Wood box cars Scratch building and trick shots

Started by bparrish, July 26, 2020, 05:53:13 PM

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S&S RR

Great knife work there my friend. I'm enjoying your thread.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

bparrish

Now for the cleaning up of the lower side edges.  I have removed the queen posts for the truss rods.   This is an issue of the order of things.  With the sides on you cannot get back to the inside so the fishing line has to be tied off at the correct length and then relieved for this step.

This is another of those decking procedures where you choose some steel ruler or the like as a spacer.  I work one side of the car at a time and the other is off of the sand paper scuffing along on the bench.




Here is a look down the floor and the sides prepared.  The over hang scales out to be about three inches.   The fishing line is barely visible here.




Now to clean up the last of the roof sheathing.  I use a steel ruler that is .020" thick which scales out at about an inch and three quarters.   Much wider would be unsupportable in the real world.



A look at the completed roof ends.




More later
Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

bparrish

Next is what to do for end beam sills.  This is where the bolts and washers come out the end from the truss rods.

I used some .094" angle strip wood from Northeastern.  It scales out at about 8 inches in HO.  I cut them to fit between the scribed side sheathing and lap up onto the end of the car at full width.



Below is what the part under the floor looks like.  A small ship will be used to keep the coupler level when installed.



Here the fly ends can be seen.



And now the completed end.



More later
Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

bparrish

We have now gotten to my favorite trick shot............ the roof walk.  This is the step that turns people off about doing box cars or refers.  How to make the roof walk look right and good.

Here we go.

First is a shot of a ready roof.


Now another decking procedure. This time we will take off the peak and flatten it a bit.  When this gets done the sanded away scribes are completely invisible.



Here is a shot of the missing scribes.



This part is hard to see.  There are pencil marks every scale two feet along the sanded off ridge line. I start six scale inches in from each end and plot to near center.   If it does not come out even I put the last 2x4 about half way between the last closest ones and NOT on center of the car.  The symmetry of centering it draws too much attention.  Off center will go unseen.



Now cut a bunch of 2x4 strip wood over the width of the finial roof walk.  I usually cut these to about three scale feet.  I handle them with the sharp tip of a #11 blade and dip each in a puddle of yellow glue.  Once I am all the way across the roof I go back and scoop up any pushed out glue with a sharp straight screw driver. 


Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

bparrish

So I got kicked out late last night due to a phone line hiccup and I wasn't going to wait for everything to restart.

So I left off with the gluing of the 2x4s.   While the glue is still doughy, press them down on a flat surface to get them all flat and even.



Then take a 2x6 strip and glue it in the center, measuring equally from each side to get this absolutely in the middle.   If the seam in  your roof scribing drifted a bit in putting that down, this will hide it.




Then take a straight edge and make sure it is absolutely straight.



Then proceed to put another 2x6, one on each side of the center strip.   Use a #11 blade to set your spacing.  Just touch it down on the 2x4s and push the 2x6s up against it.  It will give you a very even spacing.



Once the glue kicks off go back and trim off the 2x4s.  Don't even try and get them even before you put down the walk boards, you'll never build another box car.  It will make you crazy.


Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

bparrish

So here is the finished roof walk.   You can dust off the 2x4 ends with a finger nail sanding board if you insist but a super sharp blade should be adequate.

Then take a thin flat scrap of sheet brass and dust out the spaces under the boards.



Here is what you have looking under the walk boards.  Super sanitary and easier than it looks.



And one last little piece of coolness (is that a word?), you can see the 2x4s between the walk boards.  You can't do that with scribed sheet panels three boards wide.

The finished width is right at 20 scale inches.  The proportion to the roof looks really good.  And magically.... you cannot see the sanded off scribed boards on the roof sheathing where you took off the peak.


I'm off the grid for about a week.  We'll get on to other detail stuff when I get back.

see ya
Bob
Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

swisstrain

Thanks for this great thread, Bob.

