Durango & Silverton RR Shots |About Me
|
|
| Construction shots: | Benchwork | Scenery | Finished Scenes |
| Layout: | Trackplan & Specs | History & Notable Dates |
| Misc: | The Road to MMR
| Articles I've
written | Favorite
links | Durango & Silverton RR Shots |About Me |
The "Master Builder - Cars" Certificate was the 6th certificate out of seven I earned. Frankly, I saved this one for the end because, until I got involved with the Achievement Program, I had never even detailed a freight car, let alone built one from scratch. While I felt totally comfortable scratchbuilding structures, when I looked at freight cars, I was completely baffled. Thus, of all the certificates, this one was the hardest for me, but, in the end, probably the most gratifying. My learning went from Zero to 100, and I found out it's not all that hard to build cars!
Even though the requirements state that four of the eight cars must be scratchbuilt, because this was new learning to me and I wanted to improve both my skills and my comfort level, I opted to scratchbuild seven.
I earned this certificate on October 6, 2004.
The NMRA regulations for this Certificate state (as usual, I1ve edited these for this website; please visit www.nmra.org for the complete set):
You must build eight operable scale models of railroad cars. There must be at least four different types of cars represented, and one of these must be a passenger car.
Each of the eight models must be super detailed with either commercial parts or scratch built parts.
At least four of the eight models must be scratch built. [Then the hard part:] You must earn a score of at least 87-1/2 points on four of the eight models in either an NMRA sponsored contest or in AP Merit Award judging.
So after panicking a while and reading lots of car construction articles in magazines (there aren't as many as you think!) I dove in.
I took a load of construction shots of each of the cars I scratchbuilt, but to save on server space (and lower the boredom factor), I just included a few for each of the cars. Also, it would be nuts to include the full contest documentation for each of the four judged cars, so I'm just including highlights (in red) here.
Car #1: Pacific Fruit Express Reefer
Judged at Thousand Lakes
Region 2004 convention:
Construction: 30 of 40 points
Detail: 16 of 20 points
Conformity: 22 of 25 points
Finish & Lettering: 22 of 25 points
Scratchbuilding: 14 of 15 points
TOTAL POINTS: 104 of 125 points -- Merit Award Winner
|
This is the very first car I ever scratchbuilt, and I have to say, it remains one of my favorites. |
|
 |
The entire underframe of the car was
scratchbuilt from styrene, including the bolsters and all
crossbearers. The car has a "K-style" brake system, to
which I added complete piping.
|
 |
Car sides are built of scribed styrene
sheet, with corner braces made from styrene strips and Tichy
nut/bolt/washer castings.
|
 |
Before I learned a few tricks, I made
each halfof the roofwalk supports from individual pieces of styrene.
|
 |
The end of the car. The ladders were
scratchbuilt from brass "L" and wire stock, and soldered
with a resistance soldering unit (also scratchbuilt, from an article
on the web!), grabirons and coupler lifters are bent from brass
wire, and poling pockets were made from styrene. The brake hose is
from Details West.
|
 |
Here's the final car. Because I'm
fortunate enough to have an Alps printer, even the decals were
scratchmade -- I drew them in Adobe Illustrator. The car is
prototypically painted in Reefer Orange and Oxide Red.
|
|
Car #2: Pennsylvania RR Flatcar (non-riveted version) Judged
at Thousand Lakes Region 2004 convention: TOTAL POINTS: 111.5 of 125 points -- Merit Award Winner |
|
 |
I didn't want to build all "boxes" for cars (reefers, boxcars, etc.) so I found a great "scratchbuild your first car" article by (NAME) in Model Railroader that held my hand in building a flatcar. There were two versions discussed in the article -- a riveted and non-riveted version. At the time I had no idea how to make rivets, so I opted for the latter. Here's the underframe. As with the reefer, all parts are scratchbuilt from styrene strips. |
 |
The underside of the car is completely
prototypically piped with an AB-brake system (parts by NAME).
|
 |
The hardest part of this car, believe it
or not, was figuring out how to make the stake pockets. (Yes, Tichy
also manufactures those, but I wanted to scratchbuild as much of
this car as I could.) After making several attempts at bending flat
brass stock, friend Les Breuer suggested using styrene "C"
channel, and adding "ears" on either side. A brilliant
solution, seen here.
|
 |
The finished car has individual boards
on the deck, along with the full compliment of grabirons and stake
pockets.
|
|
Car #3: Pennsylvania RR Flatcar (riveted version)
Judged at
Thousand Lakes Region 2004 convention:
Construction: 37 of 40 points Detail: 16 of 20 points Conformity: 22 of 25 points Finish & Lettering: 22 of 25 points Scratchbuilding: 14 of 15 points TOTAL POINTS: 111 of 125 points -- Merit Award Winner |
|
 |
Somewhere along the line I figured out how to make a riveter (similar to the one from Northwest Short Line) out of an old drillpress. (I wrote an article about doing this which will appear in Railroad Model Craftsman magazine in late 2005.) So I was hot to trot to try it on the flatcar. So I made another one, similar to the one above. This one, however, had full riveting on both the underframe and the sides. If you look closely at this shot, you can see the lines of rivets, embossed into scale 1"x2" styrene strips. |
 |
Except for the rivets -- which about
doubled the amount of time spent building the car -- this flatcar is
identical to the one above. Here you can see a closeup of the brake
wheel, to which I added a watch gear and small piece of wire to
represent a ratchet and pawl.
|
 |
The end of the car features scratchbuilt
grabirons, coupler lifters, and poling pockets, as well as a Details
West air hose.
|
 |
From this view the car looks a lot line
the one above. However, again, there is full riveting on the sides
and underframe. And to this car I added a .020" Tichy
rivet to each of the stake pocket "ears."
|