I think when most people refer to “train set junk” they are thinking of the old tyco/bachmann/life like/model power sets. I know Athearn made train sets but they were a better grade than the forementioned sets that you could find at most departmet stores.
I needed 35 flat cars for my Southern Pacific unit lumber train, so I bought Tyco’s for a dollar or two each. Add wire grab irons and steps looks almost as nice as those $39.00 flat cars.
A Tyco Gondola that is close to an SP prototype.
Tyco operating hopper makes a very close SP Ballast Hopper.
Yeah, I do have a lot of cheep toy train stuff running on the layout.
I have a bunch of these, and I’ve always wanted more Bennet Lumber ones…
Excellent thread!
So glad to see this as I have a fleet of Athearn BB cars that I’d like to “hop up” to more realistic appearances. Although I like prototypical style modeling, sometimes my eyes glaze over when I read the frequent oral/verbal trashing of the BB type equipment. Yes, standards were raised and there are many attractive and more prototypical units on the market…but there are those of us that have sizable fleets of rolling stock that we purchased decades ago and are not in the position to invest hundreds or even thousands of dollars to replace our entire fleet. So, while we may purchase a smattering of high quality rolling stock here and there, we “work with what we have” and the efforts often pay off as seen on this thread.
Doc I have an identical BB New Haven caboose that I bought back in the early 80s. Outstanding work!
I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what method and tool do you use to bend those railings and ladders to such smooth and precise curves? They’re impressive.
[quote user=“doctorwayne”]
I’m not sure that I’d consider Athearn to be “trainset” quality, but the BlueBox cars are definitely good fodder for kitbashing and modifications. Here’s a bay window caboose, picked-up new for four bucks:
While I didn’t alter the car’s appearance all that much, I did upgrade some of the details, while still allowing the car to be easily disassembled should the need arise. This was accomplished by sectioning the floor, and making the ends of it part of the platforms. This permitted me to build new ladders and end railings, then cement the assemblies in-place
Thanks for your kind words, Antonio.
I made a couple of simple jigs for ladder construction, as I also add them to some steam loco tenders, and will be scratchbuilding 10 or 12 wood cabooses for my freelance roads. The material used for the jigs is hard maple - very smooth and stable. The bending jig is simply a shape done in a thin piece of wood, then, using yellow carpenter’s glue, affixed to a heavier piece of the same wood:
I use a small pair of smooth-jawed pliers to form the bends - the Detail Associates flat brass bar (010"x.030") is soft and easily bent, and the smooth jaws leave the brass unmarked. I formed it roughly on the wooden form, periodically re-flattening the developing shape as required. Once I had the two stiles formed, they were placed, one atop the other, on the form and “adjusted” with the pliers to make them as close as possible to identical. Both pieces were lightly tinned, then, while held in place on the form, soldered together.
After trimming them to size, I used a set of dividers to lightly scribe a centreline along their length, then, after re-setting the dividers, “walked-off” the drilling points for the rungs.
The soft brass drilled easily using a pin vise and a #79 bit.
After the holes were drilled, the assembly was heated and the two stiles separated. I used a small file to clean away the excess solder and then used the drill bit to re-opened any holes closed with solder during the re-heating process.
The stiles were then placed in an assembly jig also made of hard maple. The two small pieces between the stiles are glued in place on the larger board, as is the flat piece at the foot of the ladder. With th
They’re probably not contest quality, but I have a fleet (soon to be 8, IIRC, all in various states of assembly. For most of them, a date with my Dremel tool will get them fully assembled) of GP20s that started out as junk units. They started out life as Tyco GP20s, all purchased online. All of the shells have had the old truck mounting holes filled in, the incorrect horn holes filled in and a few other odds and ends. The existing drives were replaced with modified Athearn GP35 drives for the powered units and frames for the non-powered units. The couplers have been body mounted, The horns and antenna are metal details. The rotary beacons are Detail Associates flashers. (I find the plastic units easier to work with.) The handrails are the metal Tyco upgrade kits with modified Athearn stanchions. (If you have ever looked at the number of stanchions on a GP20 and multiply that by 7 [I haven’t bent the stanchions yet for the eighth unit. The shell is still sitting in the to-finish pile.], that is a lot of stanchions!) They are custom lettered for my freelanced railroad. While I don’t have pics, I took a couple of them to a convention with me last summer and got compliments on them.
A friend of mine who is a custom painter once mentioned to me that many lines of model trains were held in contempt as junk but when their over-thick paint was stripped off, there was often a wealth of fine detail that had been placed into the original tooling. Often the biggest problems were the mechanism and the “durable” but nonscale handrails and such. He showed me an AHM diesel shell that he had stripped – maybe it was their SD40 or their GP18 – and it was indeed impressive. It is somewhat sad to think that some tool and die man worked hard on the shells only to have their paint department fill every gap and detail with paint applied with a cow’s tail.
