Intermodal: Wells and Spines

[crblue]

Here are some of my most recent freight car kit builds that I have added some extra details to. The spine and well cars are Walthers kits that were assembled and then detailed with parts from Plano Model Products and Details West.

[sarge]

That's some great work Mike. I bought the same well cars off of ebay for 6 bucks. They needed and still need some work though. I know I need to get the walkways, steps and container locator boxes and lift rings. What other parts did you use on the wells and the spine cars? I have a set of athearn spines that need to be detailed as well.

[sarge]

I believe they are seperate. They have a seperate part # for undecorated and TTX handrails.

[antlorch]

Dont forget the uncoupling bars ,trust me those are just as important as windshield wipers on engines,they will greatly improve the look of the end of the models even if it is the basic ones from Details Associates.

[crblue]

Jim,
On the well cars I only used the Plano walkway set along with their TTX yellow painted stanchions. It sounds like you plan on taking the well car detailing a step further but for me this was good enough, what I like about Plano is that most of their parts are available separately which gives you the freedom to detail the cars to your own satisfaction. The spines were detailed with a Details West spine car detail kit along with 0.15 and 0.12 brass wire for additional piping and .010 x .040 styrene strip for the support brackets. The trailer hitches are also Details West but are not sold with the kit. Plano does make the walkways for the Athearn spine cars aka "impacks" but I'm not sure if aftermarket hitches are available for these cars. Since the impacks hauled trailers only I would assume they had a non-collapsible type hitch so the Details West spine car hitches that are used for the Walthers Trinity all purpose spines wouldn't work.

Good Luck!

[sarge]

Thanks for the info. Actually I need the parts that I listed just to rebuild mine. They were pretty well hammered when I got them. I had to rebuild most of the pins on the male ends, but that is about as far as I got so far.

[sd45longhoodfoward]

can any one help with the routing of the air lines on the trinity industries spine cars for trailers up to 45 ft i have the details west spine car detail set sc1018 the diagram that came with it isnt so difinitive so pics drawings etc.. would be greatly apprecaited .And allso does anyone have pics of finished a line gunderson twin stack car's and thrall APL red generator equipped cars iam buliding all of these at one time! i have searched several web site with no luck even rrpicarchive
once again thanks guy's and gal's (QUOTE)once you do the rails you never come oh yeah i forgot! LONG HOODS FOWARD FOREVER!!!!!!!!

[riss2509]

2 options for ya. On yahoo groups there is the model intermodal group. Brian Kreimendahl Is a huge intermodal guy. He has his own photo site on Pbase.com, type in his name will get you his pics and such. I think there is also a regular website modeling intermodal, and there are a handful of books out there by Randall lee that may help also. Hope this helps!