Group,

 

A couple of comments on my kit-bashing the F34.  At the time I began to think about this project, F&C had not yet brought out their nice F34 kit.  Before building the kit-bash, I ordered, from the PRRT&HS, tracings of the car so that I could better understand what I needed to do to model it from the Athearn/Bachman model.  These tracings are relatively inexpensive and give great detail on the car.  One can order just the tracings for the air brake details.

 

All of my kit-bash projects, as well as all of my resin builds, are built so that they reliably will operate on my layout.  I try to get as close to prototypical as I can, but operations is more important to me than to get every detail perfect.  Thus when kit-bashing the F34, I looked at photos and attempted to place the visible brake details in the appropriate locations, however, I needed to find a way to do it so that the triple valve and brake cylinder did not interfere with how the car tracked.  This is detailed in the article.  Most of the brake detail is not visible anyway so I installed just those two components and called it a day.  The car tracks perfectly and runs well without a load and has been doing so for almost 3 years during my monthly operating sessions, so for me, it was a success.

 

Chuck Cover

Santa Fe, NM