TWO PHOTOS: COLLECTION OF SCOTT SEDERS
BALTIMORE, MD; APR. 17, 1957 BALTIMORE, MD; JUN. 24, 1955
COLLECTION OF JIM MISCHKE: BALTIMORE, MD; DEC. 30, 1955
Trailer R-500 (top left) shows off the vari- ous jacks, chocks and chains needed to tie down a trailer in the days before hitches. These flat cars (above and left) have been converted to class P-31a and assigned to Tofcee service. Note the center well in their decks and the various implements needed to tie down trailers in the 1950’s. When new, the cars had white rectangles painted on the deck to help the teamsters with the circus loading of trailers onto the flat cars.
50-foot flat cars may be an alterna- tive.
Another alternative, which
wasn’t available when I first started working on these, is the InterMoun- tain 53′-6″ AAR Alternative flat car. It should be possible to duplicate my work using one of these, should you desire. InterMountain does offer a kit version. You’ll want to be careful cut- ting the wood deck material to make the center cavity, and you may need to notch the angle used to make the up- rights more severely than I did since the stake pockets are finer. In fact, I believe Plastruct has a somewhat fin- er styrene angle which would be more appropriate to use with the Inter- Mountain flat cars.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN Construction
My model is based on the Athearn Blue Box 50-foot flat car kit. This kit builds up into a 50-foot long flat car with 13 stake pockets per side. The B&O P-31a (and its base P-31) was a 53′-6″ flat car with 14 stake pockets per side. So, to start, we need to lengthen the car, and add a stake pocket. This is accomplished by cutting two Athearn flat cars 26′-9″ (all feet and inch meas- urements are HO scale; decimal and fractional measurements are full size) from the A end, (discard the B end), and then joining the two A ends to make one longer car. This cut, by the way, should be four boards beyond the cen- ter of the car. After joining, I added
splice plates (made from Evergreen 1″×12″ cut 3′-0″ long) on the interior sides where they would not be visible. The next step is to make the cavity or stowage well down the middle of the car. Measure 3′-6″ in from each side and 7′-0″ from each end (14 boards). I marked the well outline in pencil and then ran masking tape along the out- side of the pencil marks to protect the board detail while cutting. I did this with a Dremel Moto-Flex tool, using a fine circular saw blade and following up with a flat needle file to smooth the sides. The resulting well should be 2′- 0″ wide by 38′-6″ long. Finally, using a saw blade, such as Micro-Mark’s No. 14346, -47, or -48 in a hobby knife han- dle, cut into the ends of the boards lin- ing the well so that each board looks like it is an individual piece of wood. Next, the weight has to be modified
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