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September 27, 2007
I am a member of the Maine On2 group, an internet discussion forum, and some of the guys over there started up a new "subgroup" called "Two Foot Projects" which is all about scratchbuilding On2 rolling stock! The two groups can be found here: The first project, started in 2007, is all about building Bridgton & Saco River flat car #41. I eagerly jumped on board, and plan to build three flatcars with the group over the winter of 2007-2008. This webpage will be my "Builders log" of my flatcar builds. I am going to follow the class when it comes to the basic construction techniques, but I am going to build SR&RL cars instead of B&SR cars...only because I expect my future On2 model railroad will be based mostly on the SR&RL, and that is the 2-foot railroad I know the most about right now, having visited Maine a few times already to check out some SR&RL and WW&F sites. So I will change a few details and letter my cars for the SR&RL, but other than that I will be "building with the class." It doesnt really concern me if my cars wont be exact for the SR&RL, no model is ever 100% accurate anyway! They will certaintly look like SR&RL cars, and thats all that matters. I havent done much serious
scratchbuilding like this before, so this will be a valuable learning experience
for me. I was going to go with styrene, but changed my mind and went for
wood instead. Soon I plan to go out to my local hobby shop and buy the
necessary lumber, and it can begin! Update, October
26, 2007
Construction begins! I got all the styrene bits for the frame. (im going to build styrene frames with real-wood decking) I printed out "Lesson 3, making a jig" and got to work! I changed my mind again about
the construction materials! I am used to building in styrene, and im comfortable
with it, but I feel that "wood looks more like wood than styrene made to
look like wood looks like wood" So I am going with styrene frames,
Looks good! So I made that first frame Friday night..I was planning on making the other two over the weekend. (Im going to build 3 cars for right now, two 28-footers and one 33 footer..im going to build SR&RL cars rather than B&SR cars..just change some minor details (like stake pockets and etc.) to match prototype SRRL cars..) Which reminds me! I wanted to check out dimensions of SR&RL flats, to make sure they are the same as this B&SR flarcar the project drawing is based on..I already know SR&RL had 28' flats, so the length is fine..but what about the width? do I have any drawings or dimensional data? hmmm..not sure. ah! here we go..some dimensional
data. It says the majority of SR&RL flats were 6' wide..how wide is
the flatcar frame I just made? ahhhh!! its too wide! aw man..why didnt I check
that before I made the jig?? That would have been a really smart
thing to do. My immediate reaction was simply "oh well..no big deal..so my cars will be a few inches too wide? so what?..it wont even be visable! its 1/8 inch..big deal!" But as I continued to dwell
on it, it kept bothering me! So im going to start all
over..make a new jig at the proper 6' width and start over from scratch.
Not a big deal...and I will be much happier knowing they are the correct
width!
(... a few weeks go by...)
Update, November 11, 2007. started over! Modified the plans so they
are now the correct (for my SR&RL cars) 6' wide.
New frame #1.
thats all for now..
thanks,
Scot
Lawrence
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