$.50 B&O Caboose Rebuild

[Sawdust]

Here is a little project I thought I would post just to show how easy you can salvage a what use to be, a piece of junk. I got this a couple of years ago for .50 at a swap meet mainly for parts. With all the body detail I felt it had too much potential to give itself up for parts. So here goes.

It started out with no wheels, no trucks, no couplers, broken coupler journal, no stove pipe, no windows, rusty rails, ladders & a lot of dirt. I should have mentioned what it had would have been easier.




No matter if it's Saturday or not most of my rolling stock projects get a good bath with bubbles before I start rebuilding.


I removed the bolster & cut the remaining coupler journal off.


I ground off the wood deck mounting pins for removal.


I cleaned the rust off of the ladder & rails. I also painted the wood deck floor on each end of the caboose frame.


I painted the new set of metal wheels & trucks. I normally rack up a bunch of these & spray them at one time. I put a light coat of oil on the wheels so the paint can be removed from the area that rides the rails. I had not used this paint in a long time. It came out real heavy & the pattern was very erratic so I just brushed out the heavy areas & thought that would be OK until I looked up. I had sprayed the front of my wife's dryer, her best laundry basket & part of the deep freezer All modeling had to stop for a major cleanup. This took about 2 hours & a lot of paint thinner. All the evidence has been removed.


I took some acrylics & painted some rust spots over most of the black spots where the red paint had chipped. I then feathered these out to blend.




Now for the finished Caboose that was destined to be scrap.






Thanks for viewing!

[Rhearn4]

That looks really great!

[MikeC]

Looks sweet, Jim!

Mike

[thogan3]

Nice transformation!

[ak-milw]

Great way to spend .050. I guess we shouldn't let your wife read the post though.

[I&O]

Alot of nice pic's as soon as i learn how to upload pic's to this sight i'll share some of what i am doing. Not as nice as those just getting started.

[ak-milw]

We all had a start at one time!! check in the photography section there is a sticky that tells you how to do pictures.

[I&O]

Thank i'll try that.

[Jeff LaPorte]

Great restoration job. The over spray on you drier and laundry basket, that's funny. It sounds like something I would do.

[Eastern Roads]

Jim, the crummy looks terrific, and the price was definitely right. Here's a pic of one I got for free that required a new paint job, and some details. The RDC in the center of the pic was a freebie in with a bunch of other HO scale junk, and I scrounged together the major parts.