DL&W wood milk car details

[160pennsy]

I've started work on a wood DL&W milk car kitbash using an old MDC 50' express reefer, and wanted the finished product to have individual wire grabs. Used a X-acto chisel blade to slowly & carefully shave off most of the cast on factory grabs & ladders and now need to rescribe the wood sheathing underneath. Are there any experienced modellers out there with some good pointers or hints on this subject?

Please no smart remarks like...I should just scratchbuild new ends & sides  :'(

[Chris333]

The few times I have done it I just ran an xacto blade through lining it up with the rest of the boards. Maybe drag the blade back wards.

Post some pics when you get it done.

[160pennsy]

Chris,

Thanks for the tip...I tried your method and also had some good results using the #11 blade turned around (sharp edge facing up) and slowing nicking out the material by flicking the knife up. The back of the blade rides in the any part of the old groove that was still available and keeps the new slat straight. This method allowed me the most control for getting the lines straight and not allowing the blade to drift off mark. When I slipped up and created a new odd width board, that didn't match up with the others, it just added more character this old car ;D.

The dragging blade backwards tip worked ok for removing the new plastic fuzz & flash created from the material removed. For that task I found that a brass brush or short bristled paint brush, gently swirled over the area, also worked ok. Didn't want to ruin all my previous hard work from above. Hope the final results stand up to macro photography  :-\.

Now for the next phase...laying out the grab iron locations, drilling out the holes, forming them from wire & then glueing them in place. How do you pro's handle this task?

[Chris333]

For custom grab irons (lengths that BLMA or GGM grabs won't work for) I bend the wire once around pilers leaving the wire "L" shaped. Then put it in one of the holes and mark the other holes location on the wire. If your wire is sanded already a pencil will work, if not a sharpie does it. I pull all brass wire through a sandwich of fine sand paper to give it some tooth.  I apply supper glue with a toothpick from inside.

Before drilling the holes I would lay them out in pencil and possibly a small square if needed.

[160pennsy]

  Continued working on the milk car this past weekend at the N-TRAK club's Back Shop and managed to grab some in-progress photos.  I could have done a little better job on trueing up / sanding the body joints but it was my first n-scale kit-bash attempt. Hopefully this will get hidden with a small quantity of putty along with the final paint job - pullman green. Also gave it a quick spray-bomb primer coat to see how the scribed siding looked...I'm not too happy with the results, but we'll press onward.






At this point I will be using GMM etched metal parts for the grab irons since I finally found them in my parts box. The side & small end doors will be fabricated out of Evergreen styrene and one of my Micro Train or Intermountain cars will become the "donor" for the underbody brake details. The roof still needs alot of work before it's complete.

1.) get glued together & joint sanded smooth.
2.) roof walk supports sanded off & holes filled.
3.) ice hatches, small end roof walks & grabs added

[amato1969]

Looks great!  What will you be using for lettering?

[Allentown Hump]

That's nice man. For some stupid reason, those damn milk cars grab my attention...

[umtrr-author]

You should be able to get either MTL or Intermountain underframes as separate parts if you want to avoid a "donor" car.

[160pennsy]

Looks great!  What will you be using for lettering?

My first search didn't turn up any ready made n-scale versions. Luckily it's a very simple scheme, so I might have to piece together something from a Micro-Scale gold lettering set.

You should be able to get either MTL or Intermountain underframes as separate parts if you want to avoid a "donor" car.

Not a collector so the concept of hacking up a perfectly good model felt kinda good, BUT...your suggestion forced me to perform some additional scavaging in the old parts bin & I found some of those Micro Trains & Intermoutain brake set parts. Another MT car barely escapes the kitbashers knife  :'(

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I also found these links to photos of Scott Lupia's incredible n-scale layout, showing some of these DL&W cars in a milk train. He sets the bar pretty high.

http://lists.elhts.org/erielackphoto.cgi?erielack-05-27-03/Hainesburg3.jpg

http://lists.elhts.org/erielackphoto.cgi?erielack-05-27-03/Hainesburg5.jpg

Scott do you still have any of the milk cars from the photos? Any tips on how you did your lettering?

[Scott Lupia]

Hey, the milk car looks great.  I remember doing several of these guys and they were fun to do.  Pretty simple kitbash and they product a fairly convincing milk car.  I think I had used MicroScale's Milk Car set #60-1030.  This link should work.

http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MD&Product_Code=60-1030&Product_Count=&Category_Code=

I used the "Milk Tank Car" as well as the individual letters "DL&W" off the set.  Unfortunately, the set will only do one DL&W car this way but for 5 bucks, you can't go wrong. 

I did a few of the Bordens round roof cars which were red and cream colored cars.  For those cars, I had to make my own decals on my ALPS printer. 

I hadn't been on the forum in a while and was surprised to see somebody doing these cars (other than Rich Hedstrom and myself).  Very impressive work and good luck with the project.  Make sure you post finished product photos. 

Scott Lupia

[bsoplinger]

At the risk of being branded a heretic or being mobbed by a bunch of SDLWMs ...

What exactly is different about the DL&W milk car vs the rather nice looking Athern 50' offering?

[FrankCampagna]

For one thing, the Athearn/MDC car is a old REA express reefer, not a real milk car. Most milk cars lacked ice hatches, as they had shorter runs. Frank

[Scott Lupia]

I don't think you have to worry too much about being mobbed for asking what the difference is here.  The Athearn car is 50 feet and the DL&W car is around 40'ish.  The ice hatches like Frank mentioned.  A few other odds and ends but those are the big ones.

Scott

[SecretWeapon]

Hey Scott,
  Welcome to Railwire !!!!!!!!!!!! ;D

[bsoplinger]

For one thing, the Athearn/MDC car is a old REA express reefer, not a real milk car. Most milk cars lacked ice hatches, as they had shorter runs. Frank

Umm, I don't think we're talking about the same cars (although I see I typed 50' instead of 40' in my original question). The old MDC REA express reefer does have ice hatches and is 50' long, but I'm talking about the new tooled for Athearn after they bought MDC milk car which doesn't have ice hatches and is 40' long. Here is a link from their page to one of the cars I'm talking about:
[url]http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH11631[url]