Some T.O.F.C. Car Projects

Greetings All,

After putting a dozen or more coal hoppers into revenue service I've turned my attention to some Trailer On Flat Car projects. Known to railroaders and modelers as T.O.F.C. these are some of my favorite freight cars and trains. 

In the virtual ops Ralph and I have a modest exchange of T.O.F.C. traffic and 1:1 Sir Neal does not model T.O.F.C. He does model C.O.F.C on a grand scale though but that era is beyond the scope of the virtual ops at this point. Ralph and I use 50' flats to convey our trailers from layout to layout and one of my T.O.F.C. projects is to paint and letter a car that better represents the flatcar Ralph uses. 

Let's take a look at the recent T.O.F.C. projects. E.B.R.R. 794035 with an E.B.R.R. trailer emerge from the shop. Truthfully I like the trailer. The flat car not as much. This will be a do over.

Here's a project car that I think turned out very well. Not a purgatory box project per se but a project car never the less. I think this is an old McKean TOFC. It was lettered for the C&NW. 

Here it is early in the P.C.C.M. 39 series heading towards Williams Yard with an E.B.R.R. trailer.

And here it is after the repaint. That's a keeper! 

Another purgatory box project is this Model Power T.O.F.C. car 
that looked like this when I received it as a gift about 20 years ago. Over the years I weathered the deck, added body mounted Kadees and metal wheels. But I hardly if ever used it as I didn't like lettering and the way the trailer was secured to the car. This attachment allowed for only the Marathon trailer to be used. 

Not anymore! PC 788430 is ready for revenue service and the virtual ops! The trailer landing gear attachment has been removed to allow the Walthers and Athearn brand trailers to use the car. This is close to the car Ralph uses so it will work well in the virtual ops

McKean and Model Power T.O.F.C cars now proudly wearing PC paint. Much better!!! 

But not so fast. As I reported, I removed the part that holds the landing gear in place to use all of my trailers on this car. After a few laps I wasn't thrilled with this so back to the shop it went.

Here it is with a pedestal trailer hitch hijacked from the parts box and some inner rub rails installed. All painted in my version of PC green of course. This set up will allow the flat car to be used with all of my trailers that have a king pin.

Looking better, more secure and back in service! 

Some purgatory projects on display! PC T.O.F.C cars on the lower level. PC, KP&W and E.B.R.R. coal hoppers on the upper level. 

And guess who just rolled out of the paint shop! No longer an E.B.R.R. flat I lettered it of the NYC and painted another trailer red and gray. I have some old NYC Pacemaker Freight Service dry transfers that I'm going to try and use on the newly painted trailer.

If all goes well I'll have something that looks like this;

From 3' away the Pacemaker Freight Service trailer looks pretty good. Up close on this side not so good. The other side however looks fine up close. But it's done and the old dry transfers have been used.

Here's a short video of the T.O.F.C train on the lower level of the layout shot before the Pacemaker trailer was completed. 

Here's a quick video with many of the newly added coal hoppers.

Thanks for reading!