I was browsing the Missabe Railroad Historical Society website the other day and found a couple of really cool prototypes that would make some interesting scratch building projects.
What really draws me to these items is the uniqueness most of them have. Many of the items I’ve listed below appear to be old ore cars being reused for new tasks which I think is really cool.
Car Shops Flat Car – MRHS Link
Photo Copyright Doug Buell
This is something I’m going to try and model (which is why I’ve posted a picture rather than just linking). It appears to me that it’s the remnants of a ore hopper putting it at about 22′. I’m really excited about the idea of building one of these but I have yet to decided how to start.
One obvious advantage to this project is that no lettering is needed!
Tie Car #6352 – MRHS Link
This is another project I’m going to try and model. I already have some flat cars that I once tried doing a custom paint job on that I have lined up to be made into Missabe flats. Other than paint and decals (available through the MRHS) all that I’d have to build is the end racks
Sand Cars – W-24158, W-24187, W-24456, and W-24899
This projects would likely make the most sense to do as kitbashes on ore cars (old MDC kits are fairly easy to find online). I’ll have to some more research if/when I get around to it but it appears from a glance that I would basically need to build covers for ore cars.
Ballast Cars – W-1410, W-1460, W-1465, W-1494, W-24350 and W-32675
These would be a little bit more difficult to build but it might be feasible to kitbash ore car models since they appear to be retrofits of old ore cars.
Scale Test Cars – W-32499 and W-132499
These cars could easily be kitbashes as well as they appear to be plated over ore cars. Since they are basically just boxes on wheels it might be just as easy to scratch build them.
Ore Test Cars – MRHS Link
What interests me in these is the uniqueness of it. The Missabe was testing three different air-operated dumping doors from different manufacturers and painted the three test cars different colors to easily tell which is which.
RDC-3
As regular readers may know I recently picked up a nice brass RDC on a trade. My original plan was to model it after the Missabe’s only RDC but after a lot of research I decided that with a nice brass model like that I was going to do it up the best I could and try to be as prototypically accurate as I could (which is why I’m taking that RDC and modeling it as the Budd demostrator).
I still have a lot of interest in doing the Missabe RDC if I find a good accurate model to start with
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