Modeling a B&O P-31a TOFC flat car 9. 10.
9. The upright angle members in the car’s stake pockets are made from Evergreen .060″ angle. Each upright must be notched slightly along one edge to fit in the stake pocket. The author eye-balled this, but it is approximately ½ the width of the angle, and six scale inches long. 10. Here are the uprights installed on one side of the car. Note that they are different lengths (see the text). 11. Installation of the pipe sections is next. Clamp the car in a Pana-Vise or similar, lay 4″×6″ stripwood spacers on some
11.
of the uprights, and then lay a piece of .030″ brass rod cut to length along the uprights. Tack it into place with cyanoacrylate on the uprights that don’t have the stripwood spacers. After the glue has set up, remove the spacers, and glue the rod on those uprights. Then flip the car over and do the other side. 12. Once the first pipe is on each side, and the glue has set up, put the stripwood spacers back in place against the first rod, and add the second, following the same procedure as before.
12.
hol, 80 drops of color to one ounce of alco- hol. The couplers and side frames were sprayed with Roof Brown, and then Rust; the under frame and lower sides were sprayed with E/L Gray; and the deck and upper sides with Grimy Black. Of course, with Testor’s doing away with the PollyScale brand, these paints won’t be available. As I am writing this, I have begun experimenting with Badger Mod- el Flex paint, and so far my experience is that it handles the same as PollyScale. In the future, I will probably just substi- tute the Model Flex version (they make paints with the same names as above) for the PollyScale.
Trailers, jacks, and wheel chocks There are no accurate B&O trailers for these cars. They originally were used with 24-foot and 32-foot ribbed, side- and end-loading trailers, for which stand-ins are available from Athearn and Walthers. The Athearn trailers are one foot too narrow, have two axles in- stead of one, and no side doors. The Walthers cars are better proportioned, but lack a side door. Neither is a ribbed trailer. However, despite these prob- lems, the trailers do look sharp in their B&O blue with orange TOFCEE letter-
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ing. The Athearn 40-foot Z ribbed trailer is closer in appearance to later B&O prototypes, but I don’t know how accu- rate it truly is. It is a very nice looking model, as well and I don’t let any inac- curacies get in the way of my using them on my flat cars. And use them I do, having trailer waybills, and chang- ing what trailers are on which pig flats when they are delivered to the piggy- back terminal on my layout. Because of this, I did not model any of the tie-down paraphernalia that would be found in the central well, which was intended to store all of the wheel chocks and jacks needed to support trailers in those long- ago days prior to the use of trailer hitch- es. I also use other railroad trailers as well as private-owner trailers in my op- erations, since these cars lasted long enough to be used in Plan III service. Modeling the jacks and wheel chocks shouldn’t be that hard of a project. The B&O Highway Trailer Service Infor- mation booklet referenced below has excellent pictures of a trailer being prepared for its journey, from the Sep- tember, 1954 issue of Baltimore & Ohio Magazine. A jack might consist of a length of Evergreen No. 223 ³₃₂″ tube with a longer piece of No. 221 ³₆₄″ rod
as the piston. Jacking pads and bases could be .010″ styrene, with gussets along the tube made of the same mate- rial. Wheel chocks might easily be as- sembled using three pieces of the .010″ sheet styrene to form a triangle along with Archer Fine Transfers tread plate, No. AR88067. There appears to be a length of wood spanning the trail- er underbody width between the front and rear jack pairs. A piece of 8″×8″ with wood detail could be used to repli- cate this. All of this would be challeng- ing, particularly running the chains and turnbuckles from the trailer to the pipes along the car, but would result in a stunning model.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Gary Schlerf, who many years ago gave me a set of photocopies of a series of prototype photos shot by the B&O showing the construction details of these cars. The photocopies are what I followed when building my models.
Scott Seders and Jim Mischke pro- vided the prototype photos used in this article. When I hollered on the B&O Yahoo Group for help, they responded. I am extremely grateful.
NOVEMBER 2013
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