Hi Guys,
I'm building a box car with Evergreen styrene and Grandt detail parts. It's your standard issue D&RGW 3000 series box car. Here is a pic of the underframe.
And here is a closeup of the center sill splice.
And here is the frame flipped over. I'm a little further along, will post more pics soon.
Thanks for looking,
Tom
Looking good so far.
Thanks Ray,
Nice to hear from another late night modeler,
Tom
Really nice and clean work Tom. Really shows on areas like the sill splices, and the laps/ joints of the cross pieces.
Wow....that center sill splice is a great touch. Wonderful attention to detail, which
no doubt will be carried through on the top end. Beautiful job so far.
Really cool!
I love working with styrene.
I am curious though;
Why would they build a frame with a splice? I know there were timbers long enough.
-Marty
Nice splice! I haven't seen anyone do that before.
Thanks for the good words guys!
I'm also building a train station (first model in 1:48 scale), have been at it for about 6 months and it's about 30% complete. Looking at it I figured it could be a good solid year before it is complete. So I thought I would build a boxcar as a quick diversion. Should only take a couple weeks, once I had all the materials, right? WRONG! Alot more work than I first thought.
Here is a shot of how I laid out the center sill splice, a template is attached to a piece of 0.020" x 0.187" styrene with removable double sided tape:
The part is trimmed out and glued to the core of the center sill, made up of two styrene strips.
Then the opposing ends are trimmed in a similar fashion, glued on, top pieces added, wait for glue to dry, sand to blend it all together, drill holes, add NBWs, blah blah blah...
Here's another shot of the splice. Next up, needle beams and the floor. Thanks aqain for your comments!
Oh, and Marty, I really don't know the reasoning for the splice, but my guess would be that it could be removed if they needed to replace a coupler or bolster or something.
O...M...G...
On closer inspection, my super cool splice is upside down and backwards...
shhh...don't tell nobody :-[
Tom
Here i fixed it for you!
-Marty
Marty! To the corner! (And I don't mean a virtual Photoshop corner, either!) -- Russ
This is what I call really scratch!! Keep showing your progress!
Hey thanks Lucas, your boxcar is looking sharp too! Mine will also be On30.
Tom
An update, adding the needle beams and truss rods.
I built up the needle beams from strips of styrene, to avoid having to cut square holes and make notches.
Locating a needle beam, with queenposts added:
I made a jig to solder the turnbuckles to the truss rods, worked really well.
Here are the truss rods set in place...and another pic with them bent to shape. Man, was I surprised at how much trouble it was to get the truss bent to proper shape, they are close, but not perfect.
I'm also getting concerned that the inner truss rods will have to be modified to allow for the trucks to swivel, I'd like to run this at less than 60" radius.
Thanks for looking, Tom
You left out the really hard part: How you bent the truss rods. In all other respects, substantially more than satisfactory. -- Russ
Forget running this beauty, put the right trucks on it and display on the mantle sitting on a mirror. Very nice work.
Where did you get the nice turnbuckles?
John
Thanks Russ,
I bent the truss with some pliers and a template I drew. Problem is I drew the template based on the Tomalco dwgs, not the model, so they didn't fit too well. Then I spent a lot time straightening, bending, rebending, etc...lesson learned there.
Thank you John,
Yes, the thought crossed my mind to display it so the underframe could be seen, but I would like to run it. Especially since this is the first piece of rolling stock I've built in this scale.
The turnbuckles are old Grandt Line parts I got off ebay.
Tom
I started working on the car body before finishing the underframe, I was close to losing interest in this thing altogether. The body is built up of 0.040" thk styrene.
Then the siding was added with 'HO' scale 2x6's, which work out pretty close to 'O' scale 1x3's. I couldn't figure out the exact correct size to use, but this looks right to me. Each board received a four step process:
1. Swipe with coarse sanding stick.
2. Bevel edges with an X-Acto blade.
3. Add texture with wire brush "Eurotool" from MicroMark. (Thanks Marc, I bought one seconds after you suggested it, works amazing)
4. Rubbed the piece with heavy brown paper, to remove the fuzzies. A great tip from Dallas M., works terrific on styrene too!!
And a close up of the texture on the boards. Next stop...Nail Holes!!!
Looking good there Tom .... and kudos for not running the wire straight thru the turnbuckles ... I hate it when that happens!
Since you mentioned the scratch brush and ebay ... do a search for "scratch brush" and you'll find a set that includes the steel brush, a brass brush and a fiberglass brush ... and a refill for each ... and with shipping from the UK, the set was less than the single brush from Micro-Mark.
Reason I mention it is that having the softer brushes is also good for (a) clean-up after using the steel brush and (b) adding textures in softer material.
And, I'm a long-time fan of building in styrene, so glad to see a "real" boxcar being built in fake wood! ;D
Cheers,
Dallas
Thank you Dallas!
I am really liking working with styrene, I had planned to build this and a few other cars out of wood, even bought the wood. But I'm finding the plastic easier to work with and actually looks better too.
Tom
Tom --
I started scratchbuilding in styrene many years ago, cuz I was in N scale and (a) it was real hard to get decent stripwood in suitable sizes and (b) the fuzz was often bigger than the item being modeled!
Recently built a fake gallows turntable using styrene ... "fake" cuz it just covers an Atlas TT mech ... and, of course, fake plastic wood.
One of the really cool features of working in styrene is that you can create all sorts of fancy joinery by laminating strips before distressing ... so dados, lap joints, etc, etc.
Here's the fake turntable finished:
http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=27937&whichpage=11
And this page shows how the gallows assembly was mortised into the deck assembly without any actual millwork ... just planning ahead and laminating pieces the right way:
http://www.railroad-line.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=27937&whichpage=4
Just mentioned that, cuz sometimes you want something much stronger than a butt joint (yeah, I know, jokes to follow) ... and with styrene you can fake the millwork and get really strong joints, plus the advantages of the solvent assembly.
Looking forward to more fake boxcar assembly! ;D :P
Looks very good so far! I too am a fan of styrene.
Thanks Ray!
Dallas, yes I agree, I built the needle beams out of something like 12 pieces of styrene, shown earlier in the thread. All of the sills are multiple pieces too.
Tom
Heh, heh ... yeah, I know that ... I read that ... I admired that ... but it was more than 5 minutes ago and I completely forgot about all the impressive joinery. Just had another look thru the thread and am impressed like I've never seen it before! Now, what were we talking about? ;D
Quote from: Malachi Constant on June 20, 2010, 06:27:48 PM
Now, what were we talking about? ;D
Well, I was telling you that the key to making a perfect poached egg was to put a teaspoon of vinegar in the water as it comes to boil and then...wait...who are you?
Nudge