HOn3 to HO?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Folks, I need your input and advice. I model a small branchline road (the Newburgh, Dutchess & Connecticut) as it appeared in the early 1900’s. This means my locomotive “fleet” is composed of mainly 4-4-0’s…and not many at that. The rolling stock consists of 36’ box cars, reefers, some flat cars and gondolas. Roundhouse kits are still available at model railroad shows and good old eBay (although undecorated kits are almost impossible to find). More to the point: the ND&C had numerous gondolas in their inventory - which are not produced by the major kit brands. Recently, I noticed some really nice kits of the HOn3 gauge variety. My question is: “Can I simply build the kit with HO gauge trucks or is the entire car undersized?”

I really wish the larger kit manufacturers (Accurail, Branchline, etc.) would begin producing kits based on this era. Roundhouse/Athearn/Horizon has reduced their offerings…and do not produce undecorated kits in the “old time” era. BTW I called Accurail and asked if they were interested in adding this line. The answer I got was; “Well…maybe in the distant future.”

2

First off you will find that a large number of cars in 1900 were shorter than 36 ft, the 'standard" car was probably 34 ft and 28-30 ft cars were very common, especially for reefers. There were relatively few 36 ft gondolas, most of them were in the 30-34 ft range.

Accurate gons and boxcars are available as wood kits from Labelle Woodworking.

http://www.labellemodels.com/

And Better Than Scratch makes 1870-1880 era laser cut wood cars that would be still around in 1900.

http://www.btsrr.com/bts9602.htm

Also the O&W Carshop produces the only kit for a hopper bottom gon, which was THE coal car in 1900.

http://www.theoldandwearycarshop.com/index_B.html

Bachmann, IHC and Mantua old time boxcars can be upgraded with new trucks, underframe, couplers and details to make nice cars.

The problem with the MDC cars is that they have post 1910 safety appliance and WW1 era details (the angle iron braces on the doors. Most 1900 era cars only have ladders/grabirons on the ends or the sides, but not both.

The major plastic model manufacturers haven’t come out with a new wood truss rod car in over 30 years. Meanwhile we have 40 variations of the steel twin hopper and the 1937 40 ft boxcar.

An excellent source of decals is Art Griffin Decals, who has thousands of prototyically accurate 1880-1920 era decal sets.

http://www.greatdecals.com/Griffin.htm

You might want to join the EarlyRail Yahoo Group which is devoted to pre-WW1 modeling. Lots of good stuff there.

Dave H.

Modeling the P&R in 1900-1905

3

Can’t help with your HOn3 question, but here’s a guy that usually has quite a few Roundhouse old time kits.
http://stores.ebay.com/RIVER-CITY-RAILROAD-RCR

4

To answer your question - generally no. No matter what the length, narrow gauge cars were also narrower. A standard gauge truck might actually stick out further than the sides of the car.

When you say “early 1900’s” are you meaning 1900-1910 or something like 1900-1930? World War I changed a lot of Railroad related items so pre-WWI and post-WWI are significantly different.

-John

5

John, I guess I should have been more specific regarding the era in which I am interested. Specifically it would be the 1889 - 1901 time frame. My question regarding simply adding HO trucks to HOn3 cars has been answered with a “No”. Ah well…I guess that was too good to be true. I also have rebuilt Bachmann and Tyco cars to look better and fit the era (BTW I am not a rivet counter). I guess I will have to resort to trying my hand at some of the craftsman kits on the market. Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Ray

6

Loather,

Thanks for the return…you are a lifesaver! I will look into your suggested website ASAP. My biggest problem is finding undecorated car kits. I have a fairly large stash of Clover House transfers and would like to build/decorate some rolling stock with them. Currently, I buy a decorated MDC car; remove the lettering; repaint the car and then add the dry transfers. As you can imagine, this is a labor intensive process.

Ray