I'd like to first start off with thanking Tom Densel for the inspiration of this project. When I read Tom's post on his N9 Transfer Caboose, I was inspired to make my own.
Chessie is my favorite Railroad, so I decided to make a Chessie Transfer Caboose. There was only one made in real life. Here it is.
From what I have read, many transfer cabooses are made from box cars. This seemed like a difficult proposition since I needed roof overhangs and steps on the frame. I've never Kitbashed a train car before, so I did not want to make life too difficult. So I decided to use the MTH Bay window caboose as my base model to hack up. I purchased this one on Trainz for $25. It was broken... but I figured I was going to break it even more, so why not.
Disassembly was pretty easy. Then, cutting it up was not too hard either. I did quickly realize that the car would not be scale dimensions. The car would not be as tall as the prototype and because I will be using this to house my BlueRail board and battery, so I needed the car to be a little longer to ensure all would fit inside. I also left the lights in place even though the prototype did not have lights... because I like lights. I still need to figure out how to make the plate on the end with the 4 red dots. Not sure what those are for.
My next challenge was the windows. I had too many of them. They were also square and the windows I needed were oval. I used this Perfect Plastic Putty that worked great.
I glued some styrene behind the window and filled in the hole. Then some wet sanding, It filled in nicely. For a brief moment I thought about cutting out new windows, then I decided to make a homemade decal for the side window. I think the decal came out pretty good. What do you think?
I had to make a new deck out of styrene because the existing metal frame showed the screws for the trucks and the hole for the wires.
The most challenging part for me was the handrails. I used an combination of plastruct and brass to try to get as close to the prototype as possible. It took a long while and admittedly it's the most fragile part of my model, but I was happy with the results.
Because of the car size differences noted earlier, I had to take some artistic license on decal placement. The O scale Chessie decals were actually too large, so the Chessie System, B&O and C3051 are actually HO decals. The C3051 on the end of the roof was a challenge too. I did not have a "C" that small. But the HO decal set has a Chessie "C" logo that was very small. So I decided to use that.
This was a fun first time project. The biggest challenge I find with kitbashing is a lack of instructions. I take steps in an order that seems logical. But there were times I would regret assembling or gluing something, because it made the next step more difficult. Live and learn I guess.
Here is the final product. The story of the figures I purchased and painted is here.
Have Fun!
Ron
