Let's Build an On30 Work Caboose! | Thunder Mesa Model Railroad

Howdy folks, Dave here for Thunder Mesa Trains. Welcome back to the studio, where today I think I want to pick up right about where we left off last time when I built the steam donkey crane car for the ON30 Thunder Mesa Mining Company layout. And if you haven't seen that video, you know of course you can check it out here at the link. But if you did watch it, you know that I started with a 3D printed resin semi-kit that I picked up online. And it came with a 16-foot flat car to use with the the steam donkey crane. Now I ended up not using that 16-foot car even after I put a whole bunch of work into it. I used a longer Bachmann flat car instead. So this 16-foot car is still sitting over here on my bench and today I think we're going to figure out what to do with it. Now I was pretty far along in the crane car build when I changed my mind and decided not to use this 16-foot 3D printed car. I just thought it looked a little too small with that with the steam donkey and that big crane coming out. So what we've got here is a little flat car that's almost ready to go for something else. You know, my initial thought was maybe a blacksmith car. But the more I thought about it, I thought maybe something like a work caboose or tool caboose would be better. But before we move forward with all of that, I think we should jump into the Wayback Machine, go back to the crane car build, and I can show you all of the work that I put into this car to bring it up to this point. Most of which was cut from the earlier video because I ended up, you know, not using it. Let's see, I remember it like it was yesterday or maybe last week. I was prepping the parts and painting them. This is some Rust-Oleum dark brown camo. I find it makes an excellent primer for this kind of thing. All right, let that first base coat dry. And now I want to mask off everything below the wooden deck on the flat car because I want to paint this a different color. Let's take some blue painter's tape and come right up to the bottom of that decking right there. And whether you prefer an airbrush or, you know, like to use a rattle can like I do, the masking process is pretty much the same. You've got to remember the modeler's rule when it comes to masking, and that's if it's a good mask, it's probably a pain in the butt to apply. And the color I'm using for this, once again, some Rust-Oleum flat camo, kind of a light grayish tan color. Now let's see how we did on this. All right, now I want to brush paint just the edges of the flat car frame with some of this Apple Barrel Chocolate Bar, which in spite of the name is actually a really nice dark kind of red oxide color, boxcar red. Some of you may be wondering why I went to the trouble of masking this. I was just going to go back and paint over the edges anyway. It's because I wanted the darker color underneath. I wanted the dark underpainting underneath this red. If I'd use this color, it would be a little bit too light. So you can see we've got the red on the edges and still the darker brown underneath. This lighter shade is some Barn Red. Just dry brush over the surface a little bit and bring out some of that wood grain. And then some dry brushing up here on the deck as well, using some grays and tans. Make this look more like old weathered wood. And then a dark acrylic wash over the top of all of that. That's going to seep back in to the wood grain, which has been 3D printed on there. Make that look a lot more realistic and believable. And then I'll hit all of the details on the truck side frames with some tans and grays as well. So I found some truck screws in my scrap box. I think these are from an old HO scale MDC roundhouse kit. You want the trucks to spin freely, more or less, on the screws. But you want a tight fit in the hole and the bolster here. I'm going to need to drill this out. And I've got a 1 16th of an inch bit here, which is a little bit smaller in diameter than this screw. So my hope is I can drill this out and then I can self tap these screws in here. Mark the bit so I don't drill all the way through the car. And this is a high speed bit for a power drill, but I'm just going to use it like a hand drill. Now let's see if I can tap these screws in here. Let's try those on for size. I'm looking at the bottom of this car and there probably should be some sort of truss rod in here. But the bigger issue is that there's no brakes of any kind and that's not going to work. It's got to have some sort of brake on here. So back to the scrap box I go to see if I can find some sort of brake cylinder to put in here and figure out some kind of truss rod. So I've got an O scale 6x8 here. Cut that to the proper length. And this center bolster comes up a little bit higher than the outside rails of the car. So I'm going to need to trim that bit out. And that should fit right over the top of that without rocking. And then I found this little brake cylinder. Again, this is HO scale from an MDC Roundhouse old time tank car kit. Pick those kits up and you can find them. They are a wealth of little detail parts and things that you can use in 0N30 models. Yeah, this is a really small brake cylinder but it's a really small car. It's a small narrow gauge car. So a full size standard gauge brake cylinder in HO is going to be, you know, somewhat believable for 0N30. Just drill a hole to mount that. Now I can glue the brake cylinder down into the hole I drilled. And I've marked the center point of the car. So