Wabash Blue Bird

[Sokramiketes]

Yes I’m all over the place, but I love passenger cars.

Just finished this attempt on the old Rowa dome:

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Sanded off the corrugations.

Tamiya TS-26 Pure White over white primer.
Tamiya TS-15 Blue over TS-14 Black base.
Tamiya TS-32 Haze Gray Roof over gray primer

Gary Roe decals.

Was also messing around with a RailSmith baggage car behind.

Kato dome coaches. And I’m modifying the old master for the Twin Cities dome obs for Wabash 1601.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[nickelplate759]

Woohoo!

Looking really good so far, can't wait to see how the rest of it turns out.

[nickelplate759]

@Sokramiketes - by the way, that's the best-looking rework of a Rowa dome I've every seen.   What paint did you use for the grey roof, but more important, how did you get the roof itself to be straight?  I have a bunch of old Rowa cars and the roofs have all got some kind of warp to them.

[Sokramiketes]

@Sokramiketes - by the way, that's the best-looking rework of a Rowa dome I've every seen.   What paint did you use for the grey roof, but more important, how did you get the roof itself to be straight?  I have a bunch of old Rowa cars and the roofs have all got some kind of warp to them.

Thanks!  I have a bunch of C&O domes that all have banana roofs or some shrink marks in the roof profile.  And for some reason they don't have the heat pressed silver window frames. 

This was a Southern scheme car, which was remarkably straight.  And had the silver window frame inserts.  The bad news, as you can see in one window, is that the car lighting wire melted into the second pane of glass.  So I'm still on the look out for a clean set of glass. 

Roof color is TS-32 Haze Gray, Tamiya.  It has the slight bluish tinge, and is the same overall tone as the roofs on the Kato PA's. 

[nkalanaga]

If the window damage is on the inside, could you maybe fill it with clear epoxy, or a similar material, to minimize the reflections?  If so, add window shades, with that one pulled all the way down, and it would at least be less noticeable.

[peteski]

It is amazing how good those old Rowa cars were made, even compared to contemporary models.  The hot-foil-applied window frames, molded-in (but not grossly out of scale) window blinds, nice interiors and underframes. Sure, no separately-applied details, but all the molded-in details are finely rendered and look darn good.


The "banana roofs" were caused by the strong solvent glue used to glue in the roof retaining brackets under the roof.  It caused the roof to bow. That is unfortunate because there is no really good fix for that.  Some of the glue was so heavily applied that it caused sink marks on the roof surface (it penetrated through the thickness of the roof's plastic).


Even their packaging was really creative.  They came in their own "display cases": a clear cover, while the bottom part had actual track and roadbed molded in.

[nkalanaga]

I have two of their steam locos, the Y6b and NKP 2-8-4, that came in the same type of case.  That Y6B is by far the best running of my few steamers.

[thomasjmdavis]

I need to pull my old, mostly Kato based, Blue Bird project out of the mothballs, and get back to work on it.  I was about 90% done, but had a series of paint failures.  Essentially, I could not keep the blue where I wanted it, over the "stainless" paint.  I am thinking, this time around, I may do the blue first, try to mask that, and then overspray gray followed by the silver/stainless steel.

[Sokramiketes]

One of the things I noticed on the prototype was that the roof gray comes down the car side a couple inches. 

This also helps hide any roof issues, on this particular paint scheme, by giving a nice straight edge for the eye to see. 

I ran into the issue with the solvant glue.  I peeled away the underframe hoping to paint it separate. It ended up in about 12 pieces, so I was hoping one of my other cars wasn't glued together.  Nope, that was the factory approach.

So don't disassemble too far. 

[Bobster]

Mike,

Beautiful work.  I never could figure out the roof color on 1602.  I guess I didn't have the right sources.  Now I can proceed.

I was in 1601 a few years back in Duluth, GA  I know it has been modified since the Wabash days but a lot of original details were there too.  If you want to see the 1601 pictures I can post them here.  There were 2 dome coaches and a heavyweight baggage -? (rusted, with NS markings) when I was at the Southern Railway museum.  I have heard that the dome coaches were for sale and that one was already gone.

Again good work.

Bobster

[Sokramiketes]

Post away! Would love to see the photos.

[Bobster]

Mike,

Sorry I didn't get the pictures up yet.  I switched computers and I had separated them from family pictures. I found them.  Hopefully tonight I will get posting.

Bob

[Bobster]

Tried posting 10 inline expandable pictures - failed. Will try again Friday. Here are the rear disk brakes on 1601.

Bob

[peteski]

Tried posting 10 inline expandable pictures - failed. Will try again Friday. Here are the rear disk brakes on 1601.

Bob

Bob, why not create a gallery album and upload all the photos there?  It is much handier (and can be viewed by more people) than photos uploaded to a post.  See https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=42854.0  I'm got a bit wordy, but it gets things explained.

[Bobster]

Peteski,

Thank you for the advice.  I'll give it a try.

Bobster