YMV 2020 & YMV 2025 Take Shape

Two More Y&MV All-Door Boxcars

Last Friday Greg McComas came over to deliver several of my locomotives.  He also gave me a surplus Walthers Thrall All-Door boxcar that he did not need.  I now had a second car to paint with my model of BENX 107 since I have decided to keep my model of RSP 20277 as is...thanks Greg!  I prefer to paint these cars in pairs since a mixed bottle of paint covers two cars nicely.  The car he gave me was USLX 50508, decorated green and white for the Chandler Corporation.

Today I prepped the cars and gave them their first coat of Y&MV brown paint which doubles as the primer coat.  The USLX 50508 is from an older run and did not have the vertical grab iron at the left end of the car or the end walkway grab iron.  I fabricated these grab irons from piano wire and installed them first thing.

I applied the shop trucks to the cars during the paint prep process.  I noticed that one of the truck on the BENX 107 angled inward towards the center of the car.  A closer look revealed that the bolster was sitting at an off angle.  So I dismantled this car - separating the floor, underframe, weight and center sill components.

At first I though that a piece of flash at one end of the underframe was the culprit.  I removed this excess plastic, however, it was not the cause of the problem.  A little more hacking and experimenting ensued.  I finally decided that the underframe bolster screw mounts were just a tad closer than the same mounts on the floor.  This was made evident by putting the pieces together and pressing down on the side that was a bit wonky.  This caused the other end of the floor to lift up off the table.

I decided to make a little reduction to the inner bolster screw sprue on the floor panel and then Crazy Glue the bolster ares of the floor and underframe together.  This ensured that the bolsters would be parallel.  Once dried this component was screwed to the metal weight and the bolsters lined up just fine.  The car probably would have run just fine without this exercise, however, it just did not meet my standards.

Next I decided to spend some time on the car roofs.  Walthers kindly left three roof panels with irregularities where the body molding was separated from three sprues.  I masked the roof details around these panes and then used two grades of fine sandpaper to smooth the panels.

The masking tape lattice easily came off the first car so I was able to quickly apply the same masking to the second car and file the excess plastic off of that car.

Next was the reassembly of the cars.

Down to the kitchen for the next step.  A bin was filled with warm water and a couple of drops of dish soap.  The two cars were submerged for a few minutes to remove any oils and other debris.  Under cold water the cars were scrubbed with an old tooth brush and then rinsed off.

A dish towel was used to gently blot the water on the cars and then they were set aside for some time to completely dry off.  The shop trucks were removed to aid in the drying process.

Finally it was off to the paint booth to apply my fresh mix of Scalecote IC Orange and Tuscan Red.  The paint booth worked just fine though the airbrush was being a bit finicky.  I think it may be time to get a new one...

Chris