Photos of mt Atlas P&LE Covered hopper

[tom]

Shown below is a model of a P&LE PS-2 covered hopper car. The car started out as a decorated Atlas covered hopper car. Atlas did an excellent job on the paint and graphics on this car but the molded on detail on this now Trainman model leaves a lot to be disired.



To bring the car up to my standards I replaced the huge coupler boxes with Kadee #78 couplers, replaced the trucks with Kato ASF trucks, replaced all of the molded on grabirons with 0.012 wire, and finally replaced the plastic running board with a much better looking Plano one.



Once all of the new parts were added I painted them to match the Atlas paint. I weathered the car using water color pencils and an airbrush.

The redetailed car looks fine running with today's models plus since decals for this scheme are not available the Atlas car is the only option.

[drolsen]

That looks great, Tom! The separate grab irons really make a huge difference. Looks like you added a separate trainline too.

This is a great approach for models (like you mentioned) where there are no decals available. Unfortunately that's becoming more common these days, although Microscale had pretty well introducing new sets recently.

Dave

[atsfan]

EXCELLENT !

[shoofly]

Oct 7, 2012 7:01:06 GMT -8 drolsen said:

That looks great, Tom! The separate grab irons really make a huge difference. Looks like you added a separate trainline too.

This is a great approach for models (like you mentioned) where there are no decals available. Unfortunately that's becoming more common these days, although Microscale had pretty well introducing new sets recently.

Dave

So much to do and so little time.....or research

Tom, your models are very inspirational! Think i might go with trimming out the rungs on those end cages and using the .012 wire too.

[theengineshed]

That's really nice work!

I did a couple of heavily reworked Aristo hoppers with wire grabs once upon a time. Never wanted to repeat the exercise...

I content myself these days with filing down the backside Trainman "slabs" and adding Plano boards. Thinning the Trainman grabs takes 30 minutes and makes a huge visual difference, but doesn't come close to Tom's "done right" example.

[buffalobill]

Tom: The work with separate grabs really makes the model. With the roof walk, really transitioned a so-so out of the box RTR model into a very nice model.
Bill

[rhpd42002]

That's a good looking car, Tom.

Those touches add a lot to it's appearance.