| On the model, I carved off all the cast-on
plastic railings, substituting .015 brass rod for these. This is
especially important on the vertical grabs near the ends which have a curved
top. They look bad when cast-on, and great when replaced! I
also carved off the broken trainline air hose, replacing with more brass
and Athearn stanchions as brackets.
An etched metal walkway was cut to fit,
replacing the crude cast walkway, this makes a huge difference as well.
The ladders were replaced with, I think, Con-Cor boxcar ladders that I
didn't use on the boxcars. Stirrup steps are A-Line, the trucks are
Athearn with Jay Bee wheels, and I modified the bolster area to accomodate
the new trucks, plus body mounted the Kadees.
I wasn't making my own decals at the time
I did this model, probably about five years ago. The large CR reporting
marks came from an Overland Models decal set I think, and the green Flexi-Flow
either came from them or from a Herald King set. I've also seen cars
with black Flexi-Flow lettering. All eventually had the CR replaced
with MDTX, and finally a full fledged MDTX re-paint, which the cars sorely
needed by that time.
Weathering consisted largely of hand-painting
the "re-painted" gray boxes and NYC herald on the car, and using finely
sifted REAL cement to represent the spills and built up areas around the
hatches. Once I was happy with the built-up around the hatches, I
hit the dried cement with CA to make it rock hard, otherwise it would have
flaked off the car. The car was photographed by John Vessella behind
Hammil Yard on my layout, one of the early photographic success stories
that are routine for John now! If I were doing the car over, I'd
make sure I used stencil fonts on the reporting numbers, which I can now
create at will. This car was one of my earliest attempts at modeling
a specific prototype, which is pretty much all I do now. |
I
have purchased a great selection of Flexi-Flo cars from a collection and
these images will be at the bottom of this page, be sure to scroll down!
