A few Bachmann bashes...

[Kevin Strong]

Okay, they didn't stay unchanged for long... I got the new B'mann hopper and two flat cars, and it wasn't long before they underwent some minor surgery.

The Hopper:


Out of the box, the hopper's a good model of the EBT's 2-bay ganister rock hoppers which they built in the 1930s. There are some quirky details that aren't "quite right," though, so I set about to correct them. The biggest was the lack of any kind of detailing on the underside of the hopper, and the incorrect air brake rigging.



This was remedied with some styrene, and a bit of brass rod and other bits to rework the brake plumbing. Curiously, some of these details were included on the 1:22 hopper, but not on this one. 



The car comes unnumbered, so I applied some dry-transfer numbers to the side. A little light weathering completes the car. I also added the air line that ran along the outside edge of the hopper.



I used the archbar trucks from the flat car to put under the hopper. The stock trucks are quite accurate for the 1930s hopper modeled, but not the original 2-bay hoppers that the EBT purchased from the Pressed Steel Car Co. in 1913. Since I model 1913, swapping the trucks seemed appropriate. (The other trucks are slated for another project.)

More of the hopper conversion can be found here:
http://www.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=45037

The Flats

Both of these cars started life as a Bachmann flat car.

The first off the workbench was the gondola, patterned after an EBT gondola.



No good photos of the EBT's gondolas have come to light, so this is more conjectural than prototypic. (though gondola #78 was 30' long)



In 1913, the EBT had not applied air brakes to most of its fleet, so the air brake detail was removed from the underside.



The deck was painted with Folk Art "Barnwood" acrylic paint, and the gondola stakes cut to fit in the stake pockets.



The deck was washed with dilute black paint to give the deck a weathered look. The wood sides of the gondola were also washed, and matched surprisingly well. I wasn't expecting such a close match, but I'll take luck when I can.

The second flat car got an identical treatment in terms of backdating the brake gear and moving the brake staff to match EBT practice.



For this one, I added "end gates" which the EBT used on a handful of flat cars for pulpwood and other timber commodities.



I wanted this car to look a bit older and worn, so I weathered it a bit more, drybrushing some of the barnwood paint on the sides of the car and sanding off some of the lettering prior to washing the car with dilute black paint.

The trucks on both of these cars are Delton/Aristo-Craft archbar trucks.

More on these cars can be found here:
Gondola - http://www.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=44154
Flat - http://www.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=45084

Later,

K

[Lee Carlson]

Very nice, as usual, Kev. 
I wish you'd show how you modified the Bachmann wood ore
cars into the hoppers shown in several of the GR photo articles.

Lee

[Kevin Strong]

Lee,

I don't have much in the way of "unpainted" photos of the process, but here's a description of what I did to the wood ore cars:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/kcstrong/trr/Rollingstock/Hopper520.html

Wasn't a whole lot to it--just filling the holes where I removed the original grab irons, adding the wood side extensions, and lowering the car a touch.

Later,

K

[traindude109]

Kevin, those are beautiful!

[Lee Carlson]

And I have 3 of those ore cars operating on my railroad, in the 600 series.
Guess they'll go fairly near the top of the pile of projects to be done. 
Wish someone made decal sets or dry transfer sets with lettering just like that.

[Paul W.]

Kevin,
Awesome job! Your attention to detail is unbelievable, and definitly worth it!

[jpipkin]

Very nice work!