Foothill Model Works Flat Car Challenge

[Younger]

All of the 28 ft car plans showed 4 truss rods and the 20 ft kit only has two. So it was necessary to rob parts from another kit and splice the needle beams:



The brake hardware on the 28 ft flat is a little more complicated than the 20 ft car, so I thought it best to form the truss rods now, but not install them until after the brake assembly is done. Here are the truss rods, with a forming jig. I ran the brass wire through Blacken-it, in hopes that the paint would adhere a little better.




-Younger

[lab-dad]

Wait for me fellas!
I'm in.
An insulated box car is my choice.

[lab-dad]

So far I have prepainted all the iron and the trucks.
Added some grain to the frame and installed the center truss rods (blackened music wire) and the body bolsters.
I am drawing the side elevations and planning the structure today.
(dont tell my boss)
-Mj

[TRAINS1941]

Well it looks like you guys are off to a good start.
Will have to foloow this closely to see the different cars you all come up with and how you did them.

Jerry

[lab-dad]

Next I continued to assemble the frame. I added the queen posts, buffer blocks and draft timbers. Be careful: in all my planning and being cautious I still put the buffer blocks on upside down the first time.

Now that the brakes were dry I painted the details in. I used Vallejo leather brown for the wood parts base coat. After the base dried I went back and added ?grain? with some ocher brown. The wheel sides of the brakes were painted with Vallejo oily steel (oops thanks Marc).

I used a program available for free from eMachine shop to draw cutting guides for the sub wall assemblies. I printed the drawing out, glued it to the 1/32? plywood and cut out the sub walls. Next will be to stain some strip wood and cover the outsides of the walls. Only one inside wall will be visible so I will likely only cover that one wall. Exterior boards will be vertical 1x6?s and interior boards will be horizontal 1x6?s. Obviously the inside boards will be stained differently from the outside. Eventually the outside boards will receive a peeling paint effect in a whitewash.

[marc_reusser]

Since my car has a slatted deck, through which the frame and underbody details will be able to be seen  from above, some modifications to the frame were necessary.

First the large styrene block casting (intended for mounting the Kadee coupler boxes) at the ends of the car needed to be removed. Since I will be having exposed L&P draft gear, I did not need this block.



The second modification that was needed was to lower the blocking areas where the truss rods pass over the bolsters. This was milled .015 lower than the cast in slot, as later, I will be adding flat truss rod pads here.



This shows the quick jig that was made to ensure that the frame sat square and rigid to the cutting head. A scrap piece of 3/4" Poplar was clamped to the X/Y table of the drill press. .125 wide slots were cut into the Poplar, into which were then inserted pieces of .125 Styrene, to act as a fence/stop. It's not pretty, but it does it's job well.



The last step was to cut off the truss rod NBW locator nubs on the end sills, and drill .020 holes through the sill in their location, in order to eventually accept/seat the truss rods from the inside.





Marc

[Younger]

Well.....since I'm freelancing, and trying to piece out the styrene deck pieces to line up with the differently spaced stake pockets looked like a big problem, I've decided to do the deck in wood (hope that doesn't violate the spirit of the Challenge). Also, since I used bits and pieces of different kits to put together the frame and brake assemblies, I shot the whole bottom in primer (Mr. Surfacer 1200) to even out the colors. I'm going to paint the entire frame with the oxide red color, and the rationale would be: while the car was in the shop to have a new deck installed, the shop foreman decided paint everything while the deck was off. How's that for a story? [smile]
-Younger

[RoughboyModelworks]

Judging by the photos, there's some excellent progress being made in the Challenge...

Bill

[John McGuyer]

I'm looking forward to lots of ideas and techniques I can carry over into 1/20.3 cars.

I may have to buy one of these little cars just so I can steal all the ideas and scale them up.

John

[marc_reusser]

New sill pieces  for the ends were fabricated using .100 x .156 styrene, and laminating a piece of  .100 x .010 on top to create the step at the bolster . A sized laminated block of styrene was used as a spacer to keep the new sill pieces parallel during gluing.




Since I am not using the Kadee coupler boxes, the recess cast into in the draft sills to accommodate them needed to be filled with pieces of .100 x .030 styrene. This image shows the replaced center sills, and the filled draft sills. At left, in the center sills you can also see where the brake hanger hardware mounting holes have been filled. These are not necessary on this car as it had braking applied to only one truck.



Marc

[RoughboyModelworks]

Nicely done Marc - very clean and crisp. Glad to see your use of a jig/fixture - a simple solution that makes the job much easier.

