Freight Car Friday

 Happy Friday all - well its been  a bit of a nail biter week with the US election and all. It still has not been decided yet and the differences in the key states at this time are very close - hopefully it will be over soon and the folks in the US can move forward. I did take some time to complete a Proto 2000 PS 2 hopper that I mentioned in my last post. It is one of their "Time Saver" kits and although it stated on the box that it takes one hour (or less) to build to have it ready to go on your layout, it took me I would say more in the line of approx 2.5 to 3 hours in total to complete. I like to take my time with a kit and take extra care when removing parts from sprue trees and clean up the parts afterward. The biggest  difference with this kit to the last full (BCOL) kit that I did (see previous posts) is that the end cages and associated break gear are already completed and installed - the same goes for the roof and the associated hatches and hinges -saving what I would guess to be a couple of hours work. I did notice that on some of the bottom pieces ( trough hatches and break lines ) that once they were removed from the sprues, you cut see the cut marks as they were off color. Luckily the bottom of this car is a flat black color, so I was easily able to touch these up with some Polly Scale steam colored black paint that I had on hand. I have seen this in other brands of kits and kinda always thought it would be a great idea if  Kit manufactures included some appropriate colored paint in the kits to do touch ups - I guess that in some cases though if a kit was not built for a number of years ( such as in this case) the included paint would be long ago dried up - oh well it was a thought!. This car is a bright yellow color ( not my favorite color for a freight car) and so once completed, got a good coat of Dullcoate to hide any glue marks as  well as to tone down the yellow - it turned out ok. The only other mod I made was to add Kadee # 148 whisker couplers - which I now add to any new freight car on my roster - cant remember last time I used the old #5's. Have a great weekend all. Till next time...

Proto 2000 PS2 4427 Hopper "Time Saver" kit