Hi Guys,   I goofed up a recent online order and received an Intermountain panel-side HO hopper instead of the car I wanted.  The car is decorated for the Frisco with a shop date of 1955 (model

I built my own wheel tread masking fixture by machining the correct sized hole in a piece of thick brass. I then bent a length of 1/8" brass tubing into a question mark shape, flattened the straight

To keep the paint off bearings, I simply take some stick-um (goop that can be found in almost any drug store, many different brands) and make a little ball of it and push it onto the bearing.

I use o-rings on the wheel treads to keep paint out of the hard-to-clean root of the flange, and short lengths of heat shrink tubing to protect the axle ends. Another way to protect the ends is to

The Westerfield cars were double-sheathed 42' cars constructed by the thousands by Bettendorf, Milwaukee's own shops, and at least one other manufacturer in 1912 & 13. They all shared I-beam

Tim O'Connor wrote: Well, as it happens, Tim (of interest to me because I model 1953) the 1953 ORER continues the SP practice of MANY years and still calls them "hog fuel" cars. Tony

Go to an auto parts store and ask them to pull out there selection of vacuum caps, they are available in both rubber and silicon, expand slightly to push over the axle end, and are inexpensive enough

Jon, in my experience the commercial wheel masks don't really keep all the paint off the treads, so I still have to clean and polish the treads. I do this by chucking each axle end in a jeweler's

derrell (not signing his full name) wrote: Do you mean silicon? or silicon carbide? pretty large difference. Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2906 Forest Ave.,

Jim, duct tape was originally called duck tape because it shed water. /there is a brand called "Duck Tape". Lee

Several builders painted and photographed "sample" USRA cars, before presumably repainting them for some railroad's allocation. These are the ones I know of; are there others? SSC HM USA (no #)

Hi Would anybody happen to have four of the Creco doors made by Keith Reterrer they would be willing to sell? thanks, Tom Dill

I have a commercial styrene wheel mask for keeping the paint off the treads (spraying). However the axel ends are not masked. Short of something applied to each end does anyone know of a cap

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll also note that gross and not very accurate machining of castings or steel forgings, to remove lots of metal before getting down to accurate machining, is

well, there has been a fair amount of info on the "hogged fuel" but little on the cars, which was the concern. guess the only photos out there are the few that I have. thanks, Tom Dill Tom

I'd like to add to the comments here; First of all I've found that original flavored Pinesol removes paint from plastic quite well. Once the paint is loosened use a stiff bristle brush to whisk as

Jim, good point. The misunderstanding of the name must be pretty widespread (or was widespread)... The NP train sheet analysis I did for several months in 1953-7 for the Tacoma Division North Branches

Tony, I'm sure I've seen official SP documents somewhere that used the term hog fuel, but I just looked up SP 52490, a rebuilt A-50-6 (de-roofed with added small side-doors) and it is listed in the

Indeed, as of January 1914 there were 81,507 Bettendorf underframes in service in freight cars of many railroads including: Armour Arizona Eastern CB&Q CM&StP CRI&P CStPM&O Central of

Paul, You might want to try Scalecoat paint remover. I've used it to remove factory lettering on a finished locomotive. It worked quite well for me. Didn't really have any effect on the paint job. I