Bashing a 68' wood, open platform coach

Bump

Part Three, Preparing the frame: Turn the frame upside down and place it on something that will allow the railings on the ends to "hang over" and not get damaged.  Using your X-acto knife, score the frame on the outboard sides of the frame members that hold the queenposts.  Score several times and then "snap" the pieces apart as you would if you were working with styrene.  (see photo above)  Smooth up rough edges as these pieces must lie flat against the bottom of the car body.  You now have three frame pieces, one center section containing the holes for the queenposts and two ends.  Place one end section into the recess on the bottom of the car body and slide it forward as far as it will go, allowing for the platform to extend beyond the end of the car body.  Do the same for the other end.  Now, carefully center the center section between the two end sections.  When you have all three pieces where they should be, run beads of Tenax where the frame sections meet the car body.  Here you need to make another decision:  if you are a perfectionist (which I am not) you may want to cut pieces out of the remaining frame to "fill in" between your frame sections.  I didn't because I figured the only people who would be looking up under my car would be the LPP's who work on my railroad! Also, I preferred to keep the extra frame intact for a possible future project... your call.

Mount the truss rods by placing the queenposts in the holes on the center section.  I put a drop of CA to hold them firm.  Snip off the truss rods outboard of the queenposts that would normally extend to the holes near the truck bolsters as they are now too short and discard.  Using the .022" brass wire, cut four pieces approximately 16.5 feet in length.  These are actuall a tad short but, we don't want them to foul the swing of the trucks.  This part is a little "fiddly" and required that I cut and fit each rod individually.  Using a drop of CA, but one end of the wire up against the queenpost in the proper orientation to the rod still existing between the posts and lay the other end in the hole near the truck bolster.  A drop of CA will hold this.  Do all four in this manner.  I found afteer the CA had cured, I felt better putting another drop of CA on all eight joints. 

About the differences between the older MDC cars and the new Athearn issues.  The Athearn cars come with working knuckle couplers which, apparently, necessitated raising the car a little on  the trucks to clear the swing of the coupler extensions.  The MDC cars sit lower and, in my opinion, look just a little bit better than their slightly taller cousins but, they come with Rapidos or dummy knuckle couplers which area little iffy operationally.  However, ths difference is slight.  If you have the Athearn models, you're all set with MT couplers.  If you want to mount MT's on an MDC car, simply score and snap off the coupler extension from the trucks.  I mounted MT 1015's directly to the floor under the platform.  The height appears perfect.  The cars will handle an 11" curve beautifully with body mounted couplers.  For lengthening these cars and adding vestibules and steel ends, see:

http://www.nscale.net/forums/modeling/scratchbuilding-kit-bashing/2008/07/26/woodside-coach-vestibules

These cars frequently can be purchased individually (coaches) but, they come in sets of four: combine, coach, sleeper, and business car.  This opens up all sorts of possibilities bashing.  But, you'll need two sets to be productive.  Below are several  cars I built including coaches, combines, and business car (the business car is a product of an possible idle afternoon and my imagination and a bunch of left-over parts).  Finding photos of these cars will give you detailing ideas such as, the chimney, a wire running the length of the roof indicating up-grading from gas lights to electric lights inside, etc.  Have fun and good luck!

If any of you ty one of these, I would love to see it!