A little more progress on the ACF CF3200 covered hopper.
I kind of made a bit of a foobar when I cut the shell and boxed myself into a corner. Back then when I cut the Weaver shell I assumed all 2 bay hoppers were the same size, give or take a bit and being as I had a drawing for the 3200 took the measurements off that to make the cuts.
Turns out all 2 bays are not the same and lengths vary from 32 to 39' in hopper lengths, most keep the same frame lengths between couplers of around 41-43'. Long story short the 3200 isn't a big batch model, early models were only built for one year (65-66) and totaled 605 cars, the second batch was built over a longer period (90-06) but again only 901 cars, frankly I was struggling to find one that suited my perceived traffic flow and paint scheme/railroad/lessor. The later ones are not given to mixing era's unless your modeling up to dater stuff, which I'd like to do (generic stock and scenery, change the power for era's and Railroads.
Anyway, after much digging I finally found that some of the early batch were still being refurbished/serviced and going strong in 2006 so that kind of clinched it, plus they're in BNSF red oxide which I rather like.
One advantage of the early batch is that all the brakes are below decks which makes all the rigging (if any at all) on the end platforms/porches much easier/non existent. The down side is high level handbrake mechanisms and more complex end cages and steps.
Basically my chopped shell now had a prototype to match so I sallied forth.
First up was a new end sheet in brass, scribed and bent to shape and secured to the shell with copious amounts of super glue, it'll not come off as eventually pretty much all the of the brass will be seam soldered, at that stage you could probably remove the plastic core, bit like the paper mache balloon heads I used to make at primary school.
Step two was the porch/end deck, I've made a bit of an error in the first one and cut it a little too thin to meet the new lower cills when they get fitted, there is an inner cover plate but it would have been nice if the floor went full width to give extra strength. The rear of the porch has two large pieces of scrap 0.7 mm etch added, these hook behind the Plasticard end wall and when glued with Devcon 5 min is a rock solid platform. The porch extends into the inner area and two 8BA nuts (plus two the other end) will help secure the inner hopper and gate sub section later.
The end plates will also support the combined draft gear box and truck bolster, Kaydees will be fitted but not in their housings I bin them and fit them into my detailed 3D draft boxes with a closure plate. That way I can retain the compression springing and auto extending on curves and have decent looking draft boxes. The concept worked very well on the EMD 2nd Gen diesel test build.
The final step for today was the side skin, a sheet of 10 thou rolled to the right profile and the ends shaped accordingly, the welded seam representations look okay for now but might diminish after paint but there are some tricks you can do with aggressive and dark base colours to enhance the visual effect if you lay the final layer thinly.
The side skin is just held on with double sided tape for the photos, it needs to come off to all the second end sheet to be profiled accurately once fitted. The thin skin overlap over the end sheet is exactly why I've gone to all this effort, on the Weaver model it's virtually non existent and what is there is massively thick.
The next stage is to replicate these three parts for the other side and end, then form the lower cills and new upper cills and just for the hell of it I'll skin the roof as it has a small overhang at the end sheets.
peco-uk.com
