Converting fish belly flatcars into bulkhead flatcars

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I thought it was about time I give something back to the forum, so here’s a project I was working on the last two weeks. I have several old-style fishbelly flatcars and wanted to turn them into bulkhead flatcars for modern use. When I saw the prices they go for, I decided to see if I couldn’t kitbash my own. I bought an RTR Canadian 53’ bulkhead flat from my LHS and started taking measurements. Here are my results.

Materials:
0.250 x 0.060 strip styrene
0.060 x 0.060 strip styrene
A fish belly flatcar
A pack of full-height freight car ladders. I got mine from Detail Associates.
The thin styrene from DPM kits for roofs (I don’t know the thickness, but it’s perfect)

Starting with the flatcar, remove the underbody, trucks, couplers, and weight. Saw the flatcar, underbody, and weight in half down the middle and trim off the fish belly so the bottom is level. Also cut off the hand brake.

I placed the flatcar halves next to my prototype and measured the gap to be about an inch, so I cut 16 1.3" strips of 0.060 x 0.060 styrene to fill the gap. I also extended the underbody using the 0.250 styrene.

After that, I built the bulkhead ends with the sheet styrene and 0.250 strips using measurements I made off the RTR car. I’ve included them here.

I added ladders and the brake wheel. Yes, I know the brake wheel is too high. This is why it’s important to pay attention to what you’re doing at the workbench. [D)] Ordinarily, the tall ladder would be on both sides of the corner. However, I’m cheap and want to make my ladders stretch, so I cut them in half for short ladders and only had 2 tall ladders for the entire car.

2

Looks good. I want to see your videos so I’ll bookmark this thread so I can check them out at a later time. Nice work on the flat car. I always find lumber cars useful.

3

Thank you! I’m going to make two centerbeam flatcars sometime soon, too, as soon as I figure out what styrene I need for that.

4

Nice work on the bulkheads. Of course, the deck arrangement on the modified car doesn’t match the real thing, but if the idea is that your RR was just doing the same thing you did, and built/modified their own in their shops to the same general design, well then, that certainly explains things. :slight_smile:

(There were after all 4 different real-world builders of similar cars. Hawker-Siddeley (the Walthers model), Marine Industries (the True-Line Trains model), Railswest Manufacturing (the Kaslo Shops resin kit) and CN’s Transcona shops. All of these were to the same design and very similar, with only subtle minor differences (mostly differences in the design of the bolster jacking pads).

5

If you sacrificed one flat car to use as the filler piece to lengthen others (instead of flat styrene) you could match the deck design and pocket spacing.