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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 8, 2023 4:30:03 GMT -8
In 1953, Canadian Pacific manufactured 50 all-new steel "streamlined" cupola cabooses at their famed Angus Shops in Montreal. The group was initially numbered 437405-454 but vans 437422, 437429 and 437448 were unfortunately scrapped by 1966. 45 of the remaining 47 were rebuilt to the first iteration of CP Rail's now-famous action yellow wide vision caboose in 1968-69. That left only 437442 and 437451 in service with their original cupolas. Both were repainted into action yellow in 1972-73 and remained in transfer service that way until the late-1980s.
Here is a quick February 1975 Bill Grandin image from my collection along with a CPR article promoting the revolutionary look 70 years ago!
HO scale models of the CP streamlined cupola caboose were never manufactured in plastic but Overland produced several accurate brass versions in 1991. There were a total of six versions of three numbers over the two streamlined vans that carried action yellow paint between 1972 and 1990. In order to maximize the benefit from engineering effort and tool/work area setup, I am building five models together. Not yet decided which of the six versions to model, so you may notice some duplication. The models will be scratch built completely from Evergreen and Plastruct styrene sheets & strips plus components from Accurail, Tichy, Black Cat, Grandt Line, Cal Scale, Bowser, Kadee, Moloco, Juneco, Plano and others. Paint and coatings suppliers include Tremclad, Rapido, TLT and Krylon while decals are by Microscale, Highball, Micromark and Black Cat.
I will try to update this thread with a photo every 1-2 days starting now until ALL FIVE models are totally finished. If you enjoy this type of content and want to see more be sure to hit the like button on the posts, follow along with me, ask questions and hopefully learn something from the builds. Here we go!
Today we get started with this view of my work area. For those interested, yes the wine caddy definitely had to be restocked after recent completion of 437110. 
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Post by cemr5396 on Sept 8, 2023 5:35:14 GMT -8
honest question, why not build one of (or lots of, lol) Dave Bedard's 3D printed kits of these?
or are you just scratch building for the sake of scratch building?
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Post by snootie3257 on Sept 8, 2023 5:44:03 GMT -8
honest question, why not build one of (or lots of, lol) Dave Bedard's 3D printed kits of these? or are you just scratch building for the sake of scratch building? Maybe he’s just a glutton for punishment 😁 Steve |
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Post by kentuckysouthernrwy on Sept 8, 2023 11:49:35 GMT -8
$$$ might be a factor.
The slanted cupola never inspired me, Ann Arbor and Pennsy come to mind. I do like watching the craftsmanship of real modeling. Going to need more wine...or dos Equis Draft...
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 8, 2023 12:05:03 GMT -8
$$$ might be a factor. Going to need more wine...or dos Equis Draft... Using styrene instead of kits helps me pay for the required amounts of wine to cope.  |
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Post by cpr4200 on Sept 8, 2023 12:59:48 GMT -8
I had no idea these were so rare in the 70's. I shot one of the two at Aroostook Jct in the late 70's.
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Post by nstophat on Sept 8, 2023 13:25:17 GMT -8
No wine glass in sight, the man must drink straight from the bottle.....
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Post by riogrande on Sept 8, 2023 13:27:08 GMT -8
Or the pitcher!
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Post by snootie3257 on Sept 8, 2023 13:28:30 GMT -8
No wine glass in sight, the man must drink straight from the bottle..... Been there. Steve |
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Post by Christian on Sept 8, 2023 15:07:44 GMT -8
The slanted cupola never inspired me, Ann Arbor and Pennsy come to mind. Wabash had a lot. They went to NW for a brief time. Alaska RR had 20 similar built by PC&F, but they were really ugly. John Comb's Alaska Railroad website: www.alaskarails.org/ |
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Post by wagnersteve on Sept 8, 2023 15:27:35 GMT -8
September 8, starting at 7:11 p.m., EDT
Re cabeese with slanted cupolas. The Ann Arbor got some because for quite a while it was a subsidiary of the Wabash. And if I'm remembering correctly, I think in the summer of 1964 the Manistique & Lake Superior, which was a subsidiary of the AA linked to it by an AA car ferry between Frankfort on Michigan's lower peninsula and Manistique on the same state's Upper Peninsula, also had one. That summer my family of origin drove across the then fairly new Mackinac Bridge and then headed west along Michigan's UP, spending a fair amount of time at Marquette and Ishpeming, before paralleling DN's DW&P line to International Falls, MN and crossing into western Ontario there.