I'll glue this center beam in for the truss rods. Now I need to drill four holes near the base of these truck bolsters. And those holes are to receive some 0.016 size brass wire that will represent truss rods here. What I discovered is I don't need to drill holes in this end. I could just put little notches up here because then I can run the wire down through that big opening. Bend it over the top of the king post and then down into the hole I just drilled. Then I can secure it at each end with some CA and then just trim off the excess here at the hole. And after a little touch up with the paint I think we're okay. And that's how we got to this point. But now I'm ready to finish this car and turn it into something new and unique. And to help things along I've made myself some laser cut parts here. I've got some walls cut out of some 1.16 inch thick basswood plywood. I've got some laser board doors and windows. I've got a couple of stencils. I've got some trim pieces cut from this very thin 32nd of an inch thick basswood. And I think I want to start the way I usually do by distressing and staining all these wood pieces. And my goal here is to have a funky old car that looks like it might have been built right here at home in the Thunder Mesa shops. Going over all of these scribe boards with a fine tooth razor saw to enhance the grain a little bit. I'm going to stain all of these pieces with my shoe dye and rubbing alcohol mixture. I've described how I make this many times. Just get a bottle of shoe dye and empty it all out into another container. I prefer black for this. And then fill that container up with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Shake it up and all that residue that was left in there that mixes with the alcohol and makes a very nice silvery gray wood stain. Now this little shack is not going to cover the entire car. It's just going to sit back on one end like this. And it's a scale about seven feet long by about six and a half feet wide. While I wait for the stain to dry, I'm going to go ahead and assemble the doors and windows. And the parts are cut from some 25 one thousandth of an inch thick laser board. This just goes on top of this like that using some good old Titebond wood glue. And those are going to fit in there. And then on these little caboose windows, just have an outer frame that can glue right on top of the larger inner frame. Then each of the outer window frames has a separately applied sill that's glued down on the bottom like that. Now I want to prime all the door and window pieces with this Rust-Oleum kind of grayish tan ultra flat camo. It's a fairly good match for the color of the stained wood. And now with the stain dry, I can start assembling the walls. I want to cut some braces for the interior corners. I've got some O scale six by six here for that. I need four of those. And those need to be glued here on the interiors of the end walls flush with this edge. And that gives us a lot more glue surface for when we put this sidewall on. And it makes it a lot easier to keep this square. Here's a little notch coming down here for the sloped roof. Fits right into that corner there. Keys together. Now this is designed to come down over the edge there and basically bolt onto the frame like that. But we've got a little bit of extra decking hanging over the edge here, so I need to trim that away. This should fit down here. All of this is going to be painted the same color so I can finish adding the trim. And that's how it's looking after the trim is on there. I want to use the same color of paint that I used on the side frames of the car, and that's this Apple Barrel Chocolate Bar, which is actually much more red than brown. It's kind of a dark red oxide. And I'm going to apply it with this stencil brush, also known as a stipple brush, because this is the way you use it like that. You stab down. Get some paint on there and then stipple it on. And this is going to simulate the look of old crack and worn paint. I'm going to get lighter as I go down towards the bottom edge of the car. About the only place I want solid coverage is on the inside edges of these door and window openings. And while the paint is still tacky, I'll take the flat edge of my hobby knife and scrape some more off. Let that stain underneath show through. And after that step, I do believe we're ready for the stencils. And these fit right under there like that, plus with this wall and the edge of the window. What I like to do with these is spray the back with a low-tack photo mount adhesive and put it in place and then tape off the rest of the car so I can spray these. Now I just tape off everything that I don't want to be painted. Now I just want to go over that very lightly with some flat white. As soon as the paint is no longer shiny, I think I can go ahead and peel the stencils off. Get in there with my knife. And that is exactly the look I was going for. Now I want to go back over the entire thing with my watercolors with a mixture of burnt sienna and cobalt blue. If you haven't tried watercolor weathering, I do highly recommend it. I've been doing it for years. One of my secret weapons. In particular, you see how this looks now, how that white is a little too bright. Go over that with this mixture and immediately it looks more realistic. And if you're worried about the impermanence of watercolor or coming off, just spray the model when you're done with some some testers dull coat or other dull enamel or acrylic finish. It will last the life of the model. And