5 minute makeover take two...

Last year I did a short blog post on a quick job that transforms a model, and in the same vein I offer a second today...

My older American freight cars, along with some of the more modern ‘budget’ releases lack air hoses on the headstocks. Kadee offer a pack of 10 pairs (#438) which make the job of adding these quick and easy. They may not be a perfect representation for each prototype but that’s not what this is about, it’s a quick job that adds an extra layer of realism by ‘filling in the gap’ so your eye doesn’t have to...

Cutting the mounts you’ll notice a square hole, to marry up to the air hose. I find these are a touch out of register and once secured (with polystyrene cement) I tweak the hose to ensure it hangs vertically.

The centreline of the hose top should be about half way up the coupling face, so if necessary the extra mounting pad can be used from the Kadee sprue. In this case it wasn’t required.

Simply superglued to the end of the car, adjacent to the coupler box, the lip at the front makes its location easy and consistent.

The result, seem on my fledgling layout shows that you could even leave it unpainted. This small touch I think has the effect of fooling your eye into thinking there is more detail then there is, a neat trick with these older cars (this is a 1990s Atlas tooling I repainted last year). I can do a car at a time, in less than 5 mins, which is a good way to spend some ad hoc modelling time when other jobs are 5 minutes just to get the tools ready! More soon...