Pennsylvania N5 caboose conversion

@Brother_Love posted:

This is a MTH casting that I have re-worked and 2 railed.  It was started because I was inspired by John Sethian’s PRR cabin conversion although this one is no match for his. I added brass trainphone antennas, thinned the factory roofwalks, drilled out the smokestack and built a new underframe for better details.  The worst part was the surface mounted windows but it did not look right at all with windows mounted from the inside.  It has one glaring error but I will get it corrected this week.  I m working on another now in Focal Orange, it is factory painted and I am trying to salvage the paint job.  They will look out of place on my layout but it matters not to me.  I have already touched up the underframe where adjustments were made in truck mounting to acquire the correct coupler height.

@Brother_Love

Your PRR cabin car shows magnificent work and result. I am considering scratch building a caboose. Would you mind sharing your parts sources for things like the roof antennas, roof walks and under frame parts, etc.? Also, if you kept photo records of your step-by-step progress while doing the conversion, yours sounds as if it would be a GREAT OGR magazine article! Your work is masterful! Such a detailed article would be an inspiration to others to also try their hands at super-detailing.

@Randy Harrison posted:

@Brother_Love

Your PRR cabin car shows magnificent work and result. I am considering scratch building a caboose. Would you mind sharing your parts sources for things like the roof antennas, roof walks and under frame parts, etc.? Also, if you kept photo records of your step-by-step progress while doing the conversion, yours sounds as if it would be a GREAT OGR magazine article! Your work is masterful! Such a detailed article would be an inspiration to others to also try their hands at super-detailing.

A lot of those parts can be found with Cal Scale for the Antenna  mounts and Precision Scale models for the under-belly parts.

Randy,

The antennas came from the auction site and the under frame parts are Scale City Designs.  I used .020” wire with Tichy NBW castings. The couplers are Kadee 740 and the 2R wheelsets are Intermountain.  I’m building an All Nation PRR NW2 to go with the cabin. Thank you.

I think I know the "glaring error" Malcom is correcting.  PRR cabin cars equipped with Train-Phones have a prominent electronic equipment compartment on one side of the car body.  The compartment was accessed by a horizontally hinged door.  Cabin cars without Train-Phone antennas do not have this door.  A May 15, 1957 listing of all PRR cabin car assignments (2113 cars!) reports that only 65 of the 199 N5c's on the roster carried Train-Phone gear.  N5c 477929, the car Brother Love is modelling, was one of the cars that carried Train-Phone gear.    well done...

Wow, your conversion effort is really fabulous! I was initially going to compliment your caboose, but thought otherwise LOL

Good job Malcom!

Great job. N5c’s are my favorite caboose.

Steve

I'm guessing that pipe pointing straight down from the floor is a toilet with no holding tank, right? Can you imagine working on the brake gear under one of those?

Excellent job on the cabin car.  Really first rate! 

George