Tag Archives: Railway

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 Southern Extended-Height Twin Hopper in HO Scale

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Southern Extended Height Twin Hopper - Athearn Offset Finished

One of the things I love most about modeling coal-hauling railroads is the variety of hoppers employed by all the railroads. Each line seemed to have their own unique preference for sizes and mixes of cars, and the manufacturers made them in so many varieties. The 1960s and ’70s were especially eclectic as railroads engaged in hopper rebuilding programs to extend the lives of otherwise obsolete cars, especially 50-ton twin hoppers that were the mainstay of coal hauling for most of the 20th century. This is an easy kitbashing project to bring one of the more distinctive modifications in Appalachian coal hopper history to your layout.

History of the Southern’s Extended-Height Fleet

Rebuilding programs often involved increasing the capacity of … Read more →

SOU Brevard Branch, NC track plan HO

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SOU Brevard Branch, NC HO scale track plan by Dan Bourque
  • Size: 6′ x 22′
  • Scale: HO
  • Minimum Radius: 22″
  • Minimum Aisle Width: N/A″
  • Designed by Dan Bourque

Southern LogoThe Southern’s Brevard Branch stretched from Hendersonville, NC to Lake Toxaway, NC in the foothills of the Appalachians. The largest customer on the line was the paper mill in Ecusta, and in the 1980s the line was cut back to Ecusta, just short of the line’s namesake, Brevard. This branch was far from the coal fields, but a power plant at the mill received coal, so hoppers were a common sight along with tank cars and boxcars. The mill at Ecusta made fine paper for Bibles and … Read more →