O-SCALE ADVENTURES - CABEESES

In O-Scale, I am modeling the Penn Central/Penn Central era (1968-1976).  What is available in O-Scale (O-Scale, scale, ie not Lionel Tinplate type products) in plastic is fairly limited, especially compared to HO Scale.  Weaver and Atlas both produced plastic 1:48 scale locomotives, and freight/passenger cars.   Weaver is out of business now, although Atlas has produced a few of their products under their Trainman line.   There is a smattering of other plastic kits and a few resin out there, but most are steam/transition era, leaving, scratchbuilding, or semi-scratchbuilding in the form of wood/metal kits made be Athearn/Reynolds, or the Quality Craft/Ambroid/Gloor Craft lines.   The later all seem to have produced the same products, I just don’t know the exact lineage/order of these companies.   Another manufacturer, Lykens Valley Models, also produced wood kits, abet, more primitive than the Ambroid-Gloor craft kits.   All these manufacturers are long out of business, but kits can be found at eBay and train shows.  On Ebay, especially for some reason in the past two months, sellers tend to list these at very high prices and the bidding is robust.   Shows are a better source and I rarely pay over $20 for one of these kits.   Since the heyday of these companies was likely the 70s and very early 80’s, the “modern cars” they were producing kits were, are perfect for Penn Central era.   Many of the kits are fairly unique prototypes that should add some nice diversity to my freight manifests.   A quick list of some of these kits I have -  86’ Trailer Train piggy back flat with trailers; 86’ high cube box;  C&O Coil car; 89’ auto rack flats;  shorty corn syrup tank cars;  the giant Publicker tank car; all-door boxcars; Railbox type cars; 63’ mechanical refer; bulkhead flats;  heavy duty well flat car;  and then there are the cabooses.

Small portion of wood kits.

I must admit, I also have been buying these type of kits in HO, “for my old-age”, but haven’t built any yet.   I have a half dozen O-Scale freight cars underway in various stages of construction, but for some reason I’ve grown an interest in cabooses of late, and am currently building four, along with a caboose like flanger.  Getting the wood pieces in the box to look like steel is the real challenge - lots of sealing/sanding, and you still have an imperfect surface.   Even the prototype wood sided cars are not great, as the scribes on the siding are too deep.   I’m experimenting with substituting styrene or acyclic for the wood parts.  The full size plans and metal castings, more than justify the cost of the kit, and the wood can be used elsewhere.    I decided to keep things cheap and fun, and I’m building the caboose kits with the wood and other parts in the box.  

Gloor Craft PRR ND four wheel cabin car,; Quality Craft Erie wood-sided caboose; and  Ambroid Nickel Plate caboose.    Various stages of construction.

Building these kits has been a bit of a learning experience, but hopefully mistakes are only made once.  I would highly recommend trying one of these.  Some patience is required, but many hours of fun, for low cost.    None are complete yet, but I’m in the weathering phase of the Erie caboose.   All these cabooses, even the four wheel PRR were technically still around during the early part of the Penn Central era.   Photos of the Erie (Erie-Lackawanna) caboose from the late 60s show a pretty weather worn, beat up car.  It looks like they had been relegated to MOW trains.  

I’m not happy with the Erie decals, but working on camouflaging them.