Kitbashing Southern Rwy.’s first 50-foot boxcars
The two finished cars painted with Southern freight car brown dis- play the larger Youngstown doors. The paint schemes are different, however. Car 40178 (top) has the 1938 monogram logo on one end, while 40184 (below) has the more modern large lettered graphics.
Coupled to a Southern Rwy. RS-3 is 50-foot, double-door car No. 40120 (page 67). Now wearing the “Green Light” scheme, the car had been in service for over 30 years when the photo was taken. Note that its roofwalk has been removed and ladders cut down.
decal set No. 26. They are applied just like any other thin film decal for letter- ing using distilled water (I get better results with distilled water) and decal setting solution. Cut about one half of a row and apply it to the car while still “wet.” Apply the other half of the row and align them so they are straight. Facing the car, you want to place the rivet rows vertically just to right side of the scribed lines on the right of the door and on the left side of the scribed lines to the left of the door. Set this aside to dry, then do the other side. From here on handle the car very gen- tly, as you can pop off a rivet or two. Once you finish the rivets, prime the
car. I use grey Floquil Primer. This serves two purposes: first it sets the de- cal rivets, making them more durable while handling the car, and it also points out the mistakes made between the sides and the car body. Fill the gaps with body putty and sand them to fin- ish. If you have the SRHA book and are a true rivet counter there are many oth- er places to add rivets to this car, like the new side sills and the ends where
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the auto racks were installed. Next, apply the brake rigging to the underbody. Use the kit supplied parts or modify others to suit your needs. I deviated only slightly from the kit parts and cut off the brake rods from the parts tree. I wish I could tell you it was a prototypical move, but I just couldn’t remove them without break- ing one or two of them.
I modified the brake cylinder by cut- ting off the rod and drilling a hole to take half of a turnbuckle clevis. Next, I cut off the three rods from each of the brake levers, leaving the levers con- nected as they come in the kit. Using pliers, flatten the end of the levers where the rods were cut, then add the brake rods using “half clevises” as de- scribed in the “Essential Freight Car Series” by Ted Cullota. Use the turn- buckle clevises (mine came from my parts box, but Grandt Line and others make good plastic ones) and glue them with cyanoacrylate from the clevis to the end of a .015″ brass rod. Then cut off half of the clevis and glue it onto an- other .015″ brass rod. Once you have
two brass rods, drill three holes in the center sill near the truck kingpin (use kit instructions for the hole locations). Fit the clevis onto the brake lever and bend the other end of the rod to fit into one of the holes drilled into the center sill. The idea here is to have the rods look like they attach to the truck when the car is on the tracks. Knowing this is not possible in HO scale we get the “look” without hampering the truck motion during car operation. For the third rod, the one attached to the brake cylinder, use a piece of brass chain, about eight links. Make a tiny loop at one end of the brass rod and loop it into the end link of chain and clamp it closed. Now add another half clevis glued into the brake cylin- der. Once the cyanoacrylate has set, glue the link on the free end of the chain to the clevis. It really isn’t that hard and it looks good as the car sits on the track. Southern also added a bracket to keep the brake rod from dropping as it is a long rod. See photos to add this.
Now install the car end stirrup NOVEMBER 2012
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