Freight Car Scratchbuilding
For Achievement Program (AP) Awards
text and photo by Dave Roeder, MMR |
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The NMRA achievement program has a requirement that the
applicant build a total of eight pieces of rolling
stock. Four of these must be scratch built according to the
regulations as written. The other four must be
super detailed (also according to the regulations).
One of the eight cars must be a passenger car. Additional
requirements are that the four scratch built cars
must all be different designs. Four wood box cars of the
same design, but lettered for different railroads
is not allowed.
Research, Planning and Design
 After reviewing the NMRA information, I decided to model
early cars from the time period just after the
civil war. This period from 1870 to 1890 and up to 1900 saw
the beginning of standards for couplers and
air brakes.
Since I was not familiar with civil war era cars, I
contacted Bob Amsler who I knew was researching this
period. Bob is also a model railroader and serves as legal
representation for the NMRA nationally. Bob put
me on to several reference books on the Civil War era and
the United States Military Railroad as it was
known back during the Civil War. In addition there were two
volumes of The American Freight Car by John H.
White [1993] and The American Passenger Car also by John H.
White [1978] that gave details of the
technological advances throughout the development of
American Railroads. With titles and author names in
hand, I went to the Barriger collection at the University of
Missouri, St. Louis and was able to copy
pages from these books. Once I had the design information, I
created detailed drawings for 3 freight cars
and 1 passenger car that I would scratch build to qualify
for the AP certificate in Cars. I drew the four
cars in "O" scale (.250" = 1' 0"). These four drawings were
the basis for the construction.
Materials
I have always built structures and modified rolling stock
using styrene so it was a simple matter to
purchase Evergreen Styrene strip, rod and sheet to suit the
sizes required. Early freight cars were of
wood design, so even the frames were simple straight shapes.
Large structural pieces such as the bolsters
were made from .250" square stock. Other frame parts such as
sills and cross members were made from strip
stock of the proper dimensions. Car siding is available from
Evergreen in scale 3" width scribing.
The detail parts such as grab irons and brake gear can be
purchased individually, or you may go to a swap
meet and purchase an old Varney, LaBelle Woodworking Co. or
Liberty craftsman kit to get these parts as a
set. An additional benefit of this approach is that you get
a set of plans that you may use to construct
your own scratch built version of a car. The only drawback
is that the AP judging gives more points for
plans drawn by the person building the car.
I made bending jigs to fabricate simple items such as grab
irons. The brake rigging on early cars was much
more primitive than on cars from the 1930's. Suppliers such
as Tichy Train Group, Grandt Line and Kadee
offer some very nice plastic parts with a high level of
detail. I went to our local detail parts
hobby shop Tinkertown in Ladue, Missouri for these. In fact,
I purchased all of the early style
Westinghouse air brake sets in stock.
Construction
I started with the most basic of freight cars, a
Carter
Brothers flat car. This car was very primitive in
that it had only mechanical brakes. Research revealed some
of the railroads were reluctant to put any
brakes on freight cars. In some cases the cars had
mechanical brakes on only one truck. Passenger cars
were equipped with hand brakes as early as 1845. Early
freight cars were not equipped with brakes since
most railroads considered this expense unnecessary. Life was
cheap and safety was not on the minds of
those in charge of the purse strings during this period.
Starting with the basic frame, a flat car is nothing more
than a series of timbers cut to length and
placed in a square jig to get 90 degree corners. Care must
be taken to cut parts to exact lengths. A
Northwest Shortline chopper is a good investment for this
part of the job. I also use a 6" dial caliper to
insure scratch built bolster heights are within .002" of
each other.
I cut a set of planks for the decking from strip styrene.
This is the easiest part of the fabrication. I
drill and tap a #2-56 UNC thread for truck mounting screws
in the bolsters and use a #0–80 for the
coupler mounts. Note: Kadee HOn3 narrow gage coupler sets
come with #0 sheet metal screws that work very
well in styrene.
Grandt Line nut bolt and washer castings are available in
most common sizes for details. I also found drop
type grab irons made from wire. These were very easy to
install using a very small amount of ACC adhesive.
I use a canvas sewing needle cut off on the eye end and
pressed into a 1/4" wood dowel handle to apply the
ACC at the base of the grab iron.
One step you must do when working in styrene is drilling
holes for steps and grab irons. I have a set of
drill bits from .013" to .040" in a small case. These are
very handy for doing this work. I set my Uni-Mat Machining Center up as a vertical drill press and feed
the drills into the work by moving the work on
to the rotating drill. I find this gives better control and
eliminates drill breakage. I also use an
old beeswax candle to lube the drill before each hole.
If you have ever built a Tichy Train Group freight car, you
now can have the pleasure of doing the same
type of detail assembly work. The difference is you are
assembling a "plastic kit" with individual
components that you fabricated. Final assembly, paint,
decals and weathering are all the same as on any
kit. Once you get started, these cars go together just like
any other kit except that you made all of the
major parts.
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