Jim, I stumbled across this thread while working on my own ore car project. I’m absolutely drooling over your work, the cars are gorgeous. The brake system detailing is excellent. Your design execution in regard to ease of assembly is very impressive. I also quite like the look of the stenciled lettering, I’ve seen plenty of photos of freshly painted PC equipment with white overspray around the lettering.
I’m 3D printing my own versions of the three ore car prototypes. I’ve wanted to print these cars for years, but until now never had the resources to do it affordably. I drew all three of them many years ago when I was in high school, but they were designed for an FDM printer while I’ve gone the way of resin. My drawing skills have also come a long way since then, so I decided to start fresh with a clean slate.
I do have one question for you, what is the height between the rail head and the flat bottom of the car body? I model in three rail so I suspect mine will have to sit at least six inches higher that the prototype would to account for flanges.
Here is my mostly finished base model for the G39/G39A. I haven’t done much with the underside as I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be doing in regard to trucks/couplers yet. I may go with Kadee couplers since these are intended for unit train service. There is also a good bit of metal work yet to be completed at the bottom end of the ribs. The ribs on my model are 4” wide. I originally had them at 4.5” and I thought they were a little too fat looking.
Curious how your own project has gone since 2020. Would love to see 30+ of these being dragged around by a trio of 630s....