That leads into a true story. Decades ago I was the high bidder, at $10, for three prints of watercolor paintings Howard Fogg had done for Alco at an auction in Boston sponsored by the club that had, and still has, layouts in three scales in the city's Roslindale section. I wanted, and still have, the one showing a D&H RS-2 powering a passenger train along Lake Champlain. I went to the bidder I outbid; he wanted the one of New Haven Alcos. I let him have that for $3. The third showed Ann Arbor FAs working the car ferry slip at Frankfort. After checking with Jim Hediger, who'd created a great HO model of a similar scene for Model Railroader, to be sure he'd like to have it, I sent it to him as a present. The Ann Arbor eventually went to the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton, whose paint scheme inspired the one Hediger used for his proto-freelanced HO railroad, the Ohio Southern, if I'm remembering right.
Sept. 9, starting at 7:26 a.m., still EDT
I've just now spotted a really unfortunate typo or computer-generated word change and fixed it. Michigan's larger peninsula is its lower, not loser, one! The English translation of the state's Latin motto is, "If you're seeking a pleasant peninsula, look around". That refers only to the lower one.
Michigan acquired its "U.P." in a deal that ended a serious altercation with Ohio, allowing that state to have the area including Toledo on Lake Erie. Negotiations that officially ended what Americans call the War of 1812 included a proposal to extend the parallel of latitude that defines the land border between northeastern New York State and the province of Quebec westwards; that did not become part of the final Treaty of Ghent. That left the south central part of Ontario in what became Canada, but both the entire south shore of Lake Superior as well as a large part of what became Minnesota became US territory. The former turned out to have important copper ore deposits and both to have a great deal of iron ore. Fighting between US and Canadian lumbermen in the so-called Aroostook War in the 1840s was ended by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, a compromise eased by the fact that each side had a map from the negotiations that ended the War of the American Revolution that tended to favor the other side's claims. The later Gadsden Purchase of a relatively small area now in the Southwestern USA from Mexico, years after much more had been yielded by Mexico after its defeat by the USA in a major war, was made specifically with the intent of building a railroad to the Pacific through it. Alaska was purchased from czarist Russia partly as a favor to that empire, which bribed some members of the US House and/or Senate to ensure its approval.
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Post by wagnersteve on Sept 8, 2023 15:30:39 GMT -8
7:28 p.m.
Christian, that Alaska Railroad caboose wears a livery that echoes the slope of nearest part of the cupola in the photo wonderfully!
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 9, 2023 4:24:03 GMT -8
5 streamlined cupola cabooses at once for efficiency!
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Post by Christian on Sept 9, 2023 6:27:28 GMT -8
5 streamlined cupola cabooses at once for efficiency! I'm watching to see how that will turn out. I'm at a big-time stall on a five-unit stack car simply because I'm bored with doing the work, again, on the remaining side of the fifth unit. I dread paint and decals. I really, really dread decals. There are well over a hundred teensy bits of decal. I can only recall one other freight car multiple that I built and in that case, things were fine. But that was back when expectations weren't so grand and the problem-solving was fun. (Boxcars with a 1/4" Plexiglas box under a laminated ABS skin.) (It might have been the copious methyl-chloride-based Plexiglas cement fumes that made that project seem to whizz by!) So I wish you and your bottles of courage well on this build! Why, if you are building five, are there seven underframes visible in the wine shot? |
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 9, 2023 7:43:48 GMT -8
^ Sorry to read your stacks are stalled. It would be cool if my thread inspired you to complete them. Good catch on the intro photo. Someone mentioned 3D vans upthread; the photo does have one of those in the top right corner. As for the other two, those are the wood vans described in another thread. I just wanted to show the state of the bench when I started the streamliners, esp since I know enquiring minds wanted to know about the home brew in the other corner.  |
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Post by Colin 't Hart on Sept 9, 2023 8:51:54 GMT -8
5 streamlined cupola cabooses at once for efficiency! I'd just be worried about screwing up the same thing on all 5... |
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 9, 2023 9:05:25 GMT -8
5 streamlined cupola cabooses at once for efficiency! I'd just be worried about screwing up the same thing on all 5... A legitimate concern on your part and a calculated risk on mine indeed. Besides, if that happens who will actually care? Learn from it, do better next time and be grateful for the pleasurable learning experience. |
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Post by grabirons on Sept 9, 2023 15:42:42 GMT -8
I'd just be worried about screwing up the same thing on all 5... A legitimate concern on your part and a calculated risk on mine indeed. Besides, if that happens who will actually care? Learn from it, do better next time and be grateful for the pleasurable learning wine drinking experience. There, I fixed it for you. |
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 10, 2023 6:05:21 GMT -8
Engineer the ends and mark the spots for trucks, draft gear and end sills.
