Rebuilding C 648 Part II

Somehow I managed to finish rebuilding the caboose without getting too many photos snapped so here's the conclusion of this project.

While all of the window glazing showed signs of age, glue and paint to varying degrees, the cupola was by far the worst offender.  The glazing had popped loose and was nearly falling out when I removed it from the roof.  Using the old glazing as a tracing template, I cut new glazing from plastic packaging.  I glued these pieces into the cupola using Testors Clear Parts Cement.

The only remaining steps were to paint the weights I had "hidden" in the car's interior and beneath, touch up the paint on the figure in the cupola, cut and install end glazing, and reassemble the car.  The car came together easily and without incident, though I did have to scrape away some old glue here and there to get clean fitting joints.

I left the roof removable for the future in order to hopefully someday add lighting.  Thankfully the fit is snug so I don't need to worry about rigging some way to hold it on.  Also the ladders wrap up and over the ends though I'm not relying on them to hold the roof in place.  The other caboose (briefly mentioned in the previous rebuild post) only needed minor repairs, not worth detailing here.  I'm happy to see both cars back in service.  Up next, a big red box car.

Sorted

The first pass at my rolling stock was into three major categories.  This image shows the result of sorting those categories into further divisions.  Some of these tubs and boxes near the top contain structures.  Believe me, people, this is progress!

The categories as of this post, 10/23/2026:

• Turn of the Century
• 1920s (pre-depression)
• 1950s (pre-1959 VGN-N&W merger, "transition" era)
• 1980s (right around the N&W-SOU merger into Norfolk Southern)
• "Heritage" fleet (private road names of varying eras built by the original owner)
• Commemorative cars (childhood nostalgia, commercially produced private road name cars, and tourist railroads)
• Passenger equipment and Maintenance of Way
• HOn3
• Freezers (cars, kits and car sides of varying eras)

I'm still processing the process, so to speak.  That is to say, this journey has raised a few questions and has given me perspective on the state of my collection with some real numbers.  For example, I have one tub each of 80s equipment and Turn-of-the-Century equipment, two tubs of 1920s era rolling stock, but 4 tubs worth of "Transition" era equipment, not counting the heritage equipment or reefers that fit into those eras, and passenger cars or MoW stock.  Based on this division, how would I fill the staging cabinet I'm building for my current '20s era layout?  Would it reflect what I own, what I want to run on that layout, or what interests me most at the time?  The answer may seem simple but the fact I'm raising the question means it is not.  Each option has its pros and cons.

I've also been paying attention to what excites me most as I look through this stuff.  It all brings a smile to my face...well...most of it.  Some cars I wonder why I bought them, and some were gifts I wouldn't have chosen.  Some are "sows ears" that would take great effort and cost as much as a newer kit to build into a fine model.  No doubt I'll cull the collection with the intent of buying a table at a swap meet.  I also realized I want to build (and restore) many of these cars but of course can really only do one at a time.  To that end I've made a 5/25 list* and the results surprised me.  Out of the 25 cars I'd be interested in building sooner than later, the top 5 that stood out most weren't all from one era or group, but spread across multiple groups, including a diversity of car types.

I haven't decided on the next step in this inventory work.  When I originally set out to make an inventory I had visions of spreadsheets which quickly morphed into visions of note cards which I could then sort into categories.  Handling the cars by emptying the tubs and rearranging them into categories has been far faster and easier than creating a card for each car, one by one.  Andrew Mellen is right; making these sorting decisions is simpler when all the items are laid out before you instead of handling each one.  So I suspect the next step in the inventory process will become obvious as I get the staging cabinet built; either that or it will hit me like lighting at 3 AM.  Either is possible.

*Falsely attributed to Warren Buffet, the 5/25 list is a way of selecting which projects mean the most to you at that moment, allowing you to be more productive, supposedly.  Once the list is populated you select the top five, focus all your energy on them, and set aside the remaining 20 until the first group is done.  I'm using it as a way to examine my present interests more than select an actual list of projects to build, though I may use it that way when the current Trail Drive is completed.  We'll see.

Rebuilding C 648

I own two Pan Handle Rusty Route cabooses and one is in far better shape than the other.  I'm starting with the most distressed and in need of repair, number 648.  Built from a Silver Streak kit with full interior and lighting, the car is a fine example of what could be done by a skilled modeler in the 1960s to create a car with detail and charm.  Sadly it has seen better days, but happily the repairs needed are straightforward.

