Painting in August

Several weeks ago I painted for several hours. I did not get much finished, but I have 8 models ready to decal. So someday soon I will have to get in the mood to decal all day.

This is an Ambroid kit based on the StPM&M prototype from the late 1800’s, I am going to reletter it for my home road M of W department. This is a double decker dormitory car. The cables hanging on the sides were used to tie the car down so it would not blow over. Also note the shelf for storage under the car. Ambroid kits are mostly wood with some metal castings. The kit, as supplied, came with windows printed in black on clear plastic. I thought that looked very poor, so I made each window individually, from styrene strip. There are 16 double hung windows on the lower lever and each contains 16 parts, and the 32 upper windows have 12 pieces each, or a total of 356 pieces. Building and installing windows probably took longer to build than all the rest of the project. I think I am going to glaze the windows with Microscale Krystal Clear, and add another stove to the other end to “modernize” the car for the Nirvana Valley Railroad.

Below is a Silver Streak Frisco box car, this was assembled by Mike Stephens of beautiful Joplin, MO.

I did a little touch-up and weathering. It is really a nice vintage piece.

Speaking of vintage, this is a Megow kit. Probably dates back to the 40’s? This kit was comprised of paper sides and ends, zinc hopper castings and trucks and wood for most other pieces. I, however, did not use any wood. I laminated the sides to styrene, and used styrene strips for all the wood parts except the main floor piece. The main floor is made of a piece of 1/8” steel with styrene strips glued around the edge. This provided weight and a good gluing surface. I have lots of construction pictures for this project, and hope to post those later, and have a clinic on building old wood, metal and papaer side craftsman kits.