These are the topics covered in this article:

    A. Disassembly

    B. Converting to Micro-Trains Z-scale couplers

    C. Upgrading the wheels

    D. Adding weight

    E. Applying weathering




A. Disassembly

Removing the frame from the body of this boxcar is simple, once you know how to do it! The photo below shows me using a small flat-head screwdriver inserted in between the body and the frame. This widens the body away from the frame. With a little tug the frame will fall away from the body quite easily.

Here are the two parts separated. The frame is mostly made of metal, and it carries almost all of the weight of the model.

This first step is to remove the trucks from the frame. This is done by pulling on the bolster pins which hold the truck in place. These are not easy to remove. I used a pair of needle-nose pliers. Care most be taken not to damage the pins too much.

Micro-Trains made it very easy for us to convert these cars to body-mounted N or Z-scale couplers. Pre-drilled holes are already present as can be seen in this close-up photo. The left-most hole is for Z-scale couplers and the right-most hole is for N-scale couplers.

It is a simple matter of inserting the coupler's supplied screw and, with a little determination, the new coupler is installed. The underbody is now finished.

After having converted the boxcar to body-mounted Z-scale couplers, the original trucks of the car need to be modified. The truck-mounted couplers have to be removed. The coupler can be removed by spreading the coupler body sides apart. The coupler will then just fall out. I used a pair of railnippers to cut off most of the coupler base. I don't bother with making this look pretty because it cannot be seen when the car is right-side up on the track.

Painting the wheels for me is a two-step process. The first step is to paint the inside of the wheels that is visible when viewing the car from its side profile. I have tried various paint colors. This time I decided to use Floquil's Rail Brown. I like that one the best. This makes the wheels look dull and dirty. The next step is to paint the wheel treads a metallic color to simulate the metal wheel's wear and tear. The photo below shows the wheels on my wheel painting jig.

The wheel treads have been painted with Poly Scale's "Stainless Steel".

The final step is to remove the wheels from the trucks again (putting them in the trucks makes it easier to paint the wheel threads), and weather the truck. I used various colors of the Bragdon Enterprise's weathering system. The weathering is subtle, but if you compare it with the photo above, you'll see the difference.

This car comes in at about 0.6oz which is about 0.35oz shy of the NMRA recommended practices for this three-inch model.

Several years ago upon a recommendation from one of the members of a Yahoo Groups mailing list, I bought some shot (small round balls of metal) to be used for weighing down our models. I had not used them yet, so I figured it was time to try them out on this model.

The photo on the right here shows the bag. I bought it at Bass Pro Shops for $15.00. I am not a hunter, but I suspect that any hunting supply store will carry this. This one bag will be enough to last me the rest of my life!

Because of the nature of this material, it needs to be constrained. I measured out about 3oz of the shot pellets and realized that I was going to need quite a few of them. The idea, then, was to build two boxes from styrene that sit right above the trucks. Since this is a boxcar, the interior was not fully visible, even with the doors open.

One side of the car's frame had a hole in it big enough to loose one of the pellets, so a styrene piece needed to be glued over it to keep the shot in the box.

Plastic glue was all that I needed to assemble the boxes and to then attach them to top of the frame. I made the boxes small enough to clear the body of the boxcar.

And the boxes have been filled. Of course, the shot has to be glued in place. At first I tried white glue, thinking that since it is liquid enough to drain through all the shot, that they would be bonded together. However, after several hours of drying time, the pellets were still loose. I decided to use superglue. Several drops of that in each box made this one cohesive unit. The car could now be turned upside-down without loosing its "load".

Weathering is very important to achieve a realistic look of our models. Since this model's doors can be opened, and the basic black of the underframe didn't seem like a suitable color, I painted the wooden boards of the inside of the visible frame using Poly Scale "D&RGW Building Brown". When the paint dried, I applied some weathering chalk to make the floor appear dirty and used.

The last step was to apply various colors of weathering chalk to the body.