Chinese Surgery........

[Miamigo259]

Having now got some of the Chinese made wagons "in stock" for kitbashing, the weather today (here anyway..) enabled a start to be made on some rebuilding work.

I was initially looking at the possibility of splicing two of the box vans together to make a longer wagon, and then mounting it on one of the bogie chassis. This appears quite feasable, but at the current pricing, is rather more expensive than it would have been a few months ago!

On one of the other threads, someone mentioned removing the end platform, so this was the logical first version to produce......

Seperating the body from the chassis is easy - remove a pair of steps and then unscrew 4 screws - the chassis then comes away from the body.

The end where the platform was obviously lacks a buffer beam, so it was a case of raiding the plasticard supply for a suitable piece of material to cut to size and then fit.

The chassis then had the platform end cut away from it, but it still needs about 5mm to be cut off the end so it fits under the body - something that will be done once the new buffer beam has dried. Remember - You can't shorten the chassis at the other end as it will mess up the positioning of the sliding door runners!

More updates to follow as the work progresses...........

(will try bigger pictures next time.....and I know how to put them in with the text now!)

 

[Miamigo259]

The chassis has now been cut to size and can be seen in the photo below.

If you actually measure the distance from each wheel centre to the end of the wagon, there is a 1/4" difference at one end (the end where the platform used to be), but when it is out in the garden you won't notice that!

A pair of end ventillation duckets have been made to fix to the wagon, as per the Argentine metre gauge bogie wagon photo which happens to be visible in the background (printed off a video on You-Tube, the only real source of such material on Argentina i've found). A scratchbuilt body, or two, like that, to fit on the NQ bogie gondola wagon chassis is in the scratchbuild programme for the coming months.


Air pipes and other hoses will be tranferred from the removed end-platform to the end of the wagon with the new buffer beam, as will the centre buffer itself.

A new roof will be required, so the one that came with the wagon has been put to one side for future projects!

 

[korm kormsen]

that is interesting for me.
(i just found a bill for two of these cars. supposing, that my daughters found adequate christmas gifts for daddy...)

looking at the one car of this sort, i allready own, i was thinking to shorten it even further, by cutting away one of the three spacings on either side of the doors.

as alternative i am thinking about putting trucks under the cars, instead of the single aixles.

 

[Miamigo259]

After fitting the end ventilation duckets, I decided that the side ventillation ports looked too "European" so they had to go.....

Having prised them out, the right-hand ventillation port was blanked over with a plain rectangle of plasticard, as this is where the Railway Company logo (Belgrano Cargas) will go. The left-hand one posed more of a problem, but a simple soloution was to put some venillation louvres, also cut from plasticard, in the space. The holes left by the removed ventillation cover mechanisms are being filled accordingly.

A covering of undercoat beckons, but not tonight, as some of us have to be up for work at 04.15!!!


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[Spule 4]

Miamigo-

Thanks for the posts, looks like a good bash. I do have one question tho, are the journal boxes for the wheels the same lenght from the ends, I cannot tell from the angle.

Just last night I was eyeing the GSM raffle car and this:

http://narrow.parovoz.com/newgallery/pg_view.php?ID=127587&LNG=RU

 

[Miamigo259]

Miamigo-

Thanks for the posts, looks like a good bash. I do have one question tho, are the journal boxes for the wheels the same lenght from the ends, I cannot tell from the angle.

Just last night I was eyeing the GSM raffle car and this:

http://narrow.parovoz.com/newgallery/pg_view.php?ID=127587&LNG=RU

One is 1/4" nearer the end than the other one, assuming you fix the chassis in the same place as before, using the original screw fixing points - so not a lot in it!
It's not worth moving the chassis along by 1/8th" just to get symmetry - You only notice the difference if you hapen to take a ruler to it........

In addition, the bottom door runner is mounted on the chassis, so this would be slghtly out of alignment with the top runner, meaning the sliding doors wouldn't close properly on one side. No problem if you changed the doors to hinged ones though

 

[Miamigo259]

Just a quick update on progress...........

The interior of the wagon has been given a coat of dark grey undercoat today to make the interior less visible if it runs with the sliding doors open.

I was intending to paint the exterior of the wagon in BR early freight bauxite, but then found I had only got enough paint left to perhaps do an OO scale vehicle, certainly not a G scale one!

A solution was to hand in the form of a 500ml tin of Wilkinsons red oxide primer which I had bought last week (for all of £3.99) to paint the cleaned chassis of the full-size coal lorry I am currently restoring (as shown on the avatar). An trial application to the sliding doors and the ends of the wagon proved it to be an ideal colour, so the whole thing will be painted using that shade.
A photo will follow later in the week, once the sides have been painted as well.

I wasn't sure what to do about the company logos, but found a solution when looking at one of the Argentine rail enthusiast news sites. Above each item of news, they have the logo of the company concerned, and these are in .jpg format so you can actually copy them on to your own computer............

