Along the Right of Way ...

NKP 1000 Series Caboose Kitbash (Part III)

Milepost 553

This is the third part of my NKP 1000 Series caboose kitbash article.  The series begins with Milepost 551.

The marker lights were easier to make than you might think.  After reviewing some measurements shared by others, I concluded that some .1x.1 square plastic stock would be about right for the lamp.  They appeared to be about 24" high so that meant that 1/4" would be close enough for me (Remember, these are stand-in models).  The lenses are simply very thin disks of .08 round plastic stock.  I cut several of them before I got the hang of cutting them thin enough to look right.  Finally, the top is another .08 disk.  I also rounded off the edge of the top before I glued the top disk in place. 
Once again, a picture is worth a thousand words.  I did drill one hole partially into the side of my lamps that had no lenses for mounting purposes.  Once everything dried, I cut them apart and set them aside for later.  Don't forget to make two of them.  : )

My philosophy on modeling the underside of cars is that I'm not planning on wrecking them so I'm not planning on having people actually "see" the underside!  So the detail here is very Spartan.  I used both car floor castings as the ones sent with the cabooses were actually for a slightly different car and had one end rounded a little.  Not wanting to fool around with filing that to shape and drilling holes, I simply used them both, simply cutting them in half and using both good ends.  The modified versions of the 1000 cars only had two truss rods so I cut off the inside queenposts from the castings provided and put them in place.  I also used the brake cylinder that was provided.  You may want to use a different kind of brake gear based on the specific model and/or era that you are modeling.  Finally, I glued the two parts together with a little bracing and set them aside to dry.

The Tichy turnbuckles were an afterthought but I think they add a nice touch to the model.  I had tried to use wire for the truss rods but that was too unwieldy to work with.  Besides the traditional string that comes with the MDC kits was impossible to thread through the small holes of the turnbuckles.  So I took Ray Breyer's advice and used monofilament fishing line.  I made sure that the mounting holes on the car floor were clear and put the line in place.

OK, enough modeling for a while.  Let's cheat a little and see what our efforts have gotten us so far...  Looking good if I do say so myself!

Remember, I still have some caboose kits available that are the basis for the kitbash.  Contact me at danmerkel@sbcglobal.net

dlm

NKP 1000 Series Caboose Kitbash (Part II)

Milepost 552

This is the second part of my NKP 1000 Caboose Kitbash article.  Part I is the previous post.

Let's put everything back together and see what we have.

Starting with the caboose body, carefully check then recheck the joints for smoothness and being in square.  Once you are satisfied that they are, first turn the middle section of the car 180° then glue it to the end piece.  Repeat the same with the other two pieces then glue those two sub-assemblies together as shown.
Add some more square stock on the inside of the body for reinforcement.  Be sure that the top edges are all lined up as this is where any gaps will look the worst.  Anywhere else and you can say that the siding is simply pulling apart there a little.  : )         

If you opted to simply cut the two car bodies in half and use those two pieces, you would end up with window spacing that looks kind of like this:  []   []   []   [] .  But by making that second cut and turning the piece, you get a more prototypical looking spacing that looks like this:  []  []    []  [] .  It is a rather subtle difference that looks a little better, but since these are "stand in" models, either one is acceptable.

The window openings on the MDC model were a little big so I decided to close them in a little from the inside.  Again, I raided the scrap box for some rather flat, rectangular stock.  First, I glued a strip just above the bottom of the window openings.  Next, I experimented with placement of the second strip to cut down the tops of the windows a little.  I didn't glue this one but held it where I thought it looked good then measured between the two strips.  Finally, I used an NWSL Chopper to cut the side pieces.  I glued each of these into place then finally glued the top strip in place as well.  While the description of this isn't all that clear, the pictures show what I did and how I did it.

In addition to making the windows smaller, the long strips provide some extra bracing on the inside of the car body.

I seldom throw anything away and the left over caboose ends were no exception.  I actually cannibalized one of them for extra scribed siding for the cupola.
It took a little extra work but the siding is an exact match.  Once you have the extra material, carefully trim it to make new cupola sides.  For right now, don't worry about the window; I have a little secret to pass along about that.  Glue the new cupola sides into place and reinforce from the inside with small bits of scrap styrene.
Set this aside to dry thoroughly.

