Milepost 554
This is Part IV of my NKP 1000 Series caboose kitbash article.
When we picked up the bulk caboose kits for these projects, the person who had them did mention that there were some parts that were not available. Among them were the square handrails for the caboose ends... both the ones that fit on the body and on the car's end itself. So again, grabbing the leftover parts of the caboose body, I made a little bending jig for the railings. I simply glued a hefty block of plastic stock right where the bend needed to be made. To use it, I first bent the end of the wire 90° and put the small end in the hole near the door. I then bent it around the block of plastic and then down through the second hole at the bottom of the casting that I had "daylighted." While I wouldn't use this for bending a whole lot of these parts, it worked fine for the four that I needed.
There is plenty of extra wire to bend the railings for the car's ends. I did cheat here a bit by making one railing per end instead of two. You could make two to be a bit more prototypic or you could even paint the center section black after the yellow to make it less noticeable. The rest of the railings need to be painted yellow so I made very small slits into the bottom of a model box and stuck each railing piece into one. A few shots of gray primer followed by the yellow paint made short work of those railings. Let these dry for several days as the paint will come off rather easily if it isn't cured.
It's paint shop time so I masked off the parts of the cars that needed to be protected, mainly the interior of the car body and the middle of the floor casting. Don't forget the doors on either end of the car. At this time, I also drilled small holes for the marker lights and installed them into the sides of the cupola. I then hit everything with some gray primer followed by the final color... red for the car & cupola and black for the roof. Again, I was lazy and chose rattle cans over the airbrush. I've found that with a little care, one can get very acceptable results with the rattle cans. And clean-up is much easier than with the airbrush. But suit yourself on this one. As soon as you can safely remove the masking tape, do so and then let the parts dry for a few days.
Call me lucky... call me really lucky but I still have a working ALPS printer so I'm able to almost always print my own decals. I measured the height and the width of the "High Speed Service" stripe and laid that out in a program I've used for many years called Paint Shop Pro. It is a Photoshop knock-off and is about one tenth of the cost of the real thing. It serves my purpose quite nicely. The "Nickel Plate" in Nickel Plate Road was a little too wide so I had to rescale and print that as well. Don't ask me about the car number... for whatever reason, 1016 sounded good to me. I applied the decals using regular decaling techniques and set them aside to dry. A soaking with Walthers Solvaset about 24 hours later really helped them snuggle down into the wood siding. Don't forget to seal them with your favorite clear overspray.
Assembly of the roof, cupola and cabin body was easy. What turned out to be the hardest part of the whole project came next. I wasn't even sure if I was going to add the cupola bracing but Ray talked me into it. So I first shaped them from the stiff wire that came with the kits. The pieces looked good but were totally inflexible and gave me fits. I soon gave up on that idea and looked around for another solution. Hmmm... what did I have that would make the job easier?
I thought that if I had some more pliable wire, I could put it into place then "feed" it into the hole in the cupola. NOT! So I eventually shaped the braces from some soft copper wire, installed them on the car side then carefully cut them to just the exact length to just fit into the hole in the cupola. A small drop of CA held them in place.
Remember, I still have some caboose kits available that are the basis for the kitbash. Contact me at danmerkel@sbcglobal.net
dlm
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