Bob, you do a great job of building Robert's cars. I try to bid for one of your flat cars, but got outbid. I see that there is a big demand for them.
Get in line, John.................BEHIND ME!!! :shade: I've already tried to convince Bob to build only for me, but I just can't match that Hans guy's budget......... mg: I'll keep trying for these builds though, as Bob does beautiful work, and Hans has to sleep SOMETIME, right? :lightbulb:
Yes, weren't these cars good and fun to build Chooch? I guess we are a few off the lucky chosen ones to have these cars so far. Thanks Robert. PS: I se that you have gone for a different look with the "sideboard" mounted on the bottom off the car sidings.
Hi Torsja, I had the wrong chassis base for the car so had to make a few adjustments. The weight for the car is inside the car stacked at the ends but even with the doors wide open you can't see them. And I had to use trucks with couplers as I didn't have the proper coupler mount because of the different base. And not enough spare parts around here to assemble it according to the C&C instructions. So it might be a one of a kind I guess. Their fun to build and you end up with a nice old style boxcar. Now if my Pacific Steamer would arrive I'd be all set. The mail seems awful slow at times. Bob
Looks good Bob! Welcome to the "misery of grab iron forming" club! I have 11 more of these cars, all build and ready for grab irons, but that is where I am stalled as I hate forming and applying grab irons. Each car takes about 30 of the little buggers, and I can't get motivated yet to do 300 or so of them yet.
wouldn't the smaller grab irons (drop style also) made by BLMA work for your boxcars? i think craig now has templates for these which make easier work of drilling holes accurately and in line. there are two sizes, but i think the smaller (n scale) grabs would look right. maybe not. has anyone tested them on Z cars to see? dave f.
I could re-space the pre-burned holes to match pre-formed grabs, but since I made this model primarily for myself, I did not bother. Now for the HO caboose kits I used to do, I included Tichy Train Group pre-formed grabs, because I could buy 1000 packs for $20, where $15.50 worth of N Scale preformed grabs will only do 2 of these cars. To save $100 I decided to form my own.
I spent a evening just making grabs for the cars and got going so good at it I just kept going. I now have enough to do quite a few cars and will use them on some N and Nn3 kits I plan to build soon. The templates for lining up the holes for drilling are pretty much a pain in the butt unless the place where the grabs go is absolutely flat so you can either glue the template on or hold it in place with tape. I have some templates from Gold Medal Models and some I have made myself and its easier to have the holes pre-burned like Robert does on the wood kits and make the grabs yourself than use a grab jig. And there are 32 grabs on the radial Boxcar. Lots of fun.
Resurrection of an old thread, why? Well it's more than 15 years later, and I am retired now. So, what happened is I was working on my Lester TTZ module set, and was about to build a fire car, which I determined was rebuilt from one of these 36' car. I decided to look through my junk boxes and uncompleted projects boxes, when I found these stalled projects. I hit the mother lode. It seems like they came from a lifetime ago. There are actually 11 cars built that need the brake wheels and grab irons applied, then paint and decals. This project was started at a time when there was very little available in Z Scale, and people were just discovering that they could actually build laser kits in Z. Several of the members of this forum built them. One gentleman, Torsja, from Norway, even went on to design and build his own version of car, after building some of my cars that I sent him in 2006. I found that long lost car that Torsja sent me, and now have the prize back in my collection: So right now while I am motivated to do so, I am going to attempt to finish the 11 cars I found:
100%, bring your kits back....and some more. Loved to build them and still have some gems in my drawers...
The kit I missed that you made way back was the hopper cars. I was a little intimidated at that time as I was just figuring Z Now after dozens of your mt and baz kits it seems silly I was that way. Literally a year later MT came out with their hoppers after yours. Still yours were cool!
Well, I had a senior moment out here in the garage, where I was staring at the computer, and fell into an internet coma. Then all of a sudden I snapped out of it, 2 hours later! It's been below freezing for a week, and I have a heater in the garage, so I set it to 70, and I fired up an electric heater under the workbench to warm my feet. I had just poured a hot cup of coffee, and started looking at old photos from Railimages when I started feeling warm, and dozed off. So after I snapped out of it, I managed to apply the brake gear and grab irons to one car: I did the brake rods: I did the ends: And I did the sides: Now I need to do 10 more cars before painting. I'll be at it for a week I bet, but if I paint even one car, I won't ever get to the rest, so before I gear up for paint I better grab them all. I did find a couple photos from back in the day pulling some of these old cars:
Torsja is a fantastic artist! He also did some custom N scale work for me. His Z scale layout was fantastic!
Rob, Yea,yea,yea! Those are some lovely boxcars! I was wondering, do the brake wheels from Gold Metal really look close enough in scale? I mean they look good in your photos. Scott
I think they are close enough. I can do a shrink on them and make them out of something other than brass, but the brass is pretty hard to damage. I thin the reason they look OK is that this is the same size as an Nn3 28' boxcar, so to the eye it's hard to see anything wrong.
Well, I could only apply grabs to 4 cars before I broke down and just had to see how they look. As it turns out, I can paint 4 cars on one paint cup of Floquil, and this time I used ATSF Mineral Brown. Also, I did apply the rooftop grabs, and the underframe brake rods, where 17 years ago, I was just too lazy I guess. Maybe it was the need for instant gratification, that I just had to see how they looked? Anyways it's that need to see what they look like that drove me to go ahead and paint 4 cars as soon as i got the grabs for them on. Also, I think I must have brush painted the first cars, because the paint looks thinner and detail crisper. We will see if that's still true after decals down the road.
