Thanks Tim - I hadn't thought of CDS. And the good thing about CDS transfers is that I can put my hands on them in the local hobby shop and do that measuring! I can feel a trip coming ....

Rob Kirkham

Thanks for sharing your experience Phil. Of the decal lettering sets you've used, which seems the best choice? (I'm doing a model for 1946, which may effect which set to try.)

On the rivets, I lucked out and got a second shell at the same time. So I shaved off rivets one at a time with a single edge razor blade and placed them on the car side. ( I used a large desk mount magnifier to see what I was doing, a dental pick and a very small droplet of Windex to place the rivets and a very very fine paint brush to drop a bit of Testors plastic cement at the base of the rivet. The Windex is better than saliva, as it seemed to help cut static that was a problem some of the time. The cement is naturally drawn out of the brush and into the space between the bottom of the rivet and the car side. I found that once the rivet had a little tack from the first bit of cement, I could run the brush down the car side along the rivet row to really glue each rivet in place. The heat of the magnifier lamp helped cause the cement to evaporate quickly so only the slightest change in sheen to the paint surface occurred. Once weathered, that will not be a problem.)

On the first side, I ruled it off horizontally and vertically. Using a straight edge I drew a line for each of 22 rows of rivets in each column, and used a square to draw a vertical rivet row. The idea was to be able to place each rivet on the cross hairs. I used a Pigma MICRON .005" pen. Turns out it is not washable. Ugg. But I found scrubbing the car side with a little cleanser paste removed most of it. Later I found a generic Windex-like product was also effective. On side two, I skipped the horizontal lines, and just eyeballed the spacing along a vertical line. I used a jig to get the spacing of the vertical line on each panel.

It turned out imperfect, but satisfying. I should not have put on the doors and ladders until I had taken care of the car number and lower edge of the side sill. Lesson learned. Still lots of work to go. I've scanned the car side for anyone who is curious. Its under SSW boxcar at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFPH/files/.

Rob Kirkham

Rob,
First for the paint matching question: I didn't add the extra
rivets, but added the deep side sill with styrene. I don't know if you
want to weather your models, however that helped out with my models. I
couldn't find a good match for the factory paint, so I covered the
white areas with Floquil ATSF Mineral Brown. Then I weathered the
bottom edges of car with Floquil Mud to represent sand-grit. That
blended everything in.
As far as changing the numbers goes, you may just want to remove
the whole number and substitute all of the digits. Also, I got a four
pack of those cars, and wanted to repaint a couple of them. I don't
think that four SSW cars in a single train would work on a branch line
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Anyway, I tried to strip the paint and the
P2k white lettering is tenacious! You may want to try sanding the
numbers off with 1000 grit or finer wet-or-dry.

Regards,
Phil Buchwald


--- In STMFC@..., Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@c...> wrote:

Rob, don't forget CDS Dry Transfers -- he did -5- different SSW
Blue Streak sets: 179, 180, 609, 610, 686. They range from 1941
to 1957. I'm sure you'll be wanting to measure those too! :-)

Tim O'Connor

Here is another way of expressing my question regarding the decals

that

might be used to model this series of 50' single door cars: does

anyone

have a set of the microscale 87-38 50' double door box car SSW

decal set?

Likewise the 87-219 assorted freight cars from the 70's SSW set?

Or how about the Champ SSW boxcar decal, SHS-216?

Or the Herald King Cotton Belt sets: B-570, B-571, B-572 or B-573

If so, and if the car numbers are in white, can you please measure the
height and width of the car number decals.

Rob Kirkham

Rob, don't forget CDS Dry Transfers -- he did -5- different SSW
Blue Streak sets: 179, 180, 609, 610, 686. They range from 1941
to 1957. I'm sure you'll be wanting to measure those too! :-)

Tim O'Connor

Here is another way of expressing my question regarding the decals that might be used to model this series of 50' single door cars: does anyone have a set of the microscale 87-38 50' double door box car SSW decal set? Likewise the 87-219 assorted freight cars from the 70's SSW set?

Or how about the Champ SSW boxcar decal, SHS-216?

Or the Herald King Cotton Belt sets: B-570, B-571, B-572 or B-573

If so, and if the car numbers are in white, can you please measure the height and width of the car number decals.

Rob Kirkham