Walthers N Articulated Thrall Well Cars

[ednadolski]

I know i would break so many #80 bits even attempting that...

Maybe drill both sides, at a 45-degree angle?   That would take a light touch!  :impressed:

Ed

[daniel_leavitt2000]

@jagged ben I command that you show us how you did the brake piping! 
But seriously we would like to know. Because I am with Gary on that. I know i would break so many #80 bits even attempting that...
of course my thought was to only drill pilot holes and glue brass rod into those... maybe we need a Walthers Thrall detailing thread... 

Oil. Use LOTS of oil on the drill bit and it cuts through pretty well.

I really hope that MTL follows up with more container cars. I would love to see an 48' All Purpose Husky Stack, Thrall 48' single and 48' and 53' articulated cars. I know these are not really MTL's - no fancy schemes or anything. But these do seem to play to MTL's engineering strengths - well molded delicate parts, no glue, lots of fine printing.

[James Costello]

Another vote here for the 48' All Purpose Husky Stack to be next in the queue...

[jagged ben]

It's a pain for me to set up to take good pictures... maybe later.  But here's my description about how I did the brake pipes. 

• I used a drill like this one.  (Note: I can't promise you that this auction link will be the same quality as mine, but the picture looks nearly identical.)  If you don't have one of these and find your modeling calls for drilling holes in cast metal then you should get one.  It's a lot more control than a motor tool and helluva lot less effort than a pin-vise.  Note that the collar behind the chuck does not spin with the drill.  You brace that part against one finger of the hand that holds the model while you drill with the other hand.
• Notwithstanding the above, it took a lot of hours and elbow grease, and a bit of blood.      I recall that if I got through one well in an evening I felt good about it. 
• #75 drills, and yes you will break quite a few.  My strategy was to get packs of really cheap ones (50cents a piece is possible) and not stress when they broke.  You'll need a sharp pointed tweezers or similar to push broken drill heads out of the holes when it happens.  Once you get the feel for it you don't break so many, and you also learn how not to end up puncturing yourself when the drill breaks.       
• Per Ed's guess, yes, you drill at an angle from both sides.  Not 45degrees though, it's more like 20-30.   You find the happy medium of exposed drill length (about 1/2") that allows the lowest angle without lots of broken drills or grinding the model with the side of the drill chuck.  Also drill the holes right into the corner of the rib and the side wall, don't try to center your holes on the rib.  Your holes will actually pass largely through the side wall.  In all my drilling I never broke into the middle of the well, and only once broke through the outside of a rib when I didn't follow this.
• Drill halfway from one side of the rib, then the other, and when you're about to break through in the middle slow way down to avoid broken drills.  Stop using the twist action of the drill and use it like a pin-vise for that part. And go very, very gently until you see the drill head poke through the other side.
• There's really not that much to fishing 0.015 or 0.10 brass wire through once you've drilled the holes. (The pipes are not all the same size, look at your prototype carefully).  You can bend a ninety degree angle in one end, leave the other end long, fish it through, rotate the bent end outward and bend and cut the other end to match, then rotate the whole thing back inward and CA the ends to the underside of the end platforms.  The hardest part is bending the drooping loop in the middle of some wells to represent the air-hose joint (as seen here.  Photo is also a good example of why the wire doesn't always have to be perfectly straight.   
• Touch up the brass with a couple very carefully applied coats of matching paint when all done. 

So much for the step by step.  Some comments...

Before I started on a model I cared about I experimented on an undecorated well I had somehow obtained.  I recommend that approach for learning the technique, including broken drill head removal.

At the beginning I tried out Nscaler's idea of drilling divots in the sides of the ribs to hold cut sections of brass wire instead of drilling holes all the way through the rib.  That was a big failure, for a variety of reasons, but ultimately because if you don't get holes and the different pieces of wire perfectly lined up it will look awful.   With the drill-through method the wire lines itself up decently even if your holes are a few thousands off from being in line. I quickly realized that the drill-through method wasn't more work and would produce a better result.

There could probably be a better method than my eyeball for locating the holes at the correct height.  I mostly used a lot of sighting along the car length as I started each hole, adjusting the center by pointing the drill up or down to 'drift' the center of the hole until it looked right.  An improved method would probably involve a jig or something for locating the holes consistently and saving time on that part.

The whole thing does risk a fair amount of scratching and such to the model.  It looks a lot better under the '1-foot rule' than up close, with the all the paint touch up (although I could probably make that look a lot better with weathering and graffiti).  Is it ultimately worth it?  Yeah, I guess I still think so.   


Oh, one other comment on this thread not related to the break pipes.  When I converted this car to Kato trucks I had to remove a lot of material from the underside of the intermediate end platforms to make space for the 38" wheels.  (The Kato flanges are not on the small side either.)  Compared to using BLMA 100-ton trucks I'm not sure that was worth it.   

[jagged ben]

Here are some pics.

[nscaler711]

@jagged ben i will now be sending you all of my walthers wells as i am not sane enough to do that!
It looks great. Also what did you use for chain for that one car?