stock car

 

First I removed the old steel plate deck from the flat car and cut the old steel frame in half. I then welded two 1x2 steel tubes in with a 3" drop so the tank tops well be low and the roof of the car will not stick up too high and look funny in a train.

 

I also had to rebuild the end of the car as the coupler was too high. After doing this, I took the car out and we ran it behind the loco to see if all was OK and it was, just a little lite for the spring switches but I think it well be OK when the body is on it. For the body I had an HO and a G scale stock car, a photo of a stock car out of a book, and a car builders book that has a lot of detail info on older wood cars for my info base.

 

I played for some time with the sizes to be use on the car. I knew it couldn't be too long as it has to fit on the steaming bay behind the loco but not to short that it looks funny so it is 57" long. It has to be around 15" wide and under 16" tall this is not the scale sizes of a stock car but if you scale an old stock car it will not look right.  I have found this out in the past, as the car would be 14" wide x 14.5 tall and 4' + long and it just doesn't look right to people and they will ask "what's going with that car?".  As when building a car sometimes not being right is the right thing to do? Note this also works when racing cars.

 

For the strips of wood used on the siding I used 1/8 thick Luann plywood and cut it 1 3/8" wide. I might use 1/4" thick next time. For the outside framing I'm starting with kiln dried 2x4 for stock and ripping it down on my table saw so I can get some clear wood cheap. The uprights ended up being 3/8" x 3/4" with the baseboard/sill being 1/2" x 1 1/2" and the top board/plate being 1/2" x 1  1/4". I have been using Liquid Nail to hold the joints and 18 gauge escutcheon pins too look like small lag bolts. It is a lot more work to put the pins on all the joints but it gives the cars detail a lot more depth. The side doors were just made out of smaller sizes of the 1/8" plywood.