85ft Lima Baggage chopped down to 70 ft

[Specter3]

I got a Lima baggage car off the bay and at 85 ft it is too long for my 1920 time frame. SO for a try at a shorter car I broke out the saw.









About an hour into it.

[OldEastRR]

Technical note: that is not a Lima car, it was sold by Atlas/Rivarrosi/ConCor. But nice work. Those cars are nice to chop up into any number of versions used by various RRs. Adding specific type doors is easy.

[jmlaboda]

This was a Concor creation, tooled after Atlas had dropped the Rivarossi passenger cars.  It is based, obviously, on the combine.

[Lemosteam]

Just did one down to 65' myself:

[Specter3]

Jerry

It still has the seats in one end of it!

[Cajonpassfan]

This was a Concor creation, tooled after Atlas had dropped the Rivarossi passenger cars.  It is based, obviously, on the combine.

Just an interesting bit of history on these...
The baggage car is a model of a one-of-a-kind ATSF car, 1849, rebuilt by the railroad from the Buffet- Library car San Vicente during WWII. My model of it has RivaRossi markings. Other, similar B/L cars were rebuilt into "rider" cars and graced the rear of many Santa Fe mail trains for many years. Models of those cars, also made by RR, were sold as "combines", but only had a baggage/storage mail section and a small rider section, mostly for deadheading employees (although anyone could buy a ticket if they knew about the train....it wasn't in public timetables).
Btw, the sill running along the bottom is a dead giveaway for ATSF heavyweights.
Fun stuff, Otto K.

[thomasjmdavis]

Well worth the effort to get a bit of variety without the expense brand new cars- and the Rivarossi/Atlas/Con Cor/Arnold cars go for cheap on eBay and at train shows.
Here is mine from a few years ago-
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And a personal best for Rivarossi kitbashing fanaticism- a not particularly accurate 1100 series rebuilt coach- IIRC, I cut up 2 diners and used leftovers from turning 2 combines into a baggage car- so parts from 4 different cars.
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[John]

Nice work .. this is the type of things we want the forum to be for .. a place where you guys can show your work..

[Specter3]

What method do you guys use to make cuts square?

[Lemosteam]

I always cut long and use a wide bottom square block of hardwood on top of a 220 grit sandpaper that is taped for the entire perimeter to a very flat surface like a countertop or desktop. I align the workpiece so that it is square in both directions (completely perpendicular) and "push" the workpiece ahead of the block trying to apply slight downward pressure (never back and forth) until I can see that the sandpaper has smoothed the entire cut to a single plane. Then I continue to sand in this fashion until I reach my original cut marks. It is slow and trial and error all the way.

[Specter3]

Very patient filing and a flat surface.

[OldEastRR]

What method do you guys use to make cuts square?

I de-construct the car by cutting at the corners and along the floor-side junction so I can remove the whole side from the frame. Then I can re-work/shorten the car side easily. If I need to cut down the car length, I make sure final joints of the floor and the car sides are not in the same place, to make a strong construction. To fill the kerf cut where the floor and walls are re-joined I use strip styrene of a thickness to fill  the gap between the floor and the re-attached side.  Since this strip can't be seen no worries about how it looks.
I do it this way because a) I can never make exactly square cuts in the sides and it's a mess trying to fix an ugly joint, and b) staggering the joints holding the two car parts together makes a stronger construction.