Do you have any unusual or wierd cars or locomotives?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Do you have any unusual or wierd cars or locomotives on your layout? Right now the most unusual piece of rolling stock I have is a 50 foot Roundhouse combine with a coupula on top right in the center of it. I saw one in the book Model Railroading with John Allen, and decided I would build one. It’s definatly a conversation piece at the LHS when it’s being pulled behind a few cattle cars on their layout.

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i receintly built a weed spraying car in ho by combining half of a boxcar and half of a tank car on a 40’ flat car. i used old kit sprues for piping and n scale coupler trip pins for nozzles.

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I have a four-truck depressed center flat car that needed a load, so I took a block of wood carved into an odd shape, plastic rods, assorted washers, etc. and fashioned a load that looks something like a large piece of machinery. When people ask what it is, I tell them it is a Flangellated McFooddlebobbelator. If they have the nerve to ask what a Flangellated McFoodlebobbelator is, I just say that it’s that thing on the flat car, and that they’re the only person who has never recognized one when they saw it.

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I’ve never seen a Flangellated McFooddlebobbelator!
Can we see a pic of a Flangellated McFooddlebobbelator please???

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And I thought I had a good load when I had a flat with a “discombodulated widget” but alas it hit the floor and propragated (SP) into three “discombodulated widgets”. It was mulitplying like rabbits. So I threw it away.

Have a blessed day and remember SANTA FE ALL THE WAY
Bob

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I thought I made a post here last night but I must have previewed it and then not “submitted” it or something silly like that.

These may not look too obviously wierd but they are subtly unusual.
First, two sulphur gondolas.
Prototypes built late 1920s, when new cars were generally being built with steel bodies, not wood, except for reefers where wood is somewhat of a natural insulator.
These gondolas for ATSF and SP carried powdered sulphur. Sulphur residue, heat and moisture could produce sulphuric acid, which could attack steel. So gondola carbodies were built of wood.

BUT sulphur residue etc could also get into small openings in steel underframes riveted and bolted together from structural members in traditional steel construction, so the underframe of the car was a ONE PIECE STEEL CASTING. This did not come into general use for freight car construction for another 30 years, so the same car was both behind its time (wood construction) and ahead of its time (one-piece casting). Models were kitbashed with scratch upper body built over plastic flat car which had rivet detail filed away.

This next car looks pretty much like an ordinary boxcar but it is a “boxtank”, a boxcar shell enclosing a tank for pressurized gas, AAR mechanical designation XT.

The entire boxcar sides, ends and roofs could be lifted off for servicing tanks, which made for a subtle difference in appearance of the side sill-- an easy modification to the model. (arrow) Also there were small doors on the ends of the car (arrow) to access tank valves. An easy modification project, could hardly even call it a kitbash.
But it makes an operational difference. Instead of this car being moved like a boxcar, with few restrictions when it becomes empty, it is in assigned captive service, the same as a private-owner t

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My LHS owner has a tank car that is labled for radioactive waste, or some such.

When you turn off the lights, it glows in the dark! Way cool, IMO.

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Yes. Santa Fe 2-10-10-2 and 4-4-6-2 both look pretty weird - but they existed
In Diesel, Athearn’s Santa Fe’s F-7A’s with steam boiler vents was pretty weird - as it never existed.

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I have a covered hopper painted for Bullschittz Fertilezers. It’s pretty funny.

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Wierd enough?
[image]http://users.adelphia.net/~wmry1407/FU2_resized.jpg[/image]
See http://users.adelphia.net/~wmry1407/interest.htm under the heading, Kitbashing, for the rest of the story

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A freind of mine built an FU2. The front is an F unit, while the rest is from a u-boat. The really funny thing is that a similar prototype showed up in a magizine !! You guessed it, from Mexico.

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Hey coaldrag,

You should follow the link to the post above yours…

Do you know Karl? Which magazine did the ‘unit’ appear in Mexico? Inquiring minds want to know!

BC

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I didn’t see to post above mine. It’s nice to know there are other “creative” peole around. The magazine was probably Trains from about 8-10 years ago. It’s been a long time.

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Hmm- does my DRS6-2-1000 qualify? I took the remains of 2 AHM E-8s’ that I had cut up to make an E-8B unit back before they were commercially available to make the engine. Only one was ever built by Baldwin and it was for the CNW. Uses P-2-K frame and power strecthed to fit.

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lol I was gonna do a similiar thing with an old lifelike F40PH and an athearn geep once, and then theres my prototype P2K sw9 chassis with a 40’ boxcar on it [:p]

oh yeah and I have an IHC mbta boeng LRV that i won on ebay