freelanced tank car kitbash

[Bill Gill]

Finally almost finished a kitbash that has taken forever. The idea was to mount a Roundhouse old time tank car tank on a shortened Tichy tank car frame That would create a freelanced car for transporting a real product from a real company that never used rail service. Curious? more to follow.

BOROLEUM is a mild analgesic composed primarily of petroleum jelly and, at one time, boric acid. It's said during WWII packaging BOROLEUM was moved to a small island off the New England coast to finagle an increase in the amount of gasoline and heating oil allotted to the island.
Their are family connections to the island itself(none with the company), so modeling a rail car that never existed to carry a product we never used but heard tales about was irresistible.

Here's an early BOROLEUM box that guided the decal design.

[Bill Gill]

The first steps shortened the Tichy underframe to fit the length of the Roundhouse tank. The underframe isn't symmetric, so had to figure where to make the cuts rather than simply chop a section of the middle out.

[Bill Gill]

Truck clearance on the short frame was tight. My C&V RR has tight curves. Everything got tweaked several times to work and still look "normal".
Also changed from the kit's K brakes to AB brakes which made it more of a challenge to fit everything.

[Ray Dunakin]

Cool project! Looks like you're off to a great start.

[TRAINS1941]

Looks good Bill.

Jerry

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, Ray & Jerry.

The tank had the thick molded-on lugs for the handrails removed and the holes for mounting the dome platform filled with styrene sprue and the manhole cover on top of the dome was sanded off. Smoothing all that left some slight undulations in the tank that added a pleasingly realistic look to the sides. The elbow with the safety relief valve was removed and an updated (1930-present) Tichy manhole cover and hinge from a salvaged model were added. That left very little room for the safety valves which were scratch built.

Here the tank was dry fit on the frame. 0.05 styrene pieces were layered on the inside of the saddles to fit the small diameter tank. They are the just visible white lines between the blank tank and gray saddles.

[Bill Gill]

Next the handrails were added. The Tichy kit had styrene rails and stanchions. I knew those would get broken before the model was finished. I used cast brass stanchions and 20 gauge bronze wire. Short lengths of plastic wire insulation represent the unions where the end railings meet the side railings and short pieces cut from a 20 gauge hypodermic needle made the unions where the railings join at the middle of the tank. I bent wire grabs for the corners and and added styrene NB&Ws next to them.

[Bill Gill]

The tank bands were the next target. The Tichy kit called for styrene 1X4 strips. They looked too thick. Also the lower ends of the bands ended somewhat ambiguously in slots on the sides of the tank saddles. One alternative I tried were strips of aluminum cut from a soda can. They looked good, but nothing securely attached the very narrow strips to styrene.

[Bill Gill]

So after several failed experiments I decided to use 0.05 inch styrene for the tank bands. It's close to scale thickness.
Here is the tank with the 0.05 inch bands glued on and the tank given a coat of primer. Notice how short the bands are, more on that later.

[finescalerr]

That is not an easy project. I've worked with MDC kits; they don't lend themselves to modification (and removing those handrail stanchions, filling the holes, and substituting new ones must have taken hours). The underframe also is no simple cut-and-paste job. Satisfactory so far. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Looking good!

[Greg Hile]

Looking good and following closely. I've got a tank car project (mostly just painting and weathering) coming up at some point soon ...

[Barney]

looks nice - keep it coming
Barney

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, everyone for taking a look. The 3/4 view above shows a pair of last minute fittings added to the bottom of the end just before priming. They represent the steam line connections for heating the petroleum jelly to facilitate unloading. The fittings are loosely based on one fuzzy side view of a prototype asphalt tank car and a small photo from a Tangent tank car kit.

[Bill Gill]

Here's the car almost finished. I'm trying to decide whether to keep the exterior of the car squeaky clean since it is the only piece of rolling stock the company owns in my version of reality and keeping up appearances is a major company goal

The last details needed are the four safety placards on each side of the car. I had found decals for them, but recently discovered they are too modern for my 1950s setting, so I am looking for  this type of notice