While I'd like to light this car again in order to showcase the interior work, that's not a project I want to tackle at the moment.  My goal for now is to rebuild the car to running condition, mechanically sound first, address a "weighty" issue, and get it back on the rails behind #225 within the next month.  I'll leave the roof removable for now in order to add lights eventually.

The chief mechanical defect is a frozen coupler.  I had originally planned to replace it with a nearly identical one from my parts bin but decided I had nothing to lose by trying to unstick this one.  So, I thwacked the knuckle ever so gently with a tiny hammer and it moved.  A few more taps and I could move it, stiffly, with my thumb.  I applied graphite with a mechanical pencil followed by a drop of alcohol to draw the lubricant into the joint.  That did the trick.  After scrubbing away the remaining corrosion and working the knuckle a bit more, the coupler is now functioning and ready to be reinstalled on the body.

Next I turned my attention to the supplemental weights John had added into the body.  I'm guessing the car didn't track well or perhaps didn't make reliable contact with the rails to keep the light from flickering.  Either way, he felt a bit more weight was necessary, as these lumps of lead appear to be later additions to what was a neatly laid out interior arrangement.  I decided I could keep those weights in the car by modifying the details in such a way as to hide the weight in plain sight.  

I began by milling out the cabinets under the cupola seats to accept the two largest weights.  I used a small Forstner type bit and a straight cutting bit in my Dremel tool to remove the material.  Next I cut the remaining weights into smaller bits that would replace parts of the seat and table bases, taking care to keep the weight balanced on each side of the car, as best I could.  Finally I resorted to slipping one chunk of weight between the underbody tool box and center sill.  Once painted this will be invisible from a normal viewing angle.

This is a good stopping place for this post so I'll continue the caboose repair report in the next.  Thanks for reading!

225 Rolls Again

This is the first installment of my Fall 2026 Trail Drive during which I will restore the equipment I've collected from John L. Oliver's Pan Handle Rusty Route and Earl Benteler's Allegheny.

Having successfully reorganized my workbench and created space for the staging cabinet beneath the layout, I decided it was time for another Trail Drive.  Click HERE for the post that explains the Trail Drive concept and HERE for the current posts with that label.  There's a specific reason for undertaking this particular trail drive at this time but that'll be explained in another post.  For now I'm starting with 2-8-0 #225.

The United "Santa Fe" 2-8-0 is one of the most popular brass locomotives from what some consider to be a golden era of brass imports.  John Allen had one, along with similar 2-8-0s from United based on other prototypes, and they were popular with his crews.  I can understand why.  Beautiful detail, well balanced, and no doubt when new, smooth reliable runners, sure footed and strong.

But time has not been kind to many of these models.  While this one was in excellent condition cosmetically, it ran with a significant grinding noise.  After removing the motor and gearbox - a simple matter of removing a few screws - the wheels rolled freely and the valve gear motion was smooth.  The issue was the motor and gearbox.

I had purchased a "can" motor from an eBay seller several years ago, not long after acquiring the locomotive.  I knew I'd likely be replacing the gearbox but postponed that purchase until I could get the thing on the bench and look under the hood.  Now that I'd done that I could see the model would benefit from a better gearbox but funding for that purchase is not available at present, so I'd have to make do with the new motor and some model airplane fuel tubing for a "universal" joint.

A bit of research revealed I'd be in for a challenge removing the brass collet from the gearbox shaft.  Some persistent heat and pressure from a Northwest Short Line Puller II made the task relatively painless.  I reinstalled the gearbox and after some cogitating decided it best to mount the new motor using A-Line's double sided mounting tape.  This is by no means a permanent solution but for a proof of concept it'll do nicely.

And prove the concept it did!  I made a video showing the difference in the locomotive's performance before and after the remotoring.  This is without any supplemental lubrication so I expect a slight improvement in performance with some oil.  I disabled the lights as the old cloth insulation on the wiring was a little sketchy and I didn't want to risk a short.  Someday when I upgrade the gearbox I'll probably install new lights as well but for now this is enough.

Nearly There

Does it look any different?  See this post here for the "before" images.  Beneath the layout where the two white boxes are sitting is where the "staging cabinet" is going to live.  That's a project for this Fall, and one I'm really looking forward to.

