Tag Archives: kitbash

Kitbashing an HO Southern 1960s Bay Window Caboose – Part 2

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Southern bay window cab 22

In Part 1 of this 4-part series, I showed the modifications required for the body, windows, and steps. In part 2, I’ll dive into the roofs, bay windows, and underbody.

Roofs

  • Pressed panel roof (option 1). The “two-bulge” roof panel seems to have been less popular than the smooth roof, but I found at least a few examples that made me want to model it. As mentioned in part 1, this is a tough roof to find, and the only example I had from a Milwaukee Road horizontal rib boxcar kit was too wide. I decided it wouldn’t be too tough to model from styrene bits. From part 1, the roof was already smooth except for the panel … Read more →

Kitbashing an HO Southern 1960s Bay Window Caboose – Part 1

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Southern '60s era HO bay window caboose

Some railroads are blessed to have fairly accurate plastic caboose models, but unfortunately, the Southern Railway is not one of them. In HO scale, the choices are brass, a nice but complicated (and hard to find) resin kit, and a pretty substantial kitbash from a plastic kit. In this 4-part series, I’ll show you the steps to get a credible and fairly accurate model from an Athearn bay window kit. Warning, this project is not for the faint-of-heart! In fact, I think these are the most challenging models I’ve ever built (and I’ve scratchbuilt some cars and done major locomotive kitbashes). Even if you don’t go all-out, you can pick the steps that are most important to you, and while … Read more →

Modeling a 2-Bay Short-Taper Offset Hopper in HO Scale

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CG 55T Offset 14

HO-scale modelers are blessed with a lot of coal hopper models and kits to work with. One fairly common car that’s still tough to model is a 2-bay short-taper offset hopper. This car is distinct because of the smaller and more steep angles in the side sheets to get from the inside of the car to outside the ribs and the three thick rivet strips at the ends and center. This car was also longer than most 2-bay cars at 34′ versus the 33′ of a more common offset. Most people would be content to just use a 33′ car (and I don’t issue any judgment here), but I’m kind of a hopper nut, so…

Athearn made an old blue-box … Read more →