What is always remarkable is the potential Doctor Wayne sees in what initially would strike most modelers as being pretty unpromising raw material.
The take away is that some train set junk is in fact junk, but that some things regarded as train set junk are train set but not junk, just poorly painted, plopped on poor frames and trucks, or saddled with poor mechanisms and handrails.
Dave Nelson
Thanks for your kind assessment of my work, Dave. [:$]
I had some reservations when a good friend asked if there was anything which could be done to make a Rivarossi C-Liner into an acceptable representation of a CNR loco. However, I was fortunate to discover that the mechanism from a Stewart Baldwin (an AS-16, if I recall correctly) was almost a drop-in fit for it, and was able to find one locally at a really good price. Detail Associates offered C-liner sideframes which were a snap-in replacement on the Stewart trucks, and armed with some prototype photos from my friend, I was able to do a fairly respectable model of a CNR locomotive. Paint is SMP Accupaint, and the decals are Accucals from the same company.
LifeLike Proto1000 later offered a nicely-done version of these locos (including B-units) and also some of the 5-axles versions, too. My friend bought several of each, but the re-worked Rivarossi loco doesn’t look out of place in a consist with them.
Wayne
Very nice work on the FM C Liner Wayne
It is a strange thing but the sideframes that came with the powered C Liners were not very well done but for an unpowered B unit, AHM or their original source redid the side frame into a very respectable and accurate model indeed. Yet I do not believe that improved side frame ever saw use on the powered versions, and the unpowered B units were decidedly scarce.
Dave Nelson
These three old ladies are the same LifeLike as my Bennett car(s) just weathered up from pics of another (real) Michigan shortline,but with my reporting marks.
This was an old Mantua Heavies kit that I upgraded with metal wheels, Kadees, some weathering, stakes and a couple of loads. Was going to sell the kit and deceided to try to salvage it.
-Bob
Doc,
Thank you very much for your response and detailed photos. Outstanding work! Excellent material for an instructional video.
I have a number of rolling stock pieces, including cabooses, that are missing ladders and rails. I’ve decided not to put things off any longer and take the route that you and a friend of mine took…forming your own from brass.
How about one respectable car built from two.This N scale Gern 50’ double plug door Hi cube was made from a pair of Bachmann 40’ hi cube plug door boxcars.
I’d forgotten about GERN cars, although most of mine are stock Athearn BB cars which have a few added details and appropriate paint and lettering. These ones below are also Blue Box cars, but slightly modified:
I backdated this one just a bit with the full-length platforms:
This is another Athearn car, with the “kitbashing” done in photoshop by my brother, who does all of the ad copy for GERN:
Wayne
Here’s what I call a “down and dirty” conversion. This started life as a Tyco yellow UP gon. This was a quiet afternoon’s work. I removed cast on detail, replaced with wire grabs and ladders. New trucks and couplers.
I had to guess at the color because SRR had 2 colors for their gons, black and freight car red. For this, I guessed wrong, its supposed to be black. One day, I’ll change it
Well, I don’t model the Southern, but this one’s not black:
…nor is this one:
…although I’m not too sure about this one:
I had two Tyco gondolas like yours in MoW service for my home road, but when I realised how close they were to Accurail’s 1941 AAR gondolas, I re-painted them and placed them back in revenue service.
Here’s one of the Accurail cars:
…and a re-worked Tyco:
I also followed an article in RMC to convert a ConCor (previously Revell) gondola into a fairly good representation of a Pennsy G-31 all-welded gondola:
I liked the car so much, I bought four more and did a similar conversion, lettering them for my own road. These cars are almost the same as the PRR car, but I left the sidesills unaltered. At a buck apiece, I couldn’t resist:
Wayne
Wayne, what I should have said is the SRR painted certain classes of their gons in black, and most of the other classes in freight car red. I chose red as that was what the majority of the classes were painted in at the time I’m modeling. Turns out, this car belongs in a class that was painted black.
Okay, got it. [:$] It occurred to me (after I had posted) that the colour options might have been era-specific. I got caught on that one when I committed to backdating my layout to the '30s with a couple of these Intermountain drop-bottom gondolas. I had already painted them as seen here:
…but many CNR open cars (flats, hoppers, and gondolas) were black until about 1940.
Not sure if I’ll bother to re-paint them, though. [swg]
Wayne
I had forgotten about these units that I upgraded for my wife’s cousin (I posted a thread a couple of years back).
A Bachmann Amtrak Full Length Dome and an IHC Santa Fe dome. Both stripped, Alcladded, and decaled into the Santa Fe scheme. The glazing on the full length dome was tinted green with Alclad’s #408 Armoured Glass.