Please accept my apologies for any typos that you may find in this post. The spell checking routine on the blog software isn't working correctly and it has been difficult to check for all of the errors. They tell us that they are "working on it..."
Milepost 614
You may remember that a while back, I mentioned to you my "project car" with a Van Dorn end. As you can see from the picture here, a Van Dorn end looks a lot like a bulls-eye with stamped, concentric circles presseded into one solid piece of steel. These were actually experimental and not that many were ever used. But it does make for an interesting model as you can see here. I'm not sure where I saw the graphic for the Redd Line but I thought it would work for me here so I adapted it for my purposes. Again, using spray paint cans, I simply painted the shell of the finished model an appropriate looking brown then set it outside to dry & cure in the heat of the sun. The next day, I added the decals. Once the decals were set, I oversprayed the car with some clear, semi-flat sealer and added the floor to finish the project.
Another earlier post introduced you to a different yet equally unusual car end. This one has a Vulcan end and it featured vertical ribs instead of the more traditional horizontal ones you see on many cars today. This one was rather easy to simulate with an old Trains Miniature single sheathed boxcar and some metal siding sheet stock from Evergreen Styrene. Although it doesn't show here, the original car end was made up of two pieces of steel that were stamped then riveted down the middle. I'm not really into rivets so don't sweat such fine details.
While this is not an exact model, the Wheeling did have some cars that were similar to this one. They were unusual though in that the doors were not centered in the car's side so there were more braces on one side of the door than the other. There are no cars like that on the market today and I had no real interest in scratchbuilding one so this TMI stand-in will have to do. To summarize, the work was rather easy as all I did was to remove the end details then cement the plastic sheet metal piece in place. I then added some ladders and brake detail and the model was "...good enough for Findlay." A slightly different brown paint from the spray can and the car was ready for lettering. The WLE didn't do much in terms of really decorating their cars so the decals were fairly simple and easy to put into place on the car. Again, after the decalling was done, a clear spray was used to seal the lettering onto the car.
I still have a few more car projects to share but that will have to wait for a future post. Stay cool!
dlm
My wife wants our semi truck to have a paint job. However, I'm not sure what design or color to put in there. I think I'm going to ask some of my friends to paint a model semi truck first before I head to the auto shop and have it painted for real.
Posted by: Japeth | March 11, 2013 at 08:54 PM