Old Athearn Blue Box question - removing the molding gate on a passenger car roof?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have a few Athearn Blue-box Streamlined passenger cars (yes, I know they’re 10ft too short), stripped the paint off with ease (yay, 91% alcohol finally worked), now I’m faced with fixing that Athearn blue-box patented abomination, the ugly molding gate remnant smack dab in the roof.
Any hints or tips as how to smooth it out without making a mess of the job, or taking a life-time to do it?

Thanks

2

Filing it down? That would work wouldn’t it? With needle files?

3

A new #17 blade in your X-Acto should do the trick. Work slowly under good lighting and use magnification if necessary. Keep the bevelled side of the blade adjacent to the work, and skim-off any protruding material, then cut down into each corrugation, from both sides in-turn.

Wayne

4

Exactly, and once satisfied w/ the results from scraping w/ the chisel, I will sand “smooth” w/ a thin strip of #600 wet/ dry. Sand wet and wipe off to inspect. Occasionally, you may need a slight filler from any marring/ holes at the gate.

*Note, the chisels are rather sharp when new, however, I will “hone” the edge each time I need ti use it. The chisels not only will cut and shave, but if extremely sharp will scrape as well. I use one that the sharp edges are rounded off just to use for scraping and eliminate any edge gouging. Many times properly scraped, you will end up w/ a better finish that the wet sanding.

5

Thanks for the suggestions, but I think the problem will be that the gate crosses several roof “corrugations”, and those corrugations will have a “dip” or notch in them after I’m done filing/scraping
Yes, I should have been much clearer, sorry

The question is therefore how am I going to fill those notches on thin ribs without going bonkers (I can just image this thing snowballing as I attempt to add thin styrene to the notches, file that, screw up, try again and so on - arggg!).

6

LION has several of these cars. Him never noticed gates on the roof.

Here is photo of one modified by LION to look like LIRR equipment. Maybe your standards are several orders of magnitude greater than mine, but what the heck, once on the road these cars get banged up pretty badly anyway.

ROAR

7

For me, these blades are the easiest to sharpen, and will last pretty-well forever.
As for scraping, I’ve used them to remove painted-on lettering which couldn’t be removed chemically, although I was intending to re-paint the cars anyway - this eliminated the chance of the old lettering being visible as a “ghost” under the new paint and lettering. For small lettering like changing dimensional data or BLT dates, simply re-letter without the need for painting.

In addition to rounding the corners of these blades, you can also shape them to suit specific requirements. I use a cut-off disc, working slowly and with lots of pauses to avoid overheating the metal. The one shown below works well in tight spots, and they can be made much narrower if necessary. For certain situations, the narrow area is best left on the edge, rather than the centre of the blade, and it’s useful to have both “right-hand” and “left-hand” versions.

[quote user=“chutton01”]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I think the problem will be that the gate