Decluttering is a skill that, when learned well and practiced regularly, is able to rewrite the brain.  The greatest takeaway from this reorganization has been the realization that I deferred way too many decisions.  That's the essence of clutter - "I'll decide later".  The more I can decide now, the easier it becomes to keep doing that, and the less cluttered my workbench becomes.

Better For Baby

In my last post I shared an image from Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Why Michigan?  Because I've been searching for prototype images of billboard refrigerator cars.  A while back I acquired a large set of card and wood sides for HO scale freezers.  I'd like to be able to categorize them by era but also learn about the details of the actual car bodies they'd have been seen on and that means research.

I'm nearly certain I've seen a prototype image of this car:

It wasn't in the Hendrickson & Kaminski "Billboard Refrigerator Cars" book.  It wasn't on the 1900-1930 Era Railroad Modelers Facebook Group.  So where did I see it?  Maybe I'm just imagining it.  Still, there should be an image out there somewhere, so I began digging around online.  Digital collections of railroad images in Michigan seemed a good place to start.  

It didn't take long to find an article on Fremont history that included an image of the Gerber factory in which one end of a GSVX freezer can be seen (Gerber Strained Vegetables).  The source for that image was a post card in the University of Michigan digital image collection.

Fremont, 1936  (citation below*)

Can you spot it?  I didn't at first.  Here's an enlargement, zoomed in on the car in question:

What does this tell me about the car?  Not much, but now I have a few clues for modeling it.  The roof is dark, as is the ladder (or grab irons...).  The hatches appear to be plain, without a larger platform around them.  The biggest unknown remains the underframe.  I'd guess either a deep fishbelly or straight steel, but this picture gives no indication.  Kits are no help here as both options were available; straight from Tenshodo or Varney, fishbelly from Red Ball.  My sides were likely made by Tenshodo.

A helpful comment on the Facebook group mentioned above indicated that the cars were listed in the ORER from 1935 to 1937, a short window of time.  These cars were built in the late 1920s but painted for Gerber in the early 30s.  The ban on billboard reefers went into effect August 1, 1934 with a grace period until January 1, 1938 before they could no longer be interchanged.  That makes this photo a rare thing, showing the car in operation.

Finally, a word about color.  Early kits offered them in the lovely two-tone blue and white but somewhere along the line Tyco made the decision to offer a pink version.  Were there pink ones in real life?  The pink/blue gender colors were suggested in 1918 and well established by the middle of the 20th century so it is possible, especially from a baby food company willing to paint dancing animals on a pastel hued car side.  I think the pink version was more likely a marketing gimmick by toy train manufacturers rather than a reflection of reality, but it would be an exciting discovery to learn they came in both colors.

*"Fremont Michigan". https://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tinder/x-44719/tinder-rppc-089437. In the digital collection David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. September 13, 2026.

Shipman Choo Choo Candy Kitchen

What are the odds?  I'm browsing historic photos in the Grand Rapids Public Library, (a site that is absolutely convinced I'm a robot, btw), when I stumble across this image:

https://digital.grpl.org/Detail/objects/122671

Here is the accompanying text from the listing:

"Aerial view of the Kent Printing Company at 49 Coldbrook NE, and the surrounding neighborhood including the houses at 41 and 51 Coldbrook. In the background are buildings on Plainfield near Leonard NE, including the Shipman Coal Co., later the Choo Choo Grill, and others on the west side of Plainfield. The photo also includes the railroad yard behind the building, houses on Leonard and Barnett streets, the water treatment plant and the Grand Rapids Chair Company."

I had already spotted it, but in case it doesn't jump out at you, here's a closeup of what caught my eye:

That Jerkinhead roof over the round top window and the tall chimney on the roof could only belong to one building, the Lemon Drop Candy Kitchen.  Okay, well that's my name for a model of what in reality is now the Choo Choo Grill but in this image it was the office for the Shipman Coal Company.  Google either of those for good images.  The modern structure is where Walthers got the inspiration for the round window awnings and they also included two door types, one matching the current structure and one matching the older use, a nice nod to the structure's fit in multiple eras.  This image is from March, 1938.

So what am I doing perusing the historic images of Grand Rapids?  Looking for an image of the elusive Gerber reefer, of course, but that's a post for another time.