Milepost 706

Quite some time ago, I got an email with this picture in it from a modeling friend. We had been discussing older cars and in particular, the Wheeling & Lake Erie so he passed it along thinking that I'd be interested in seeing it. As I do with many old photographs I find of interest, I filed it away for "some other day."
Recently, I was going through some of my files, looking for another old photo when I ran across this one. That coincided with my purchasing a group of older Model Die Cast/Roundhouse freight cars that included three stock car kits that looked very similar to this photo. The wheels got to spinning and the gears meshed... I could simply paint a couple of the stock cars black and print some decals... BOOM! I'd have some "reasonable" realistic-looking W&LE stock cars.

As with most everything that the Wheeling did, car markings were simple. No fancy logos or anything else. Just what was required by law in plain black and white. The decals were easy to lay out although that "&" symbol was unlike any that I had in a wide range of fonts so I had to "customize" it a bit in my trusty graphics program. Otherwies, I added a few serifs to the main letters and that was it. Printing was a snap and I took the lazy man's approach to the painting process by using a simple can of satin finish black spray paint.
The cars I bought were the "old" MDC cars tht still had the cast metal floors in the kits. More recent kits had plastic floors which were much better detail-wise and easier to work with but that's what I ended up with. I spent quite some time trimming and filing off extra flash and reaming out partial or non-existant holes that were to accommodate the underside of the car's details. Again, I grabbed a can of flat black spray paint and painted the floors once all of the clean-up work was done.
Assembly of the cars was easy in that the body is a one-piece casting. The modeler adds the door guides, the doors themsselves and the brake wheel. The underside of the car is a little more dificult in that one must thread their own truss rods. I made this even more difficult by adding Tichy turnbuckles on the truss rods. They are a pain to put in place but do make a nice finishing touch. The rest of the assembly process was pretty simple; I was ready for the decals.
I'm not sure why, but I simply DON'T LIKE doing decal work. So I put it off much longer than I should have before finally just kicking myself and got going on the project. Actually, the decals went on rather easily since there were only four decals for each car side. Once complete, I let them dry thoroughly then added some decal setting solution to get them to really snuggle down to the car's painted surface. Again, after plenty of drying time, I gave each body three or four light coatings of clear sealer and the project was done. The only thing that remained was to spot the cars on my layout for their unofficial portrait.


In the end, the project wasn't all that difficult and I'm pleased to have a couple of cars that do resemble the prototype. Probably the hardest part of the project was finding the cars thenselves; Model Die Casting no longer makes car kits and I simply don't know how difficult it would be to take apart cars that were assembled as RTR models. If I want to do any more, I'll just have to keep my eye on Ebay.
When I was growing up, my mom always cautioned me about who I hung around with... "Some of those people might be a bad influence on you," she would say. Now I know that she was right... several of my model railroad friends are interested in modeling older freight cars from the 1910-1935 era and maybe some of that HAS rubbed off on me. These cars really don't "fit" my era but they will be on my layout anyway. All I can say is, watch what your "friends" talk you into doing...
dlm