Now as to that little trick about the windows... take your #11 Xacto knife and carefully bore a hole right in the middle of the cupola side.  Make sure it is centered both left to right and top to bottom.  Make your hole the same diameter as the Tichy Work Car Windows are wide.  Using a file with a square edge, square off each corner of your newly bored hole.  Get it "close," but don't worry about precision.  Now for the secret... take the Tichy Work Car Window and lay it down on a piece of fine sandpaper.  Put your finger on the window and gently slide it around.  After a while, the little inside ridge on the back of the window will be gone and you can glue it into place over the hole you just squared up.  Once the glue dries thoroughly, simply use that same square file to take away any excess material that shows through the window.  That's a lot easier than cutting that hole to fit; those Tichy windows don't leave much room for margin of error.

The MDC caboose kits don't include weights so you will have to add your own.  I should have done a little weighing here but I guessed that three 3/8" nuts would be about right.  The finished car is a little heavy so two would probably be better.  Glue them in place on the inside of the car along the center line using some CA cement.  I tried to put mine between the windows a bit but they show nonetheless, so I sprayed the interior with some light green paint.
That's all for this time; next time, we will work on some market lights & the caboose underside.  Remember, I still have some caboose kits available that are the basis for the kitbash.  Contact me at danmerkel@sbcglobal.net

dlm

NKP 1000 Series Caboose Kitbash (Part I)

Milepost 551

Several months ago, I wrote an article for the NKP Historical & Technical Society's NKP Modeler's e-zine.  I had hinted at this article a while back and feel that it's time to share it here with you.  The next five posts will deal with it so sit back & enjoy.  If you would like to try to build one for yourself, I still have some caboose kits available that are the basis for the kitbash.  Contact me at danmerkel@sbcglobal.net and we can get you some.

Here's the article:

 

When one thinks of the Nickel Plate, they often think of the 2-8-4 Berkshires on the head end of a high speed freight making time across a straight, relatively flat steel raceway.  But there are other icons of the Nickel Plate and among them are the memorable 1000 series cabooses.  It's not within the scope of this article to tell you about the 1000 series; I'll leave that to those who know more about them than I do.  But I can share with you my slant on building one of these famous "cabs" using two Roundhouse/MDC 3-window wooden caboose kits and a few odds & ends from the scrap box.  Let's get started...

As mentioned, the raw materials for the caboose body come from the two MDC kits.  What we are going to do here is to cut the bodies into three pieces as shown.
The first cut simply cuts the car into two equal pieces.  That cut can be made right between the two windows in the middle of the car sides.  I counted boards to get the cut exactly where I wanted it, then laid a steel straightedge right on the line.  I held the straightedge in place with a small C-clamp and carefully ran the back side of a #11 Xacto knife along the edge, making several light cuts.  After a while, the blade goes through and your cut is complete.  Do the same on the other side then cut the floor and you are done with your first cut.  Cut the other car body in the same manner.

You "could" use the two pieces with two windows as they are right now, but I opted to try to get a little better window spacing, so I made a second cut on the car half with two windows.  I made this cut about a third of the way past the first window from the end, repeating the same on the other side.  When the cut was complete, I squared everything up with an NWSL Sander.  Patience at this juncture really pays off with nice seams later on.  Repeat the process on the second body piece then set them aside.

Next up is the roof.  As you can see from the photo,
I made my first cut right next to the short end of the roof at the cupola opening.  The second cut was made right on the ridge to center the cupola on the car once the middle section is turned 180° and glued back together.
From the scrap box, you can find some small square plastic stock to reinforce the glue joints.  Set this aside to dry.

The only remaining cuts are small ones.  The 1000 had one side window in the cupola and the MDC cupola has two.  I cut the sides out as shown.  Use a file to clean up the cuts here as well, since it makes things a lot easier down the road.  Put away the razor saws gang as the "kitbashing" is all done.