now I want to paint the doors and the windows in pretty much the same way that I did the walls. Stipple on that red oxide and come back and scrape some of it off and then go back over it with a watercolor wash. Now I'm ready to glaze these doors and windows, but I decided I want to have one of these windows boarded up on this back door, you know, like the the glass got broken out. A little scrap piece of basswood here. And I'll do the rest of these with some clear acrylic. Remove the backing. Glue this on here with some zap canopy glue. And the same thing for the windows. I want to add some doorknobs before I install these doors. I've got a couple of Pico track nails. I like these better than Atlas track nails for doorknobs because the heads are smaller. So all I need to do is drill a couple of holes here using a size of 72 bit in my twist drill. Now I can push these through. I like to push them all the way in. Get some CA on there and then pull it back just a little bit. Then I can just trim these off. Now before I install these, I want to spray some Velcote on the back. And that's just to fog the glass a little bit. It's also to give it some tooth so I can weather the interior of the glazing and make the glass look dirty. And with that done, I'll just take some chalks, some grays and tans here. Brush it on the back. Now I can glue the doors and windows into their respective openings. I want the doors in there flush with the interior wall. And then the windows get glued right into the openings like that. And finally, the window frames get glued right on top. Then I want to add some blinds behind these side windows with some green blotter paper. Make sure that's straight. Now I can glue the doghouse in place on the flat car with a couple of drops of CA. Make sure that's about two scale feet on the end. Yeah, that's good. And I've cut myself some slatted roof panels here. Make it look like using some nine inch wide boards. This is just cut out of some chipboard. And I'm going to stain the undersides of this where it's going to show using a Minwax Early American stain marker. And before I glue those on, I just want to take my sanding block real quick and sand down the edge of this piece of trim so it matches the angle of the roof here. Line this panel up, glue it into place. And the roof is really what's going to give this a funky home-built look. Now I'm applying some black construction paper to act as tar paper on the roof here, putting it on with some yellow glue. That's not going to be the final look of the roof. I'm going to put some corrugated roofing on top of that, but there should be something underneath it. So put some black tar paper down, just like you would on a real roof. And I'll put a little tar paper cap on this as well. I'm going to use some of this nifty corrugated material from Full Circle Models. It's pre-printed with the little rust weathering already on there. Cut these into three by four foot panels that fit on the car. I want a little bit of an overhang here, and then the next one overlapping the last one by about six scale inches or so. You might notice I don't have a smoke jack for a stove on this little caboose. That's because this one is primarily just a rolling tool shed. And then I like to cap the roof by taking some thin pieces of the corrugated material and folding them over. And of course you want to overlap those as well. Now you can leave well enough alone with this roofing because it has the rust already printed on there, but I like to come back and touch it up with my pan pastels. This takes the shine down of the printed material. Don't forget the edges. And always a good bit of weathering to add to any steam era equipment. There's some black soot right down the center of the roof. For that I'm just using some black chalk. Now I'll get some spray matte finish on there, lock all that in place. When you look up under here you see the tar paper and everything. That's the whole reason to go to all that trouble. Well now I'm working on the gondola sides for this part of the car using some scribed basswood. And I like to take my sanding block, get the top edge here, and kind of wear parts away. Add some wear and tear there where you know things would be tossed over the side, hit the boards, and damage them a little bit. So it ends up looking like that. I also want to punch up the stain on here a little bit. I'm going to use my watercolors, darken this, make it a little bit richer. That top edge. Now I'm cutting the stakes for the sides out of some O scale 4x4. And we'll get some stain on those as well. And now I want to draw a guideline, a scale foot in, from the ends on each side of these. And that's going to show me exactly where to glue these on. And now comes everybody's favorite, a whole bunch of nut bolt washer castings. You knew this was coming, right? Five holes in each one of these 4x4s using a number 72 bit. And I've got some Grantline size 100. These are teeny tiny nut bolt washer castings. These are about one inch bolts in O scale. So for each one I need to cut it carefully off of the sprue, grab the top, the head, with some tweezers, dip the end and do some cyanoacrylate, and then push it down into the hole that I drilled. Nothing to it. And that's pretty much the look we're going for right there. And with that job done, these can now be glued into place on the sides of the car. And while I'm at it with the nut bolt washer castings, I've got some larger ones here. These are some Grantline number 16s with a big three