Just like that!

Printed out to a suitable size, you can get about 30+ logos on a sheet of A4. Two were cut out, mounted on plasticard and given a coat or two of matt varnish and they are now ready to be attached to the completed wagon!




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[Miamigo259]

Ho, hum...

Not had a lot of time to do much to the wagon in the last few days, so grabbed the opportunity about 15 mins ago to put an initial coat of paint on one side.

Once this was on, I decided to fix the body back on the chassis, and found problem No.1.........the coupler mounting on the "shortened" end now fouls the new bufferbeam!!

Can see a solution to it, but the paint will have to dry first!


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[C&S]

Can see a solution to it, but the paint will have to dry first!

Will you be able to shorten the coupler shank without losing towing strength?

 

[Miamigo259]

Can see a solution to it, but the paint will have to dry first!

Will you be able to shorten the coupler shank without losing towing strength?

The screw holding the coupler on goes into an extended moulding that is well proud of the coupler shank (if that is the right word). The moulding in question is the one that is fouling the new buffer beam, but the screw does not go that far up into the moulding, so it appears that the section in question can be removed, thereby eliminating the problem.

Will have to look more closely at that at the Weekend, as I won't get a chance again until then!

If not, the coupler assembly appears to be seriously over-engineered, so Evo-Stick will most probably do the trick.........

I'm not intending to run seriously long trains on my line, so I would think Evo-Stick could cope with 4-5 wagons.

 

[Miamigo259]

The wagon body has now had a couple of coats of paint on it, so I have started to reassemble it.

Body is now fixed back on the chassis and the sliding doors are back on.

I chopped off the top part of the extended moulding for mounting the coupler and this now clears the "new" bufferbeam. However, the "loop" coupler at the shortened end has a similar extended moulding, which now fouls the centre buffer which is stuck directly onto the new bufferbeam! Just unscrewed the coupler and will chop that extended moulding off as well to solve the problem.

Buffer currently being fixed with Evo-Stick to the wagon, which explains the photo below of it perched on a tin of paint!

Will hopefully be able to fix brake hoses etc on over the next few days, with the main remaining task being fabricating a new roof for the van. However, am having a problem sourcing some suitable corrugated plastic locally at the moment.



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[Miamigo259]

The rebuilt vehicle is now getting close to completion as the two photos below will testify.

I abandoned the idea of producing a new roof and just cut the existing roof to size. The banding on the roof isn't symmetrical, but I'm not bothered - it still looks OK!

The BC wagons seem to have a yellow safety strip applied to the bottom of their wagons, so this has been painted on along the bottom body plank and the bottom door runner.

Still some paintwork to be finished + lettering to be applied, but I am happy with the way it has turned out......

Will post pictures of the finished article over the weekend sometime.


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[jegametren]

Hello, Amigomio, ¿how are you? I have did "american surgery" taking a cheaper and better car than your chinese car.
I believe an outside braced wood box car from USA Trains was perfect for the job, notwithstanding its short lenght, and you get trucks (bogies) include in price. Attached are two (poor) pictures of what I have done.
Am modelling Belgrano railways in 1966 to 68 timeframe, would send some more pictures in the near future.
By the way, thanks for showing us your efforts, they are very inspiring, mostly for people like me, that although lives near prototype, found it is very difficult to get parts and elements.
Regards from Buenos Aires
Jorge


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[Miamigo259]

Some views of the finished product, taken outside in the daylight, now that the snow has all melted...........

As it's freelance model, I applied some stencil style numbers (originally from a 1/72 Hungarian Mig 21 kit) which were "in stock", and I also found couple of small Argentine flags left over from a 1/48 scale Aermacchi MB326 kit that I made up as an Australian Navy aircraft. The annoying thing is that I can't find the Argentine roundels that I didn't use, as they could come in handy in the future, as such things are applied to locos as well! The flags were put under the operators details on the lower left panel - though they don't show up too well on the pictures. The operators Address + Phone No were made up on MS Publisher, printed off, stuck on the wagon, and then given a coat of matt varnish. The Belgrano Cargas logos were produced as mentioned in a previous posting and then attached to the wagon.

I'm quite pleased with the way it has turned out, so may come up with some other variations in the future, though I rather like the look of the USA trains boxcar conversion in post #13 - assuming I can find a cheap one over here, that is!!!

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[Miamigo259]

Just as a contrast to the converted wagon, this is one I just repainted "from the box".

Mr Flanders seems to like it....!!

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[Miamigo259]

The next project will be constructing an Argentine style brake van/caboose, as shown in the photo below, using one of the chassis from the NQ bogie open wagons.

The van illustrated is actually a standard gauge one, which looks as though it had recently (in 2007) been painted up by its owner, ALL (America Latina Logistica) when photographed at Zarate in November 2007.
I'll make a narrow-gauge van based on this design, as and when I get the time, and will post the results on a seperate thread.


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[Bram]

Cracking project, well done.