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 Posted - July 03 2017 : 1:22:27 PM
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For branch lines and short lines, a combine car is often enough for all its passenger service. I have a couple of combine cars, but they're very much "shorty" combines. I could run the 1-car passenger train, but compared to the locomotive, the car would be so small as to almost not be there. I also have a 50-foot coach and a 50-foot passenger car that make a credible passenger train, but I could free up a staging track if I could run just a combine car.
I've been keeping an eye out for an HO combine car of credible size (not conspicuously short, but not so long as to look silly on an 18" radius curve. There's not much to choose from, but at Galesburg (IL) Railroad Days, I found a combine car that was stamped from tin plated sheet steel. I'd never seen its like, before, and I don't know the brand, but while it was in rough shape, it was only $5, so there wasn't much to lose.
It's been modified quite a bit, already, so if it ever had collector's value it's gone now, so I don't feel bad hacking on it. It'll be a fun tinkering project, and I'll likely post it here in widely spaced installments.
In the picture, you can see that the trucks are mounted oddly. There are screws running through the trucks and then an oversized nut that serves as a thick washer, through the floor and into blocks of wood inside the car. One truck has another washer, in addition, that makes the car slope from one end to another. It's missing a stairwell and some of the doors are just imprecisely cut from thick paper or thin card stock.
The ends have been modified, though not too neatly, to look like Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) cars:
I didn't want the hacked out window openings, so I made patches to cover them out of thin card stock with rivets embossed in the ends:
Also, I had some MDC passenger car trucks that I liked better than what came with the car and wanted to mount them without the need for blocks of wood inside the car, so I epoxied 1/8" wood mounting pads under the car and screwed on the MDC trucks:
Also in this last picture, the stairwells have been replaced with old Athearn caboose platforms with the steps and coupler pockets for a more positive coupler height.
At this point, the car rolls and tracks well. the body is basically filled in, but the doors need more refinement. The previous owner added a fish-belly center sill, but I want to add some small side-sills, as well to hide the lack of underside detail. I do plan to add some under-side detail - enough to lend the illusion that some detail has been modeled.
Windows should be glazed, and partitions between vestibules and interior and between the passenger and baggage spaces should be added. The windows are large, so there should be at least some suggestion of seats inside, and the windows should be glazed.
I'll be figuring out most of that as I go, so there'll be a leisurely pace. More to come, sometime.
Carpe Manana!
Edited by - scsshaggy on July 03 2017 9:39:05 PM
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Posted - July 03 2017 : 5:18:24 PM
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| It will be fun watching you go through this Don. That looks to me almost like a Mantua Metal Products combine side with some custom work on the ends and roof. The way the trucks mount on those Mantua "Old Time" coaches and such is rather sloppy like that. None-the-less, I like the looks of them and I think you can mess with them and get them to the point where you like them. And, the Mantua cars weren't all brass; there were steel stampings as well. Check out the instructions for the old Mantua cars on hoseeker.
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Posted - July 03 2017 : 11:37:40 PM
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| any idea as to what name was on it before?
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Posted - July 04 2017 : 12:22:43 AM
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| After looking at some Mantua side bodies, the windows are narrower on those. That was a nice treatment on the end with the riveted panels.
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Posted - July 04 2017 : 1:53:35 PM
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| Terrific rebuild.
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Posted - July 04 2017 : 8:16:21 PM
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quote:any idea as to what name was on it before?
Originally posted by microbusss - July 03 2017 : 11:37:40 PM
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None. I haven't seen any markings on it nor seen anything like it before.
Carpe Manana!
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waw47
Hudson
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Posted - July 05 2017 : 12:40:00 AM
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Your combine might be a Walthers PUG.
http://hoseeker.net/walthers/walthers7703pugpassengercarpg1.jpg
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Posted - July 05 2017 : 10:20:58 PM
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| Definitely looks like a 7703 with an extra door added.
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Posted - July 06 2017 : 12:06:40 AM
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Thanks, Bill and Dan, for the information. The extra door was definitely added and smacks of home talent in a big way.
Carpe Manana!
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Posted - June 25 2018 : 2:31:15 PM
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How did this project turn out? Did you finish it or did the doodlebug you built send this car to the scrap yard?
Proudly keeping Tyco Pluggers out of landfills since 2016
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Posted - June 25 2018 : 11:06:39 PM
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quote:How did this project turn out? Did you finish it or did the doodlebug you built send this car to the scrap yard?
Originally posted by Srenchin - June 25 2018 : 2:31:15 PM
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I found a combine car that was closer to what I wanted and fixed up that one instead, so this car is sitting in a box as an incomplete project.
Carpe Manana!
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