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Post by edwardsutorik on Sept 10, 2023 6:59:50 GMT -8
Additional sloped cupola cabooses would be Great Northern X-1 through X-30 (built 1958-1959) and X-310 (built 1955, and more of a "rounded" cupola than slanted).
And CB&Q "waycars" class NE12 13560-13589 (built 1960).
All made it to BN.
Must been all those swept-wing airplanes showing up.
Ed
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Post by wagnersteve on Sept 10, 2023 9:13:16 GMT -8
Sunday, Sept. 10, starting 1:11 p.m., EDT
Those Burlington waycars with slanted front and back were the likely inspiration for what Bachmann calls its "offset cupola caboose". Somewhat crudely done, as usual. Photos of CB&Q 13564 and 13581 are on the great rr-fallenflags.org website.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 11, 2023 4:10:59 GMT -8
Sides from .040 plain sheet.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 12, 2023 4:23:45 GMT -8
Ends from side section of previous .040 plain sheet. Most of the sheet was useful with very little waste.
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Post by lvrr325 on Sept 12, 2023 18:58:25 GMT -8
That CP cupola looks so much like a Pennsy I wonder if you couldn't use one to fake it. Cut one out of a Bowser roof maybe.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 13, 2023 4:59:51 GMT -8
Most of the major sections have now been cut. One Evergreen sheet provided enough material for ends and sides of all 5 vans. Random small pieces at top are the only leftovers. A lot of thought was given to cut orientation in order to maximize raw materials.
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Post by kentuckysouthernrwy on Sept 13, 2023 5:19:48 GMT -8
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Post by Christian on Sept 13, 2023 6:42:41 GMT -8
Most of the major sections have now been cut. Here's where I cringe at multiples. Soon there will be five times as many windows to be cut into the walls and ends. A nibbler makes it bearable, but, I dunno, Five? It seems that cutting the blanks would be the highlight of this job for me. Here's to hoping you prove me wrong. (Then again, I don't have a bottle rack right on the workbench. Hummm?) |
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 13, 2023 7:23:54 GMT -8
Most of the major sections have now been cut. Here's where I cringe at multiples. Soon there will be five times as many windows to be cut into the walls and ends. A nibbler makes it bearable, but, I dunno, Five? It seems that cutting the blanks would be the highlight of this job for me. Here's to hoping you prove me wrong. (Then again, I don't have a bottle rack right on the workbench. Hummm?) LMAO at the ongoing rack commentary.
On the 5x thing, it seems this thread is about to get cringey for you but here's the thing. I have bought a lot of new tools lately to address the extra tedious aspects of doing 5 at once. When doing 1-2 it is easy enough to make do with very basic tools but with this many I am forced to adapt, procure and learn new methods and tools. And it is a pleasurable experience, such as yesterday's mail which brought me tools I had long resisted. That really boosted how I feel!
In your case especially, you have a lot of these tools and practice Christian, so I hope that this thread may prove that you may be more able than you think to tackle 5x. Remember a lot of time and effort goes into engineering scratch projects and you get an economy of scale by learning a concept or measurement once but applying and benefiting from it 5x!
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 14, 2023 4:30:04 GMT -8
Step sides cut with chopper for consistency. Each van needs eight sides for a total of 40 pieces. The Chopper is the right tool for this job, worth every penny.
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Post by sd40dash2 on Sept 15, 2023 4:24:35 GMT -8
Carefully measure and cut out angles for step sides and once again achieve nice consistent cuts.
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