Accurail TP&W PS Covered Hoppers

Accurail released kits for TP&W Pullman-Standard 4,750 cubic-foot covered hoppers in 2019. These kits represent cars from a series of 30 built in February 1974 and numbered 18151-18180. The Accurail car is only available in one number, 18164, but a decal set of additional numbers is available from Accurail. I purchased 3 of these cars and the decal set soon after they became available.

After assembling one of the kits in January of this year (pictured above), I'd have to say that I was a bit disappointed overall. The finished car looks good detail-wise and the lettering is good, but its maroon color is too dark compared to the prototype cars, which were painted the same red-orange as other 1970s-era TP&W equipment. In addition, assembly was quite a bit more difficult than other Accurail cars, though to be fair covered hoppers are much more complex than boxcars. I wasn't too eager to assemble the other two kits after my experience with the first one so I waited several months until now. I learned from my mistakes the first time around and things went more smoothly this time.

Coupler Height

The cars come with scale 33"-diameter wheels, while the prototype cars have 36"-diameter wheels. Replacing the stock wheels with scale 36" wheels is trivial; however, the coupler height was borderline too high with the 33" wheels so using the larger wheels would make the coupler height even worse. Initially I decided to live with 33" wheels on TP&W 18164. 3 inches in HO scale is only about 1/32 inch in 1:1 scale and I didn't think the difference would be very noticeable, but my eyes weren't fooled. 

33"-diameter wheels on TP&W 18164 (left) and 36"-diameter wheels on ITC 1735 (right)

It's typically much easier to shim up cars to correct low couplers than it is to lower couplers that are too high, but luckily the Accurail coupler box design makes it easy to add a shim above the coupler to lower it. I made my shims out of 0.010"-thick styrene and attached them to the underframe with double-sided tape as shown below. I drilled a #43 hole in each shim to clear the coupler box screw.

The coupler boxes fit too tightly over the underframe and require filing/scraping of their inside edges. The instructions do warn that some paint may need to be scraped off of the coupler boxes to ensure a proper fit, but I found that I needed to remove some plastic too.

Here's the 18164 with 36" wheels and no coupler shim. Coupler is too high. 

With the coupler shim in place, now the coupler height is perfect.

Bolsters

On most HO scale freight cars, the bolsters to which the trucks are mounted are cast into the underframe or floor. On the Accurail PS 4750 as shown below, the bolsters are separate pieces that must be attached to the underframe.

The separate bolsters wouldn't be a bad thing if it weren't so easy to mount them off-kilter. I found this out the hard way when I assembled the first kit back in January. I managed to attach one of the bolsters a bit crooked, and the car simply wouldn't stay on the track on its inaugural run on the layout. I was glad I had used cyanoacrylate glue to attach the bolsters, so it wasn't difficult to pop off the bad one and try again. In my opinion, the bolster pieces could be substantially improved by adding raised tabs on their top sides that key into the underframe and ensure proper alignment.

When I assembled the other two kits, I used a #50 drill bit as a guide to ensure that the hole in the bolster piece was aligned with the hole in the underframe. Slow-setting cyanoacrylate gel allows enough working time to tweak the alignment. This time around I had no issues with bolster alignment.

Renumbering

The image below shows the contents of Accurail's renumbering decal set for these cars. The large numbers are for the car sides and the small numbers are for the ends.

I decided to renumber my cars to 18162 and 18167 so I would only have to change one digit on the car sides. Most Accurail cars have a very flat finish that does not promote decal adhesion. The finish on these covered hoppers has a bit more of a sheen than other Accurail cars, but I still thought a gloss coat would be a good idea. I applied masking tape to all but the immediate areas around the numbers and gave the cars a couple of light coats of Testor's Glosscote from a spray can. The masking was tedious and felt like overkill, but I haven't forgotten that I once ruined the finish on an entire locomotive with a bad can of Glosscote when I only needed to coat a couple of small areas, so the masking is insurance against that happening again.

