Flat Cars

This left me with an extra cylinder assembly even if it was broken, and I also had a spare shay truck with no motor. I thought it might be interesting to use these parts as loads for a flat car. I already had one small Bachmann flat car and one plastic under frame from a small Bachmann box car.

I made a second flat car by adding a piece of styrene box car siding as the new floor and a set of Ozark Miniature stake pockets to each side. Both flat cars were painted with caboose brown paint. Then I added a set of body-mounted couplers and installed the trucks.

The next step was to come up with a wooden frame to hold each load on its flat car. This took two or three attempts before I was satisfied with how they looked. The tricky part was how I was going to attach the load with its wood frame to each flat car. I decided to use Ozark Miniature black brass chain and chain binders. To fasten one end of the chain to the stake pocket I used a medium size necklace clasp that I found at Michaels in Owen Sound.

I was quite pleased with the final results and look forward to seeing them as part of a train on our layout next year.