It turned out to be easier to make the sides for the Rr-87 class car from sheet styrene and an Accurail plug door. The heavy work was done while the sides were flat on the workbench. For the exterior posts the author used HO 1″×6″ styrene with an HO 2″×3″ strip centered on it. Splicing two roof pieces from a 50-foot MDC boxcar not only gave the right number of panels (14 diagonal panels wit h two flat ones), but the length also came out right.
panels overhang a recess along the top of the sides. This needs to be replicated on the new Rr-87, so I used the recess to guide the blade, running the knife along the bottom of it and making about 20 light passes.
I turned the body over and made sev- eral passes on the inside where the roof met the sides, then I carefully snapped the sides free. This left the thin outer edges of the diagonal panels intact above a .030″ recessed remnant of the car side. To make the overall body less the sides and floor, the A-end and part of the roof of one body was joined to part of the roof and the B-end from the second one. The roof has 14 diagonal panels and two flat end panels, which gives the proper 54-foot length. As before, reinforcing strips were glued under the joints. This time around I decided the best approach would be to build new sides from styrene sheet. I measured the height from the bottom of the existing recess at the top of the side to the bot- tom of the car end, excluding the out- side corner tabs, marked a piece of .060″-thick styrene sheet with that di- mension, then scribed and snapped off the strip. Four pieces 22 scale feet long were scored and snapped off from it for the sides.
I salvaged the Accurail 9′-6″ wide RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
plug doors from the first attempt at the Rr-87 and glued one between pairs of the 22-foot long styrene side pieces; the bottom of the doors were positioned to line up with what would be equal to the floor line on the MDC side, not the lower edge of the side. Plastruct’s Plas- tic Weld was applied and the pieces were set aside to dry thoroughly. The sides were flipped over and splice plates cemented across the backs of the doors to strengthen the assembly, then styrene strips were glued in place to fill out the gaps at the top and bottom of the doors. When dry, these were sanded flush. It was time to test fit the sides to the end and roof. To ensure the correct orien- tation of the sides later on I penciled “A- end” and “B-end” on their backs, and to increase the mating surfaces at the roof lengths of HO scale 4″×8″ styrene were glued along the inside at their tops. It was easier to cut out the holes for the refrigeration vents in the sides be- fore assembling the carbody. The steps and sizes were the same as on the Rr- 90, as described above. (They have the same vents, and, remember, that model was supposed to be an Rr-87!) Again, these holes were made a little tight and would be filed to final size when the vents were installed.
Before assembling the carbody I
checked one last time to be sure the pieces had a tight fit, then I carefully brushed Plastic Weld on the edge of one end and for about two inches of its adjacent top edge and put the parts to- gether. (This solvent cement allows a little working time, which is needed here.) Once this had set up I worked my way along the rest of the side using Tenax 7R to glue the side to the roof. Care was taken to make sure it re- mained at the correct position in from the roof’s edge. Finally, the other end was glued to the side. This procedure was repeated for the opposite car side with the addition of a temporary floor piece to make sure the sides stayed in alignment. It was cut a little shorter than the length of the floor to make it easier to remove, and the assembly was allowed to dry. After removing the temporary floor I made side sills from two pieces of ESM 4″×8″ styrene strip cut to the length of the sides. The inside edge of the 4″×8″ stock was aligned flush with the inside of the .060″ side sheets, and they lined up correctly with the bottom of the doors and the tabs on the ends. The exterior posts were built up us- ing Evergreen HO scale 1″×6″ for the base and centering HO 2″×3″ stock on top of it. I made these hat sections in long strips, then cut the individual posts slightly over-length with a NorthWest Short Lines Chopper. The long strips were more difficult to han- dle than I expected, and if I were to do this again I would cut individual base and top pieces separately to size and make the posts one at a time. Laying out the locations of the posts
was done using a sharp pencil and a modeler’s square. Immediately next to the doors there are two vertical posts without bases. Measuring from the doors in both directions, the first of the hat section posts was placed 3′-6″ from the door edges. The rest of the posts were located on 3′-0″ centers with one exception. The post closest to the vents on the A-end, right side of the car is only 2′-6″ from the one to its right. Tenax 7R was used to glue the posts to the car letting them overlap the top and bottom of the sides. Finally, I cut the diagonal posts that go next to the doors to size; they measured 10′-0″ and were placed 1′-0″ from the doors at the top and 2′-0″ from the door ends at the bottom. Once the glue cured, I trimmed the ends of all the ribs with a No. 17 blade, cutting the ends at an angle as per the prototype. With the carbodies done to this point it is time to take a break. Such details as the vents, grab irons and other appli- ances, and the painting and lettering will be described next month.
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