|
Cylindrical Grain
Car Project Update - Part 6
click
on images for larger view
Note: This edition
of the Cylindrical Hopper car article was also
written by a guest editor, instead of Lee as usual.
Lee is nearing the
finish line on cylindrical hopper project. All of the parts have now been
fabricated, they just need to be painted and assembled.
In these photos, the car is lying on its side so the bottom can be primed
and painted. As you can see, there's no lack of detail on the underside
of the car.
Lee spends a great
deal of time on an area of the cars forgotten or ignored by most modelers
- the bottom. I think you can see in the photos above that his efforts
have paid off. The shaker details on the side of the discharge chutes
are custom castings and the discharge gates themselves were all designed
and fabricated by Lee on a CNC machine.
Now that the bottom is primed
and painted, it's time to start putting things back together. We'll skip
ahead a bit and look at the car primed and back up on its wheels. Over
the past 10 weeks, Lee has completed 16+ walkway sections for the top
of
this car (as seen in Part 5 of this series).
These intricate brass
sections are completed and are being installed as the painting is finished
on each. Lee used an almost invisible mounting technique to connect these
grates to the brackets on the car.
All four discharge
gates are now completed, painted, and installed.
This level of detail is what sets Lee's models apart.
Here's the working
end of the car coming together as a few of the key details are painted
and ready to go - including the pin pull lever, small walkway grate and
brake wheel.
Here are a couple of shots
from the other end of the car. There are still more details to be added
to this end in addition to the remainder of the walkway sections on top.
Here's a close-up of almost half
of the walkway sections installed - lookin' good. Notice the operations
latch details on the lids.
Just for fun, the vinyl graphics
are roughed in place - just to get a quick buzz about what this car is
going to look like. The graphics were made by Connie Miracle at Miracle
Railroad Products You can see it all coming together after almost
10 months of work on this project.
Stay tuned for more details
on the completion of this car.
<<
Back to Part 5
On
to Part 7 >>
|
