Lester, Thanks for your excellent blog post on the work you did on this great car. I have the following questions/comments: 1) Why use PBW wire instead of the more typical use of simple brass wire? Do

Ted, This blue car, was used to supply ice to MOW crews, cabooses and locomotive drinking water. I have this image in my head of a loco with its wheels splayed out in front of an African watering hole

Yuck, Yuck, Yuck ("Goofy" lmao) ... Thanks for that one! - Jim

Brian C., If what you bought was "a Krystal Klear knock off" then it will probably still work for the purpose you are trying to use it for ... I use KK as an adhesive all the time and for jobs such as

Hi, I'm going to take a different tack on this entire thread. Guys - I am probably -JUST- as pro-military as most of the people on this list ("above average"). But ... As Richard H. would have said an

... does any one have any pictures or drawings of same ... or have modeled same ... or seen a model with them on the underside of a reefer? Wouldn't such shields have been required/desirable on all wo

Thanks Rob - yours is an elegant solution ... works exceptionally well and is straight forward and easy to make. I have a similar jig I use for weathering tank cars - that involves using wood vertical

Hi, But if you do them by hand - how do you get the variations in "handwriting styles" that you would want/need across cars? One car, at one point in time, was probably marked with at most 2 different

Dan/all, If you have enough space for 1 oz of tungsten or titanium you will almost always have enough room for 1 oz of lead ... think about it. How much weight do we -add- to a freight car? Two to 3 o

Randy/all, We keep hearing guys talk about tungsten ... it doesn't "work" for me. Although tungsten does have a higher specific gravity than lead/steel ... it is not enough more to make a difference i

George/all, First - I, for myself, would not put too much of a requirement on "non-toxic". Second - I would use white glue (or Krystal Klear) as the adhesive to hold it in place. Yes, it takes a long

Hi all, Regarding that picture taken of the yard in Spokane in 1946 ... one of the things I noticed was a cut of 4 or 5 tank cars and the way product had spilled and run down their sides creating a 'b

Dennis, When I enlarge the picture that white streak doesn't -seem- to be paper. I'm not saying it isn't just to be argumentative ... I'm asking again "what is it?" after trying to confirm yours and J

... and can anyone shed any light on the source of the white streak to the right of the door on that same NKP car? Is it possible that this white streak could be related to the black smear? - Jim B.

Michael, It -does- look like coal. I'm trying to figure out how the car would have gotten that wide a 'dusting' of coal ... And - that high up on the sides and up onto the roof. Wasn't bulk coal loade

David, I agree - and disagree with your statement about "a decade later". The part I disagree with is the idea that in '56 there would only be a few of the older cars "hanging on". It is certainly tru

Bill, My best guess is that the car has recently sat somewhere that a roof was dumping filth (run off) on the center of the car but not the ends. I am not 100% certain but it looks to me like the dirt

... BTW - it isn't important (to me) that a lift bar actually lifts ... as long as it LOOKS like it will lift I'm happy. - Jim B.

Schuyler, "Casual" ... Really? How about "ROUGH"? *VBG* My approach is to "live with the realities" ... in other words - you either have to have equipment that lives in a display case or you have to a

Proto is as proto does Most people - when they talk about "Proto" actually use "semi-scale" ... ... if you run your equipment on a 'less than perfect' layout (track) -or- the track is 'commercial trac