That's it for Part I; next time, we will work on putting the body back together and wee what we have so far...

dlm

Railroad History

Milepost 550

Ok, today's your chance to be a real railroad historian!  Those of us who are really interested in a particular rail line often seek out books written about that line.  These books in most cases are well researched and authors often spend years poring over documents just like the ones pictured here to find out the tiniest details about their subject.

Those of you who are regulars here know that I'm from the Ohio Valley near Wheeling, West Virginia, the southeast terminus of the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad (the other end was at Toledo, Ohio, not far from where I now live).  So I'm interested in this both because of its connection to the Nickel Plate Railroad AND its proximity to where I grew up.  The Wheeling tracks were only about 100 yards from my home in Tiltonsville.

One source of invaluable information about all railroads is the Interstate Commerce Commission's Valuation Reports.  Not being a railroad historian, I don't know all of the details but the story as I know it is that around the time of World War I, there was some consideration of nationalizing the railroads.  The roads were under USRA control during the war but the government never officially took them over.  Anyway, the ICC required all railroads to submit detailed reports showing assets of the road, physical property and an estimated cost & current value.
This is just one of the reports filed with the ICC about the Wheeling Terminal Railroad, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the road that controlled the access of the Wheeling & Lake Erie into Wheeling.  Reports like these are interesting to read... for a while.  They include detailed listings of all rolling stock, locomotives, maintenance of way cars... everything that was of value to the railroad.  This is a brief overview of the Wheeling Terminal.  It must be an updated report as it is dated 1929; the original Valuation Reports were due long before this.

You can look at these two documents in detail by clicking on the following links:

View this photo     View this photo

Quite frankly, I can't imagine reviewing page after page of this kind of material... I've read a few more but these are more interesting than others!  Pity the poor rail historian... and appreciate the work that they do to provide us with the story of the railroads that are our favorites.

dlm

Transfer Track at Galatea

Milepost 549

A while back, I had written that the latest rumor at the new CSX Intermodal Yard in North Baltimore was that there would be a transfer track built to connect the east-west main line with the track that runs from Toledo to Columbus by way of Bowling Green, Findlay, Kenton & Marysville.  Rumor is now fact; a recent trip to the area immediately behind the MdDonalds Restaurant at North Baltimore confirmed the construction and significant progress was noted.  A special thanks to my friend Andrew for bringing this to my attention. 

The aerial photo above (Google Maps) shows the approximate location of the transfer track.

This view is looking north along the Toledo line.  The east-west line is just behind that little mound of dirt and is marked further by the small yellow diamond sign on the right side of the image.  The road bed is shown curving off to the left.

This image is a little farther north and looking a little more to the northwest.  The road bed can clearly be seen here as well.  The east-west mainline is just in front of the trees.

The gem here will be the more efficient movement of freight from the Intermodal yard to the Honda plant at Marysville.  Before this track is completed and open, the only way that containers can be moved to Marysville would be to either go back to Deshler (west) then go north to Toledo.  There, the cars would be put into a train that would head south on the line that runs to Marysville.  The other route would be to go farther east into Fostoria then go south to Columbus then come back north to the Honda plant.  The Deshler option would necessitate some fancy maneuvering around the diamond to get the traffic to move north and the Fostoria route would add at least a full day to the trip from North Baltimore.  With the new transfer track in place, trains will simply head east from the yard and transfer onto the line.  In today's railroading, time is money; a rather small expenditure here will save considerable time in delivery to Honda. 

By the way, for the locals who read this here in Findlay that will mean more rail traffic through town.  I suspect that we will also see our share of traffic coming north from the plant and headed west.

dlm

A (virtual) Visit to Bailey Yard...

Milepost 548

My sister-in-law and her husband recently returned from a western vacation and one of the stops that they made was at Bailey Yard, the Union Pacific's big rail classification yard located in North Platte, Nebraska.  Knowing that I'd be really interested in what they saw there, they were quick to let me know about their trip when they returned.

Bailey Yard is big.  It is the world's largest railroad yard, covering some 2,850 acres with 315 miles of track!  Those 315 miles of track are all interconnected with some 985 track switches.  There are approximately 2,600 employees assigned to the yard.