Bill

[Younger]

One of the things that I always found tedious and difficult was painting wheel sets. This time I tried something new (to me). Using a 1/2 inch brad point drill, I drilled two sets of holes in some scrap .060 styrene. The wheels fit snugly into the holes, masking the tread area. This allows me to spray 8 wheelsets at a time, getting the back sides and axles, as well as the outsides.
-Younger

[John McGuyer]

I use the Mac McCalla trick on wheels. I just paint the whole thing, then just run a Q-tip with some thinner on it around the outside rim. It even works with the wheels already installed in the trucks.

John

[marc_reusser]

I see the benefit of Jerry's method though is multi-fold:

The wheels are held in place , and can be painted all around in their entirity in one sitting,... IE. without having to deal with where to hold the wheel with the tweezers/pliers, and then touch up that spot.

They can be very easily be held and turned for painting

No worry about interference from the truck frames, and possible paint build up on frames...both of which occur when painting the wheels installed in the sideframes.

...lastly...it's a lot less work, especially in the long run, since it is a re-usable template.

I will definitely use this on my build.


Marc

[marc_reusser]

So much rain...nothing to but build models.....

Light wood graining was added to the frame using a Micro-Mark wire pencil. When doing grain care should be taken to draw the pencil in only one direction, and try to do the entire graining in one pass, so as not to accidentally create crossed grain during a reverse or second pass.




Next came some of the tedious work; making all the individual wood boards and stakes.

Similar parts were all cut to a rough length using the NWSL "Chopper". These parts were then carefully and tightly stacked on the sanding table, and held in place and square, with some steel blocks; then sanded to the required fished length. Sanding the pieces in this manner also provides slight radiused sanding marks in the end of the boards, which help represent "end grain" in the final pieces.  Care needs to be taken when doing this not to have the disk speed too high, and not to push/feed the styrene pieces to quickly or to hard into the disk, otherwise you risk melting and deforming the ends of the pieces.




Using a sharp Xacto knife, any sanding flash was carefully cleaned from all sides of each board end. Care needs to be taken so as to cut parallel to the piece surface, and not slope the cut inward, or at an angle.




Smaller pieces were then "wood grained" by carefully, and with even pressure, drawing them once, in one direction, over a piece of 180 grit sandpaper. In order to keep the sandpaper surface perfectly flat during use, the paper was attached to a glass plate using double sided tape.




Wider boards are grained with the wire pencil; again, as with the frame, keeping in mind to move in one direction, and scribe with a single sweep whenever possible.




Lastly the pieces were all "de-fuzzed"/de-burred, using the Micro-Mark fiberglass pencil. Small parts, as in the photo, were done in multiples, so as to reduce the chance of eased or rounded edges and corners. (I often also use 0000 steel wool to do this....it just happened that in this case, the fiberglass pencil was closer at hand).




For the bulkhead construction, a jig was built from using styrene.




The bulkhead boards were glued in place onto the stakes, one at a time. Care needs to be taken when applying adhesive to only apply a small amount at the inside edge (where the planks are raised above the jig surface, so as to not have the glue wick onto the jig, and bond your parts to it. Since the jig should have a "snug" fit, make sure you allow the glued bulkhead parts to dry/set thouroughly, otherwise you stand the chance of distorting the assembly while removing it.

Note that the boards are assembled with a slight space between them (approx. .002), this is to allow for visual relief, paint thickness, and the idea that the boards slightly shrunk while in service...as they would in real life.




For accurate spacing on the center posts for the middle bulkhead, the flat car frame was used as a quick alignment jig. The vertical post was held in place on the partially assembled bulkhead, while small dabs of adhesive were applied to each board.  (Making sure not to apply so much as to cause it to wick under the frame beyond, or between the board and your work surface.)




The frame with the bulkheads test fitted. The slats on the frame against the bulkheads, are part of the the new deck. The slight uneveness in board thickness, is due to the variation in the manufactured styrene strip (using pieces from two different packages)....and as I intend to represent a car that has seen about 5 years of heavy service, and weather exposure in a tropical environment, I figure this effect gave an added visual "aging"/weathering detail.




I actually got further..... and even had applied all the spaced slats on one half....but somewhere between my math, and the slight, .002 or so, variation on the pieces causing a cumulative issue, there was an error, and I ended up with two adjacent spaces/openings ....so I had to peel them all off..., and will have to give it a new try during my next session at the bench.


Marc