I'm finally starting to assemble my own 70-ft McKeen car this weekend. I started with a motley assortment of repaired and extra parts. I had a perfect set of prototype parts but whenever one of my customer's sets had a misprint I would swap in one of mine. I was able to make up a full set just from repairing some "factory seconds".
After a little filing down I brought the parts in the garage and sprayed them all with 2 full coats of Rustoleum 2x. I'm going with a red and gold Cuyamaca scheme since that's what I decorated my McKeen mail trailer for last year.
Here's the result of the painting process. Once the paint is fully set I will apply some homemade decals to finish it up. A good coat of Rustoleum Matte Clear should cut down the glossiness and smooth the surface for the final look.
Now that I'm caught up on orders I'm finally working on new projects. I want to make a 55ft McKeen to accompany the 70ft one. I have this K-Line Budd car that I picked up last month that I thought would make a suitable chassis.
The 55ft model prints in only 2 pieces with about 40 hours of total printer time. I realized immediate after printing the set (40 hours in) that I had forgotten to model the headlight. D'oh! I might experiment with putting the headlight on the roof like this UP McKeen had.
The K-Line Budd doesn't have as many usable mounting holes as the Railking Doodlebug but there's enough to do the job. I added little tabs that touch the frame on the inside to provide extra points of contact.
Here's what the 55ft design looks like right now with the headlight and driver's door where they should be.
Hope everyone's having a nice weekend!