And the yard is busy, 24/7... approximately 155 trains arrive & depart the yard daily.  As you would suspect, these trains are all over the board in terms of the cargoes that they carry.  About half of that traffic is coal mined in the area headed to power plants along both coasts.  The balance is mixed freight with a few local runs thrown in just for good measure.

Bailey hosts two hump yards; one going in each direction.  Approximately 1,500 cars are sorted in each one during the typical day.  Cars are pushed up an incline then over the hump.  As they gain downward speed, various track switches are thrown to direct them onto the correct classification track to make up a particular train.  Along the way, built in speed retarders slow the car so that it just barely arrives at its location and (usually) gently bumps into the next car, making the coupling connection.

Activities of the yard can be observed from the Golden Spike Tower.  The tower is a seven-story observation tower that allows one to see most of the entire yard although some parts of it are at a distance due to the yard's overall size.  There are both an indoor and outdoor observation deck so one has their choice of vantage points depending on the weather at the time of their visit.

Needless to say, one of the things I want to do some day is to visit Bailey Yard and spend some "quality time" at the observation tower.  Now THAT'S my idea of a good vacation destination!  It's probably a good thing that Janet doesn't typically read my postings here.

dlm

New Bachmann B&O EM-1 Looks like a Dandy!

Milepost 547

The new B&O EM-1 has started to arrive in hobby shops and it sure looks like it will be a good one.  The model is made by Bachmann and they have once again lived up to the rather high standards that they have set for themselves over the past few years.  I think this one will be a winner for them as well.

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad needed a real workhorse to tame the mountains that seperated the East Coast from the "new" frontier west of the Ohio River.  They had pushed tracks to Wheeling, West Virginia, and beyond but the mountainous terrain in Virginia & West Virginia slowed the movement of freight as trains had to be shortened even with two locomotives on the point.  Steam engines on their current roster just didn't have the power to tame the long & sometimes steep grades.  So the EM-1 was designed & built to conquer those rather formidable obstacles.

The 2-8-8-4 wheel design wasn't new as articulate locomotives had been around for quite some time when this one was designed.  But the outcome was successful nonetheless and the B&O rostered several of these beasts to handle the mountain traffic.  They stayed in service until the end of steam, putting in their final days in the coalfields of eastern Ohio.  I was a little too young to remember this but they plied the rails only about 12-15 miles from my home as they made their last stand.

Bachmann describes the model as follows:

HO Sound-Ready B&O EM-1 2-8-8-4

Bachmann presents this DCC-equipped B&O EM-1 2-8-8-4 simple articulated engine with all the features you want, including being ready for the addition of 16-bit Tsunami® plug-and-play prototypical sound. (Separate-sale Item No. 44951, B&O EM-1 2-8-8-4 Plug-and-Play Sound Module, required for sound on board performance)

 Features include:

• DCC-equipped for speed, direction, and lighting
• die-cast trucks
• double brass flywheels
• ball-and-socket driveshaft
• extra electrical pickup in tender

 Performs best on 22" radius curves or greater.

 Shipping now! Suggested price: $425.00 each

• Item No. 80401 Baltimore & Ohio^® #7600 (single headlight/large dome)
• Item No. 80402 Baltimore & Ohio^® #7627 (dual headlight/small dome)
• Item No. 80403 Baltimore & Ohio^® #7604 (large dome)
• Item No. 80404 Baltimore & Ohio^® #7614 (large dome)
• Item No. 80405 Painted, Unlettered - Early Sand Dome (large)
• Item No. 80406 Painted, Unlettered - Late Sand Dome (small)
• Item No. 44951 EM-1 SOUND MODULE (purchased separately) – shipping shortly  Suggested price: $119.00 each

Click here for a detailed view of the image above.  View this photo
 

dlm

 

Corporate Identity

Milepost 546

I'm part of a small email group that discusses the Nickel Plate in its earlier years.  I've shared with you many times that my layout is loosely based on the "mid 50s" and isn't much more specific than that.  Loosely modeling a particular period of time does allow me some latitude on what I run but it also kind of helps pull things together in terms of a particular time.  My friend Ray also models the NKP but he is thinking in terms of right after World War II so he is a little earlier than I am.

