Recent Paint Projects

Greetings All,

A lot to report this week from the N.Y.C.T.L. Shops. Prior to the P.C.C.M. 40 series reaching the N.Y.C.T.L. for the concluding installments I took took advantage of some decent painting weather to get a few projects into the completed column.

Lets take a look;

Here we have two Life-Like 100 ton hopper cars that I bought recently from ebay to complete the PC hopper project that I initiated earlier this year after purchasing a set of PC H43D hopper decals from Highball Graphics. https://highballgraphics.com/F-159.  This was supposed to be a quick easy inexpensive project. Yeah, right...

One hopper is disassembled to show how easy these cars are to work with. Two screws hold the frame to the car. Remove them and the frame will come right off as will the weights if the prior owner did not glue them. 

Here's the project cars sitting on some H43 cars at North Side Yard. The cars are all the same. A Walthers factory painted car is on the bottom left and a Life-Like car that I painted earlier is on the lower right. Walthers, who bought Life-Like, released the cars under the Proto 1000 name. The P-1000 cars come with metal wheels and body mounted knuckle couplers. The Life-Like cars do not. But they are easy to convert and perfect for this project.

Below are the hoppers, a trio of Bachmann 50' boxcars that I also stripped for repainting and a Life-Like oil company that has been washed and is ready for paint.

Here are the newly painted and lettered H43D coal hoppers. Three cars of the four car project are prototypical in appearance to their 1:1 counterparts. The fourth car is a 70 ton rib sided car that I painted and lettered earlier after becoming frustrated in the search for reasonably priced cars for this project. All cars have had body mounted Kadees and Intermountain metal wheel sets installed. The PC Hopper Project is now completed!  

Continuing with the old Life-Like brand is this oil company kit that I found at an antiques store recently for $4.00. It was new with the wrapper still on it and I couldn't pass it up. The colors were quite bright and the shack and roof were translucent. See the photo above. The kit is now painted and it's ready for assembly.

Here it is partially assembled with an Atlas telephone pole installed. 

I've ballasted the base to match the ballast being used in Terminal Yard and around the layout.

Here's the finished kit at the under construction Terminal Yard engine facility. That's 1/87th scale Wet Willie toweling himself off after climbing down from the ladder. I plan to paint a figure named Earl who'll be assigned to the oil pump hump house. If you grew up in certain areas like South Brooklyn then you know that oil is pronounced earl! 

The H43D hoppers are shoved into Terminal Yard and coupled up to some PRR H-21 coal hoppers recently released from the shop.

The quartet of H-21's are courtesy of 1:1 Engineer Ed who gave me this very generous gift. All four were recently assembled with Kadee #5s and Intermountain metal wheel sets installed. Built in 1912 some of these cars lasted thru the Penn Central era thanks two two rebuilds. Thanks Double EE!!

What about the Bachmann 50' boxcars you ask? Turns out there were a total of four Bachmann PC 160502 50'ers in the bottom of my 50' car box. I had a total of five of these cars and #5 is used in the virtual ops and should be in or around West Mill on Ralph's K.P.D. layout. Of the five, three I've had for more than twenty years and at one time painted their roofs silver to match another PC car I purchased. Four and five were more recent purchases and were in their complete factory colors. All five had been converted to body mounted couplers and metal wheels. 

So car #5 remains as PC 160502 for use in the virtual ops as seen below in P.C.C.M. 39K on Ralph's K.P.D. Layout 

For car #4 I took a page from ATJOE1972's tutorial for removing the car numbers with Walthers Solvaset. Using this procedure the car remains in factory Penn Central paint with only new reporting marks and numbers added. Here's a link to ATJOE1972's video describing the process; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXo6dijSJZc  

Car #4 was the first car out of the shop and is now numbered 360158 which is a correct PC number of this type of car. 1/87th scale ATJOE and PC Ralph check it out as it sits in Terminal Yard.

Next out of the shop was car #3 painted in a full Empire Belt RR scheme. The car is numbered into the PC's 360200 - 360499 open sequence. These cars copy NYC Lot 931B that the NYC numbered 48000 - 48159 and the PC renumbered 360050 - 360197.

Car #2 is E.B.R.R. 360458 which shows it's NYC roots and has been numbered into the PC for the merger. 

Car #1 is another E.B.R.R. car showing it's NYC roots. This car is still numbered in the NYC system and sports smaller reporting marks and numbers. This car is for cereal and flour loading only. 

Here's the four boxcars and the six hoppers at Terminal Yard awaiting assignment.

All in all it was a very productive two weeks for the N.Y.C.T.L. shops. Four boxcars and two H43D hopper cars now have a new lease on life and four good looking PRR H-21 hoppers are added to the fleet.

Thanks for reading!!!