My original plan was to apply the decals with the masking still in place so I wouldn't have to mask again for the final flat finish, but I didn't leave myself much room to maneuver the decals and the tape soaked up the decal setting solutions so I had to remove some of the tape right around the numbers. 

On the car sides I only applied "2" and "7" decals over the "4". Because the numbers on the ends are much smaller, I applied decals for the full car numbers over the factory-printed number. Experience with these Accurail decals has taught me to use fresh knife blades and make many light passes when cutting out the numbers to prevent flaking paint and jagged edges. For setting solution, I used Microscale Micro Sol. Once the decals were dry, I re-masked around them and sealed them with a couple of light coats of Testor's Dullcote.

The decal numbers aren't as opaque white as the factory-printed numbers, but you have to look closely to notice this. The finished cars are shown below.

Miscellaneous Freight Cars

My hobby time over the past month has been spent on several small freight car projects. I'm whittling down my stockpile of unbuilt kits and making minor improvements to other cars in the fleet.

ITC 8427 is an Accurail car that's been in my fleet for a long time. After seeing a builder's photo of a prototype car from this series, I removed the running board and painted the trucks red. I also swapped out the black underbody and brake gear that came with this car with a red underbody from another Accurail PS-1 in my fleet. 

ITC 3843 is an MDC Roundhouse gondola that has also been in my fleet for many years. The red trucks on 1970s-era ITC freight cars were striking and unique, so this car's trucks got painted at the same time I did the 8427's trucks.  

Formerly an identical twin, but now a fraternal one. I have two of these Accurail Rock Island ACF Center Flow covered hoppers, but both were numbered 800365. For this car, I took advantage of Accurail's renumbering decals for the first time. At the same time they produce a car, Accurail paints a small sheet of decal paper with matching paint and prints several additional car numbers on it. I learned the hard way on the ends of this car to trim the new numbers very close to the lettering because the decal edges are difficult to hide even though they're painted the same color as the rest of the car. The sides turned out ok.

This Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern boxcar is an Athearn Blue Box kit that's been in my stash for a couple of years. I didn't make any changes to the car body, though I did rebuild the underframe to correct the low coupler height and move the coupler boxes a bit farther out from the ends. I don't know how often MNS cars were seen on the TP&W, maybe never, but I like this car as a shout out to places I used to live.

The Peoria & Eastern was a direct competitor to the TP&W, but I have a soft spot for obscure railroads of central Illinois. This Branchline Trains kit waited almost 10 years for me to finally assemble it. Prior bad experiences with Branchline Trains kits made me somewhat hesitant to start working on this one. These kits have lots of very delicate plastic parts that are challenging to install, don't fit particularly well in the mounting holes, have casting flash in inconvenient locations, and are usually molded in a very different color of plastic than they are painted so the sprue marks are very obvious. Assembly of this car went relatively smoothly and touch-up of the many black parts was easy, but this will probably be the last Branchline Trains kit I build. 

TP&W RBL Cars

The TP&W owned/leased a number of insulated, double-plug-door boxcars. The "RBL" classification means that they are bunkerless refrigerator cars with interior load restraints. Below are links to a couple of  prototype photos:

TP&W 50563 (page 18 of September 1996 Model Railroading)
TP&W 50588

Circa 2000 Atlas produced ready-to-run models of these cars in the 1970s-era speed lettering scheme, and more recently both Athearn and ScaleTrains.com have also offered TP&W versions of these cars. I typically don't purchase ready-to-run freight cars because I like to assemble kits, but last year I bought one of the Atlas cars at a train show for $14. The Atlas models typically sell for > $20, which is more than I like to pay for freight cars, so this seemed like a bargain.

The Atlas model of TP&W 50575 is now part of my fleet.

