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 Posted - May 14 2016 : 6:35:20 PM
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I got the bug to work on trains again, so I decided to bash some beet gondolas. Southern Pacific used composite drop-bottom gondolas to carry beets and over the years they added planks or plywood sides to enable them to carry more. There are several accurate models available in HO but they sure do cost a bit, so I'm kitbashing some regular gons as stand-ins.
I'm using AHM/Roco gondolas and I first scribe the sides to indicate wood planks. Then I've been making two kinds of extensions. For the plywood sides, I'm using styrene. For the plank style, I'm using 5.5" coffee stirrers (you can get them in boxes of 1000 from Amazon for $6). The coffee stirrers are 4mm wide so I cut them down to 2.5mm with a few strokes of an Xacto knife.
After gluing the sides onto the gondolas, they go to the paint shop and get decaled. The next step will be a coat of dullcote, weathering, and beets. For beets, I use wheat berries. They are a bit large but I like way they look. I've seen others use anise seeds which are about the right size.
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Country:  USA ~
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Posted - May 14 2016 : 8:31:44 PM
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Very cool customs, very resourceful
Feedback-hungry attention w****
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Country: USA ~
Posts: 750 ~
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Posted - May 14 2016 : 9:55:37 PM
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Very nice!
If you're going to do that, you might as well go all out and remove the molded on grab irons and replace them with brass wire, add air hoses, and uncoupling lever.
If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed.
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Country: USA ~
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Posted - May 15 2016 : 10:05:35 AM
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UP just stopped using beet trains a year or 2 ago too
I knows around my areas trains were used to haul beets for years by STEAM
most of the track bed is now farm land but there are a few places you can trace where the tracks went
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Posted - June 27 2016 : 12:18:07 AM
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I finally got around to adding beets and weathering one of my kitbashed beet cars.
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Posted - June 27 2016 : 12:24:39 AM
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Very nice, Thomas! And I love the San Francisco area!
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