Walthers yard office, but I'm not paying £25+ for a tiny kit like that.

So I figured I'd make my own, and thought why not make a build thread/tutorial on how I did it. So, here we go!

Materials list:

5mm Black Foamcore board - A3
Cereal Box card
Basswood strips (just in case)
Clevermodels.net Union Hotel Brick
Clevermodels.net Painted Brick
Clevermodels.net Doors and Windows
Clevermodels.net Standing Seam
Clevermodels.net Distressed Cinderblocks


Stage 1 - the core

To make the core of the structure, I cut four squares of the black foamcore board - two 5cm x 7cm, one 6cm x 10cm, and one 5cm x 10cm.

These were glued together to form the walls using extra strength white glue. The taller wall forming the front of the building.




The core was then flipped over, and a roof cut from cereal box card by placing the core flat on the card and simply cutting around it. You could be much neater by using a ruler, but for the core of the structure it's not really needed. I then used an offcut of foam to form a brace stuck to the inside of front wall to stop the roof from sagging.

The roof was then glued in place.





Next, I use cereal box card to form the inner layer of the structure which is glued to the outside of the core to form relief - into this I cut window and door openings - this will become clearer from the photographs.

To ensure that the windows and doors all line up correctly, I lightly score a straight line along the top of where I want the windows/doors to be.

From here I use the cut out texture paper windows and doors as a template to score around, simply held in place with a finger. I then remove the texture papers and cut out the window/door holes using the scored lines as a guide.




After this, I cut out and stick on the texture paper I want for the walls - in this case Clevermodels Painted Brick. Don't worry about covering up the window and door holes, as this is addressed next.



Now flip over the wall and cut lines diagonally from corner to corner of each window/door hole...



...fold the newly created tabs inwards and wrap them around the back of the wall layer, like this:



Glue all these tabs down - trimming off any bits that might overlap with other tabs (eg when two windows are side by side). You don't want any of the tabs to be visible when looking at the structure from the front.

Glue the completed outer wall layer to the foam core.



Place the completed wall face down on your desk and Weight it down with something suitably heavy - like a soda can (other brands of soda are available! )

Repeat this process for all four walls. The completed walls will be shown in the second part of this thread.

I hope the first part of this has proven useful for new modellers, or even modellers new to cardstock structures.

As an attempt to try something a little different, I recently decided to have a go at scratchbuilding my first freight car, and thought this particular prototype might be a good place to start.

Below are some progress photos as well a prototype photograph taken from the web.

To finish it off I will likely have to get some decals custom made, but we'll see.

This one came from the left field! Having some Intermountain parts on hand, I asked myself if I could improve a Life-Like no Proto boxcar. The answer is yes, but after replacing all the faulty parts, only the sides remained!

How it started:



Then:







This is my take on a NSC 10'6" high 40ft boxcar. The car is now lettered and ready for weathering.

Matt