inch washer on there. And I'm using those to bolt the sides of the doghouse to the frame of the car. And I had given myself some holes. I'd laser cut some holes down at the bottom of the walls here, but just making them a little bit bigger to accept these castings. And for these I use a toothpick to apply a little bit of CA to the hole, then push the casting in there. And for this end of the car I've created some handrails. Cut this from some 25 thou laser board. Just have that bolted to the end of the car, just like that. A little CA on there. Center that over the coupler pocket. And I'll drill these out for these nice brass NVWs that I got from Precision Scale. We'll get a little rust and grime on there. And that's how that looks. And then I've got some stirrup steps, which I cut out of the same kind of laser board as this. And fortunately I've already applied the nut bolt washer castings to these, so you don't have to watch me do that. Now I'm about ready to install the trucks and the couplers. I like to put the couplers on first, because it's a little bit easier that way. And this 3D printed car, it has coupler pockets here, which are designed to accept these KD draft gear boxes. These are some number 232 draft gear boxes. And then I've got some number 5 steel shank couplers. And I need to do a few modifications before I can install these. First thing I want to do is cut off the coupler trip pins. That's because there are no air hoses, no MU hoses, on the Thunder Mesa line. We're the late 19th century, so those haven't been installed yet. And I don't use the magnetic uncoupling anyway. I do my uncoupling usually with a bamboo skewer. And then I want to remove these ears from the sides of the draft gear boxes. Those are for extra screws, and we're not going to need those. I'm going to put the centering spring in place inside the draft gear box with the lid with the peg right on there. Drop that on top and drop this screw in here. And that's going to hold this whole thing together. Make sure that self-centering spring still works. And I'll drop those into the pockets. And I've already painted these truck side frames, but I want to rust them up a little bit with my pan pastels. I always like to hit the springs with a lighter rust. Got some matte finish on these trucks. Now I'm ready to install the wheel sets. These are some KD HO scale 36 inch wheels. 36 inches in HO, but about 18 inches in ON30. Those go nice and easily into the trucks. I like that. Now I just want to tighten up the truck screws. Don't want them too tight though. I want the to be able to swivel freely in there. We've got ourselves a car. Now I can start adding a few details. And the first thing I want to add is a worn and broken down old board here across the front of the gondola section. That fits right there in between those boards. And then the brake cylinder is right under here on this side. That's facing this way. Put the bracket with the brake wheel right about there. And I'll drill that out a little bit and we can put the brake wheel on. And this is a brake wheel from my scrap box. That's some music wire, a shaft. Now I want to start detailing the car with a few likely items. I've got a keg here which should probably be holding some rail spikes. Put a little glue down there. I've got some rusty old cable with a hook on there. The cable is some crochet thread and the hook is 3D printed. I've stiffened all of the thread with some white glue and weathered it with some pan pastels to make it look old and rusty. This spot right here seems like a good place for this toolbox. That's a white metal casting. I can't remember if I got it from Berkshire Valley Models or from Keith Wiseman. Either way, it's a nice looking little toolbox. I've got a little oil can and I'm securing all of these in place with just a dab or two of Eileen's tacky glue. And we need a steel drum here with some axle grease or oil. Railroading is a messy business. And we need a couple of shovels I think and a sledgehammer of course. And then I've got this member of the training crew who's standing by with his axe. He's actually a 3D print from a photo of the late great Ward Kimball. If you know, you know. And last but not least, I'm going to add some fine chain over here. Hang it over the side and throw it haphazardly in there. And there is the finished car. Pretty happy with that. You might notice that I left the central portion of the gondola section open. And that is because of the primary function that this car is going to serve. And that is as a companion car to the crane. Well, I think I made a pretty good start on my work train. Thank you all so much for joining me today for this work caboose build. You know, there are a few things I enjoy more than taking a discarded piece of equipment or something from the junk drawer and turning it into something unique and useful for the layout. Hope you enjoyed it too. If you do enjoy this kind of content, please subscribe and hit that notification bell. So YouTube will let you know when the next video is coming from Thunder Mesa Studio. And in the meantime, you know, you can also follow along for free on Patreon. That's at Patreon.com slash Thunder Mesa or on Instagram at Thunder.Mesa. And check out the resources available on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at ThunderMesa.Studio. As always, a great big thank you to all of our Patreon members who help to make these videos and these projects possible. Until next time, keep moving forward, everybody. Adios for now.