Detail-wise, the Atlas model appears very accurate compared to the photo of TP&W 50563 linked above. This is both good and bad; good because it's a nice model but bad in a way because I have an Accurail model of a similar car that doesn't quite measure up in comparison. I'm not fastidious about freight car detailing, but I decided to make a few minor improvements to the Accurail car. I wanted to preserve its factory paint and lettering as much as possible, so my goal here was to make readily apparent modifications that didn't require major surgery.

I purchased this Accurail double-plug-door kit new in 2017. At the time I was planning for a 1950s-era IT layout, but I bought it anyway. This paint scheme is from the early 1980s, so, yes, I'm stretching the 1970s era a bit. The lettering closely matches the prototype photo of #50588 linked above, but the type of car is not an exact match. To make the Accurail car look more like the Atlas car, I decided to remove the running board and add cushion coupler pockets. I passed on things like lowering the brake wheel and reducing the height of the ladders that would have required carving on the car sides and ends. I'll have to repaint the roof after removing the running board, but, as long as I'm careful, that won't affect the lettering.

Walthers started selling these cushion coupler pockets before Accurail even existed as a company, but they will work just fine.

The stock coupler box needs to be shortened so that the "tongs" on the brown Walthers coupler box wrap around the post in the Accurail coupler box.

I sawed off the Accurail coupler box flush with the end of the floor and also cut down the sides of the box even with the leading edge of the post. 

For the Walthers coupler box to sit at the correct height, some material has to be removed from the top of the Accurail coupler box. I found it too difficult and awkward to carve material from this area, so I decided to cut a notch in the floor. As shown on this top view of the floor, I made two saw cuts perpendicular to the end of the car and scribed a line connecting them.

I used a pair of small needle-nose pliers to snap off the plastic along the scribed line and create the notch.

Now the Walthers coupler box fits as intended.

I want the coupler box cover to be screw-mounted, so I drilled out the boss in the Walthers coupler box with a #50 drill. I drilled two #43 clearance holes in the box lid: one for the screw that holds the Walthers coupler box together (right) and the other (left) so I can use the coupler screw that came with the car to secure the Walthers box to the car.

Here's the completed underframe with the Walthers coupler boxes painted black and mounted to the car.

With the underframe modifications complete, I moved on to the running board. This inverted view of the car shows the six pins that hold the running board in place by friction. I pushed from below on each of the six pins until I could grasp the running board with my fingers and remove it from the car.   

With the running board removed, there are now two slots at opposite corners of the car and four holes down the car centerline. These need to be filled, and there are also mounting brackets at both ends at at two corners that need to be carved off.

I filled the slots with scraps of 0.060" styrene. I cut the pieces of styrene slightly larger than the slots and then applied styrene cement (my favorite is Microscale Micro Weld) to both the inside of the slot and the piece of styrene. After waiting a minute for the solvent to soften both parts, I jammed the styrene into the slot. The goal of doing it this way was to get a very flush-fitting plug so that I didn't have gaps to fill later with putty.

Here's the car with all of the plugs installed.

I carefully trimmed off the excess plastic in thin slices and then carved, filed, and sanded the plugs as necessary to make them either flush with the rest of the roof or so they blended in with the ribs along the roof centerline. 

Here's a closeup of one of the plugs along the roof ribs. Each one of these took a fair amount of carving, filing, and patience.

Next, I repainted the roof silver. I opted to brush-paint the roof with Model Master Acryl Flat Aluminum instead of spraying it because I didn't think I could do a good enough masking job on the car sides and ends. This paint did not cover well and it took many thin coats to produce the result you see here. 

After painting the roof, I installed the second door on each side. Both doors were a bit too wide for the openings, so I had to trim them down to fit. It's not an optical illusion or lackluster photography: the door on the right is a slightly different shade of red than the rest of the car.

The finished car. Prior to installing the underframe, I slightly notched the bottom centers of the car ends so they would clear the new coupler boxes, which are slightly taller than the originals. This project took longer than I thought it would, but I think the results were worth the effort.