I enjoy building some of the old Ambroid and La Belle kits, and while not scratchbuilding, a lot of the same tips and tricks will be useful.  In particular the one for the roof walk is very nice and saves a lot of tedious work ...

Looking forward to the next installation.

Urs

bparrish

So I'm back.  Took a week in Portland Oregon with the grand kids and got my salt air hit for another while.


I'm now going after something that is almost never modeled. Roof walk end supports.  Most cars after 1880 had roof ends that projected beyond the end wall and the walk boards extended a bit beyond that. Safety was a growing issue and brakemen were up on the tops of the cars and had to jump from car to car.  An attempt was made to make that jump a bit shorter by extending the walk boards. OSHA would have been apoplectic with some of the stuff that went on at that time of early railroading.


To tie the walk boards together and take some of the unevenness out of the board ends a 2x4 or 3x4 board was placed under that walk boards and secured with carriage bolts.  These were bolts that had a round head with a square area below the head that would crush into the wood to prevent the bolt from turning while the nut was tightened.  In the end there was not much protruding and in HO would hardly look like some change in the wood surface of the walk boards.  Not everything has or needs an NBW.



To start then, place a pencil line horizontally across the end boards where the support rods will cross into the wood.I plotted this line with a straight edge off of the fascia boards near the sides.



I then drill hole into the end board centered under one side of the roof walk.  This is only to get the drill to hook up when the final hole is drilled in from the top on a diagonal.



I then stop the drill from creeping by holding the drill down with my thumb nail.  You can feel the drill grab into the earlier hole and it will not follow that but continue in on the diagonal.




Here is the wire pressed into the end on a diagonal.  I used .013" brass wire and it can be pushed in farther to hold tight with a pliers.  No need for any glue.





More later
Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

bparrish

So here is a drawing from an 1888 Lehigh Valley 25 ton box car.




Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

bparrish

Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

bparrish

To continue.
This part is so simple it is one of those "I knew that but I never thought of it".

To cut off the wire without leaving a raised part, load down on the cutter and the roof walk will bend down a small amount. When cut it will pop back up and leave the wire a bit lower.  Too simple ! ! ! !



So here is one of them done.  The fuzzyness around the wires will be cleaned up later.



Here is the batch of cars from the top and another from the bottom.




And here is the batch ready for brake rigging.  You will notice that with a flat floor I had to raise the center beams by a 6x6 so as to be able to run the piping and rods for the brakes.

The bolsters on mounted and ready for under floor and B end details.


Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

Jerry

Bob beautiful work.  And a great tutorial.


Jerry
"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." A. Lincoln

bparrish

Now for brake rigging.

This will vary depending on the era you model and the type of brake system that might have been used.  Shown below are shots of a K brake system used in the l890's and is available as a set from Tichy for about $3.50 a sprue.

I'm using .018" brass wire.  Holes are pre-drilled a thousandth or two less than the wire.



You can see here that I have the cars clamped together with a spacer block so as to not crush the roof overhangs.  This allows me to not have to chase the cars around the bench and move from to the next to do each step six times.






Next is a photo that shows a couple of tricks.   First, to avoid drilling holes in the plastic bolsters (also from Tichy) I press the wire where I want it to go through and heat the wire.  Once though, the wire can be moved around along the wire.  The plastic does not try and stick to the wire.  The through air pipes are done like this and the pull rods to the trucks are also stabbed into the bolster so as to not get tangled up in the truck.  Once the trucks are on this goes unseen.

Also here is a small Kemtron wire spike holding down the wires that cross the end sills.  A small dab of CA glue will be put on the end to look like the air hose couplings.   There is a wire that ends in the sill and is also held down with a wire spike.  This is where the brake wheel comes down and will have a small plastic casting hiding the end with the wind up spool for the pull chain.



Next I will do a thing on bending wire for grab irons.

see ya
Bob
Did you ever notice how many towns are named after their water towers ! ?

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