That's pretty good! Gives that ore car a nice touch. I used the dried contents of expended Brita water filters to simulate coal loads in longer hoppers (and add weight to them in the process). I used scenic cement to hold that together and then tinted the load with some diluted black craft paint to darken the lighter bits. That's recycling.
My car today is this athearn boxcar. I picked this up at a small train show for .50 cents. You have to splurge sometimes.
Ah, I also see the old Atlas Austrian switches with the screw terminals. I have many of the even older ones with the two piece machines on my layout. Doug
Back in the late sixties, I bought that kit when they still had the black running board on them. I got it even though I had N scale and my brother had an HO layout. I just couldn't resist the scheme. Fairly recently I bought the later kit off eBay just like the one you picture. Doug
Here's a good one for a laugh. My Hormel reefer I made when I was 10 - 11 years old back in the sixties: It originally had Treble-O-Lectric trucks on it but I changed them to MTs later. It's all balsa wood. Doug
Oops, dummy me comes along and forgets this thread is HO scale. Oh well, just pretend my picture, above, is twice as big in all dimensions. Doug
I zoomed the photo 2x and it did the trick. I'm convinced... All wood, almost: Nice little train show find. All wood, with a stamped and lettered thin metal sheet glued to the sides. Nice and shiny.
This boxcar was part of a purchase I made at a small train show - .50 cents each or 3 for $1.00. It is a Bachmann car.
Here is the fairly rare Varney Ohio Seamless Tube Company car from the early sixties. My older brother, RIP, had an HO layout then and had one of these cars. He lost interest in model railroading and his equipment got distributed to our nephews over the years and eventually mostly lost. In 2017, I decided to rebuy all the stuff he had - Tyco Santa Fe F9 and set, the Atlas five trackside structure set. Revell Engine House, several other cars, etc. I finally got it all, including this car which took a very long time to finally find one with the overhead beam structure, at the end, intact. Here it is as an unassembled kit: And here it is, assembled, showing the end with the beam structure: Doug
That Varney kit has a good amount of detail for something as old as I am... Especially in the lettering - it's fairly sharp. I also found a few old cars, metal ones, at train shows, from a long long time ago: Some were missing ladders. I like the nice, heavy feel to them - no adding weight here! The Deep Rock and Roller Freight tanks have their paint and lettering on what appears to be some kind of heavy film that was stuck on to the metal body. The Baker's unit was a partially completed kit. I also like the rough look to them, like they've had some "experience". Train shows are a treasure trove of this kind of models.
Wish we had the little swap meets like we had in Milwaukee back in the '70s-'90s. That's were I got all my N scale and some O. All gone now. The shows and the trains.
