I finally started building some old Quality-Craft wooden kits I've had kicking around for a while, given to me from a friend at our local club. Since I've been struggling to find affordable scale-sized freight cars up here in Alberta, I thought these would help a little bit, at least until I started looking for trucks...
I started with a kit that was supposed to be a trailer on a flatcar, but the flatcar was missing so I built the trailer as practice for the other kits. One mistake I made was I wasn't able to get the floor to dry flat, so the trailer has a lean. I should have sanded it back to flat, but I was too impatient.
I haven't painted it yet, but to continue with the process it will be the first in the booth for practice.
Next up is a pair of bulkhead flatcars, that can be built for either Union Pacific or Pennsylvania, but I only have the decals for the latter. Following the instructions, first step was to glue the five deck sections of each car together, which I did by wiping wood glue on the bottom of the seam, so no glue would squeeze through the gap.
While the floors dried, I made a copy of the profiles for the outer framerails from the instructions, then used that to roughly cut out the frame for the two cars. The scribing on the decking makes the pieces curl up, so the clamps hold down a piece of aluminum bar to keep everything flat.
I wanted to allow the car to be converted to 2-rail if desired, so I had to use the bolsters in their original form. Just have to pick up some screws tomorrow, and I can mount the trucks on one of them.
Here is a couple shots of the one with the bolsters installed but the trucks just placed under it, first on my tiny O34 layout, then on a piece of O54 track that it appears it should clear. Note the trucks may not be centered on the bolster in the photos. There is also a postwar Lionel car that's similar to what these should turn out like.
I'll update this post when I have more to report, hopefully soon!
