Like a few others here on the forum like Choo Choo Charlie, I have always have some project going on. So here's some recent ones of my own. Captions/descriptions below each photo.
As the tooling investments from the train companies are lop-sided to the scale end, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. I've always wanted a deep well container car that would run on 027 curves, and not look out of place with other "027 scale" rolling stock.
This is a converted short MPC era flat car that I made new sides for. The ladders are cut down from longer K-Line metal ladders and the other suggested details and from little things that I had in my scrap box.
The bottom container is one of the short Lionel ones used in a pair for the traditional flat cars. I cut the bottom off and it inserts to the flat car surface via a piece of foam... the same kind of foam I use for my giraffe car actuators. The container on top has the wheels and mountings removed, and sits on the lower container via some thin foam pieces. I have to print out the J.B. Hunt Intermodal decals for this container.
I never intended this to be a precise replica, though I did consult actual photos of the real thing. I instead wanted to make a replication, like I mentioned before, with painting in watercolors. I'm actually really happy with this one. And it clears everything on the layout (which I intentionally considered as I worked on the car).
I will always have affection for the Lehigh Valley. Lionel did a LV dump car sometime in the late 1980's, but it was a rather drab looking car in unpainted plastic. So I decided to repaint one in a little more exciting scheme, also making my standard improvements to these cars. On each side of the black dump base, you might notice in the photo, two pieces of wood on each side, that I cut and glue in place to add additional support to the plastic tabs on the car itself.
Probably not many people here take notice, but prices are way up on the shorter 027 cars, from what they were not too long ago. Then factor in shipping and you can easily pay $30.00 each for a short 027 train car. Since my layout is now the smallest I've ever had, I'm taking some of my longer traditional 0 cars and cutting them down, more to "027 scale." So the above gondola I think was an Industrial Rail one. I cut no more than an inch and a half out of the center and glued the two pieces back together, using some wood on the underside for bracing. This was the first of my "cut down" jobs and was pleased enough with the result to continue with more.
Same story for the flat car above, which was a typical Lionel traditional flat, that I cut a little more than an inch out of the center, glued and braced the two pieces together. I cut the angle supports off the flat car ends and screwed them into the car. And now I see how easy it is to photograph a car, not realizing one of the trucks is slightly off the rails. I didn't notice this until I uploaded the picture. Oh well.
This one above was one of those "I wonder if I could do that" projects. It started off as a 5000-series K-Line stock car. I carefully cut every other "board" out of the sides of the car. The chicken inserts are from the Lionel Chicken Sweep car. Yes, this is illuminated. I used a yellow 3M type scrubber bad, roughened up with a wire brush, to suggest hay on the floor of the car. The Foghord/Henry Hawk figure is from the larger Lionel operating car, which uses a rubber for operation. I mounted the figure to a thin piece of styrene, shaped like an "L" and mounted to the car floor at the far end of it. Then I put plastic wheel sets on one truck, BUT with the wheels flattened on one side. So as this car rolls down the track, the flattened wheels cause the car to rock a little bit... just enough to cause the Foghorn figure to move or vibrate in and out of the car about 1/4 to 3/8's of an inch.
Here's a couple of cars that get ZERO respect: The low end Kickapoo train set dump cars. Though as you can see here, when you paint them, they do look much better. I put metal wheel sets on them, and also some weights to the underside of the car. I came up with a little mechanism on my layout that operates these cars and causes them to dump their load. I also have a very simple operating forklift truck that I can use to load these cars up.
And this last photo for now is a good example of "this ended up being far more work than I imagined." In my quest for smaller 027 types of train cars that do look better on a small layout, the Lionel NYC Woodside reefer seemed like a candidate for shrinking without repainting and decaling. I basically shortened the length by cutting off 1 inch from each end of the car. Of course, then new truck mountings had to be made. I replaced the molded in ladder on the far side with a K-Line metal ladder from one of their traditional box cars. The doors (which shouldn't slide open anyways) are now glued in place. Like I said, it did end up being more work than I originally envisioned with all the grinding and cutting: It might have been easier to just scratch build one. But I managed to pretty closely match the brown paint on the car with spray paint, and then decided to do just the roof top in black. I do like the smaller size of the car now, and it looks much more at home with my other MARX style K-Line 5000 series cars. But next time? There's got to be an easier way, so I might just scratch build one.
