Hi All- Since I missed the boat on all the ATSF brass heavyweight cars by a few years, I'm assembling a fleet of ATSF passenger cars from brass sides, and wanted to share my progress on that front. Below is my first attempt, an RPO with a baggage compartment - I realize the paint might be a bit on the rough side, as I don't have a proper airbrush; also it's a bit on the green side as I've been experimenting with different mixes of pollyscale colors; anyway I think it turned out alright, though the sides do bow out a little (didn't cut a large-enough opening for the doors - noted for next time). Still awaiting decals though. -Justin
Russell I just got the decals in the mail today - they look great! I'll post final pics of the RPO tomorrow. In the mean time I've already started work on an ATSF coach. The victim: an old Rivarossi coach which I had experimented on a while back, trying to simulate the large picture windows. I've already removed the underbody details, and cut away the old sill to and clear the new channel sill when its attached to the rest of the car side. -Justin
Hooooboy. Got a package from Italia post yesterday with my coach sides from Roberto Martari. Now I need to go finish my history thesis so I can built the cars! But I had to order them now.
I finished applying decals to the RPO today - still need to clean things up a bit, and I'm thinking of adding a coat of gloss to even things out. In addition, work continues on the coach - I applied the sill to the main car sides with CA, sanded the sides of the core body smooth, and cut it in half to shorten it. Everything seemed to be going well except for one detail: I accidentally shortened the body a little too much! I think rather than deal with having to do some modifications to the underbody, I'm going to go ahead and start with the second set of car sides I have on hand - I'll just cut the core body halves to be longer, so that there'll be two cores with the same (and correct) length. -Justin
Seems I've been getting distracted from n-scale recently (wrapping up my M.S. in Mechanical Engineering) - in the mean time I did manage to finish one of the coaches (for the most part); I added steps from Gold Medal Models and a couple of underbody details. I've cut the roof to size, but haven't glued it together yet - I'm still undecided on what to do about air conditioning (that goes for the underbody details as well), and I may remove the glass and replace it with clear styrene. Anyway here's how it looked unpainted: And here it is painted with decals I've still been trying to experiment with different shades of green - this one seems to more closely match the HO-scale Walthers coach, and it gives a nice contrast to the micro-trains pullmans. Let me know what you think! -Justin