But others in the group are considerably earlier than either Ray or I.  They are interested in the early 1900s.  So when Ray came across this photo of a Lake Erie & Western boxcar, they were keenly interested.

Cars from this era aren't easy to find in HO scale.  Model Die Casting/Roundhouse (now part of Horizon Hobbies) has probably the best collection of cars from the early half of the 20th century.  The Accurail cars are pretty good as well but aren't as numerous as the MDC cars.  But there are a lot of modelers in this time period so they are constantly on the lookout for kits or simple kitbashing projects that will give them reasonable models for their era.

The email group is far more particular about details than I am so they can spend hours talking about the details in this photo.  Note, for instance, that there are six truss rods on the bottom of the car.  Most from this era only had four.  They could tell you about the type of brake equipment, the vertical brake stand, the kind of door on the car's side and even the composition of the roof (in this case, I think it's wood).  But what struck me immediately was the car's lettering.

Note that the LE&W reporting marks are much more faint than the "Nickel Plate Road."  And note that behind the NKP name, the area has been painted with a slightly different color of paint.  This tells me that the car was rather hastily repainted when it was acquired right after the merger of the NKP and the LE&W.  This took place in the 1920s so that pretty much dates the photo.  In this case, it would appear that the Nickel Plate wanted the general public to know that the Lake Erie & Western was now a part of their system.  Corporate identity must have been big, even back then.

Somewhere in my collection of cars, I have a few of the old MDC wooden boxcars which look "close enough" to this car to allow me to proceed with my plans to repaint then assemble a couple of cars that will look a lot like this one.  Remember, I have the luxury of being able to turn out my own decals so it shouldn't be too hard.  In fact, I have already laid out the artwork for the decals and only need to get the cars painted & assembled.  Through the wizardry of the decal printer, I can make the LE&W lettering a little weaker than the newer Nickel Plate Road, so the car should look pretty realistic when I'm done.  Now that we are into the Holiday Season full swing, I'm not sure when it will get done but you can bet that a future post will show my version of this most interesting car.

dlm

It's not Always the Main Subject of a Picture that is of Interest...

Milepost 545

No, sometimes there are some things in the background of an image that are far more interesting than the main subject itself.  Take the photo above for example.

The main subject in the photo was an NKP steam engine.  No don't get me wrong, to me, all NKP steam engine photos are interesting but in this case, there is something lurking in the background that is even MORE interesting.

The image above is a small but magnified portion of the larger picture.  The steam engine was to the left of this portion of the photo but the most interesting part to many of us NKP guys is the caboose in the middle of the image above.  Do you notice anything funny about it?

Well, it doesn't have a cupola!  And yet "official" records show that the NKP never had any transfer cabooses like this.  So what gives?  Well, people who know a lot more about this kind of stuff than I do first identified the caboose as one of the older wooden ones bought from the C&O right around WWII.  The Nickel Plate didn't get much of a bargain because many of these cabooses had already seen better days.  But the road was short of cabooses so most anything that could roll was pressed into service.  But what about that missing cupola?

Some of the cabooses were so bad that the cupolas were boarded up and the cabin was confined to yard use only.  But in this case, the cupola was so bad that it was removed entirely and the remaining hole was covered up.  This was obviously done after the official inventory and thus was never recorded as a "cupola-less" caboose.  But it took prying eyes to see this in the background of an otherwise rather ordinary NKP steam shot.

Yes, I know... I already have enough cabooses... but not one like this!  Expect a post about how to build your own somewhere down the road. :)

dlm

Local Rail History Found in Parking Lot Renovation

Milepost 544

When THE BLADE, the Toledo newspaper, decided to do some additional work on their employee parking lot, they found a piece of Toledo's rail history buried underneath. 

The article mentioned here provides a little history of the interurban lines that connected Toledo to the rest of Ohio and parts beyond.

http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2011/11/14/Toledo-relics-resurface-in-repaving-project.html

Until next time...

dlm