Motive Power Plan

The small layout I'm building won't require many locomotives, so I'm planning to just model a few of my favorites. I've settled on the following 6, in order of likely completion (current status of each in parentheses):

• ALCo C424 #801 (in service)
• EMD GP35 #902 (in service)
• EMD GP7 #103 (under construction)
• EMD GP30 #700 (planned)
• ALCo RS2 #205 (under construction)
• ALCo RS11 #400 (planned)

The TP&W was notable for the diversity of its diesel locomotive roster; for example, in 1975 the railroad owned 21 locomotives of 10 different models. So it's entirely appropriate for me to pick one each of six different locomotive models for my roster. A reader with some knowledge of the TP&W's motive power will probably notice that one model is conspicuously absent from my list: a GP38-2. I'm personally not that fond of GP38-2s even though they were the dominant locomotive in the TP&W's fleet in the last few years prior to the Santa Fe merger. Perhaps I'll change my mind later, but in the meantime I will focus on the units I like the most.

TP&W Caboose 529: Part III (Finale)

Part 1
Part 2

Time to finally finish this project, which I started over a year ago. My progress on this car has stalled as I have been contemplating how to model the windows. The original double-hung side windows on the prototype were replaced at some point with sealed windows that are slightly smaller than the original window openings. My initial thought for modeling them was to glaze the full window openings on the car prior to painting and mask off the glass areas. However, I feared that the paint might bleed under the masking tape and ruin the windows, so I decided to paint the car first and install the windows later. At the same time I painted the car, I also painted some white label stock to be used later to make the replacement window frames but left the details of how to do that for later. Well, later is now.

Nothing fancy here, just plain white labels from Target painted red.

I tried a few other ideas for making the windows before settling on this method. First, I made a brass template of the window area. I eyeballed the dimensions from prototype photos; the template is 1/4" tall and 3/16" wide. I rounded the corners with a file.

Next, I attached the template to the painted labels using a small bit of double-sided tape. Then I carefully traced around the template with my hobby knife. Being right-handed, I found it easiest to go clockwise around the template. After finishing each window, I moved the template to a new location and repeated the process.

I definitely got better at this with practice. Note the improvement from my earlier attempts on the left to the later ones on the right. I learned to use a very light touch with the knife, especially on the first pass around the template. I found I needed to make at least 3 passes around the template for each window.

I cut out each window frame, leaving about 1/8" or so of label around the perimeter, and removed the label from the backing. Then I carefully colored the cut edge black with an ultra-fine-tipped Sharpie so you wouldn't see the white label material around the window. 

Next I stuck the label onto a piece of 0.005" clear styrene. Using my knife and a steel straightedge, I carefully trimmed around the window until it fit snugly into the window opening on the car. I found it easiest to trim the window to the correct width first, then trim the top, and finally trim the bottom. 

For an adhesive, I applied Microscale Kristal Klear around the inside of the window opening with a toothpick, then carefully set the window in place.

One down, three to go.

All windows installed!

The underframe has been patiently waiting since last fall for the body to be completed. I sprayed the underframe black with the ladders, handrails, and brake wheels in place, then came back later and brush-painted the brake wheels and corner handrails white. Right as I was about to mount the body on the underframe, I noticed that I had neglected the white safety stripes on the steps.

I felt I had a 0% chance of neatly brush-painting the white safety stripes, so I went back to the same labels I used for the window frames. While I did brush-paint the bottom steps, I used thin strips of the labels for the remaining stripes. 

Safety stripes complete. I think the end result was definitely worth delaying completion of the model for about an hour. 

Time to check coupler height. Looks great on this end...

...but way too low on the other end. Luckily for me, the bad end is the rear of the car, so I didn't bother trying to fix it. Stay tuned to see if this comes back to bite me later.

It took some force to snap the body onto the underframe, but I'm pleased to report that I didn't break anything in the process. Let's hope I never need to access the car interior, again, though.

Here's the other side of the finished car. I'm excited to finally see this caboose on the layout.