First Kitbash/Scratchbuild Project

[jtnrr]

A friend and I were recently doing some railfanning when we came across a Norfolk Southern MOW crosstie train with those unique orange crosstie gondolas. Upon watching, my friend pointed out the fact that these cars were built out of bulkhead flatcars that had their ends cut down and had the sides installed. With no one manufacturing these unique cars I decided to take up the porject. I am going to use an Atlas Trainman bulkhead flat car and some styrene to do the job. My question is does anyone know of any available NS decals that could be used for this project? I know Microscale makes an assorted freight car decal sheet but I was curious if anyone knew of any others. Thank you.

[Raeder]

I'm assuming you're looking at something like this:

www.krunk.org/~joeshaw/pics/ns/co-cars/ns997342mw-1.jpg

This car looks like one of the pulpwood flats that were modified into all kinds of other cars. I'd consider starting with the SIECO pulpwood flat that Walthers put out, as that has the right bulkhead shape. After that, all you'd have to do is cut down the bulkheads, strip, build up the walls of the gondola, repaint, and decal. I'd say go ahead and just use a standards set of Microscale lettering decals, and whatever NS decal set has that logo on it. Those letters look like the ones off of set 90101, and the logo could probably be taken from 87-1225.

[jtnrr]

Thanks for the input. Yes, that is the car I am looking to model. I was originally going to use the Atlas Trainman bulkhead flat cars with the short bulkheads but found them to be a little lower than the ends on the MOW gondola. I had completely forgot about the SEICO flatcar, thanks! It does look like the perfect fit.

[jtnrr]

So finally got my hands on a Walthers 50' SIECO Pulpwood flatcar. Unfortunately, my work with styrene needs much improvement, so I contracted out my good friend, ncrail95, to do the work. Need to say, he did a terrific job. More has been done with this since this photo was taken, so more will be posted later.

[jtnrr]

Note: I will be doing the priming and painting.

[georgiaroad]

Man! You beat me to it! Great start of a model there. I saved your picture so I can refer back to it on my efforts.

Great Job!

[jtnrr]

Nice! Best of luck in your project.

I just need to paint and decal now.

[Raeder]

Looks good so far, good luck with the paint & decals.