Building the Body

I have never built a freight car kit. This is my first project as such. I have built plenty of plastic and wooden structure kits, including scratchbuilt ones. My first impressions of this kit when I finally sat down to start building it were less than favorable. Most of the kit is made out of urethane. Virtually all of the parts had a lot of flash to remove (not a big issue), and they were all warped or even deformed. I had never worked with urethane before, so I asked on the Yahoo S-scale mailing list about how to attempt to straighten out the parts. I got several good suggestions. The one I tried was putting a shallow oven-safe container in the conventional oven and let it heat up to about 200°F. The two end pieces of the body were in sad shape. I dropped those in the water and let them sit for about 15 minutes. After I removed them from the oven, I put some metal weights on them to straigthen them out. The bottom of one of the end pieces was deformed. I tried squeezing it straight using weights. It helped a bit, but as you can see from the first photo, I could only correct it a little bit (see the bottom of the one on the right). That piece also has brake platform supports cast into it, and those were warped. However, they magically straightened themselves out while in the oven. This photo shows the four parts that make up the basic body of the car, after they have been cleared of flash and straightened out as much as possible.

I took the best of the two pieces and glued them together to provide a good foundation upon which to build. For glue I used ACC (superglue). I used whatever tools and weights I could find to make sure the parts were glued at a 90° angle, and that their tops were even. The parts are shown upside down. To do the glue-up, I first glued the thin section of the end panel (the actual bottom of the end panel) to the larger side panel. I let that completely dry. Then I went back and glued the rest of the end panel to the side panel. Using this approach allowed me to deal with the warpedness of the panels, and perhaps forced them into the correct position.

I then did the same thing for the other two pieces to form the two L-shaped subsections. Next I glued them together to form the basic body.

Building the Underframe

The next step was to assemble the hopper chutes at the bottom of the car. I decided to not deal with the warp in the parts, but try to force them into alignment during assembly. These three parts slip into each other (the triangular center piece slips under the dividers and rests on the flat surface of the chute parts). It takes a bit of filing and sanding to get them to all fit together. However, the whole assembly can be held together to apply glue at strategic spots, so that makes assembly of this section easier.

The center dividers of the two outside pieces need to line up. The way I glued this assembly was to hold the parts together, make sure the center dividers lined up, and put one drop of glue on the surface of where the center dividers intersect with the triangular piece. Holding it together for 30 seconds made sure the parts stayed together. I let that cure for a while.

I could then finish gluing all the surfaces together. I applied that glue on the underside of the assembly so as to not have any glue blobs visible from the top. The bottom of the assembly is shown in the next photo.

Since the underframe is going to be painted the same color as the rest of the car, I decided to continue building this project. The next photo shows the body glued to the frame. I also prepared the slanted pieces that close off the car body. This photo also shows a straight-up shot of the body. Now that the body and the underframe are attached, you can see how warped the kit's parts are. The end on the right is halfway acceptable, but the left end is quite warped. I am going to continue building this kit and see how it turns out. I might write it off as a car that's been in an accident and the maintenance crew hasn't gotten around to fixing it yet. However, I am quite disappointed with this kit, considering how much I paid for it. I don't know if I just got a lemon kit, or if this was a problem with all the H21 kits B.T.S. manufactured. At this point in time I am thinking about using this kit as a go-by for a scratchbuilding project for one or more H21a hoppers.

After some filing I got the bottom angled panels to fit. I decided to make it fit flush against the top of the panel, which left a gap near the bottom of the car. The thought is that I can always fill it with some coal to hide the imperfections.

Next I glued the end sills to each end of the car. Through studying prototype photos I learned that the curved part of the end sill is to match up with the bottom edge of the end frame of the car. You can see that in the next photo.

There is a dimple in the bolster/coupler pocket for drilling a hole with a #50 drill bit. This photo shows the hole drilled in each and the flash removed.

The end sill where the bolster/coupler pocket part fits in to needs to be cleared to be able to take the part. It turned out to be a bit of a wood-carving project to clear the rounded flash from the end sill. Looking back at it, it might have been easier to have done this before gluing the end sill onto the car body, but I didn't know. I used a combination of attempting to carve out the flash in the end sill with the tip of a knife, and sanding rounded corners on the end of the bolster/coupler pocket parts. Before gluing the bolster/coupler pocket to the car body, I prepared, test fitted, and laid in place the bolster support sheet. Once the bolster/coupler pocket is glued in place, you can't get that part into the space anymore.

Because of the warping of the car body, it took a bit of elbow grease to get the bolster support sheet in place and glued, but I eventually got it.

Here's the car at this stage (the right hand side in the photo is the heavily warped edge).

This is a close-up of two L-shaped pieces of styrene that are to be glued under the slope sheets. These need to be cut to length and then filed to match the shape of the parts against which they are to be glued. It is mostly a trial-n-error process.

The next photo shows them glued into their approximately-correct location. This needs to be done for both ends of the car.

The bolster plates need to be test fitted. The instructions weren't clear as to when to install these, so I did them at this stage. I simply put a line of superglue on the bolster support sheet's edge and then carefully placed the bolster plates.

The next major step is to prepare and install the brake system. I tried to follow the instructions, but I had a hard time soldering the brake lines to the various parts. The joints weren't strong enough, even after I drilled the holes deeper in the various parts. The next photo shows the air line soldered to the brake cylinder. However, during the installation of the brake cylinder, the air line broke off. I finally decided to give up and not model the air lines. Note that the brake cylinder piston has been turned 90° on the rod.

The next photo shows the brake cylinder glued to the cylinder bracket (after clearing its hole from flash), and then glued to the center sill. This photo shows the model upside down.

The triple valve is next. I positioned it so that the five holes are on the right-hand side. I glued it onto the bolster/coupler pocket with superglue.

The air tank bracket needs to be filed down and shaped to fit its location. The photo below shows it glued to the air tank. It is supposed to fit under the two lips on the air tank, but I wanted something that was a strong joint, so I glued it in between the two lips. I could then position it and determine where to file the back of the bracket so that it slips over the side of the car frame.

After I glued the bracket to the car's frame, I also put a drop of superglue where the air tank sits against the vertical bolster support plate in the back. This should hold it in place.

Although I had a hard time previously trying to hook up the wires between the parts, I decided to at least do two between the triple valve and the air tank. It gives the impression that there is more going on in the car than there really is. These two wires required a bit of patience to shape to fit between the parts and to glue them in place. The photo is horribly over-exposed, but it clearly shows the two wires.

We are now done with the underbody details, and it is time to work on the upper body. The inside rivet strips are next. As is part and parcel for this kit, each of these were badly deformed and not well cast. After clearing off all the flash and cleaning them up as best I could, I glued them in the correct locations. The bottoms of the first and last rivet strips have to be trimmed to match the angle of the inside slope.

I then did the other side also. After cutting them to length, I sanded the tops flush with the top of the car.

Next, the two cross brace panels were installed. These didn't fit correctly due to the misshapen bottom buckets. They had to be made less wide to fit the body.

The cross brace beams needed to be filed to the correct length also.

It took me a little while to figure out how to orient the brake fulcrum, shown in the photo below. The part is shown in the direction in which I installed it. I'm not sure if it is oriented in the right way, because there are no instructions on how to install it and no clear photo of it.

to be continued...