Frank Hodina, the man behind Resin Car Works and lead on this year's Mini-Kit, will be available at the RCW booth in the vendor room to discuss this conversion. While full info sheets will be printed in the attendee program this year, you can see in progress and finished conversions, and get tips from Frank on how to perform the conversion.
This is a joint post from Jerry Hamsmith and Chris Vanko. We started on the build and thought we would share a few observations.
When preparing the body for the removal of the material along the sides between the ribs, it may or may not be best to install the backing styrene strips first. For the first car we did, we installed the strips as per the RPM handout. After first removing the sill steps as well as the 3 tabs on each inside of the body sides that were designed to hold in the floor, two strips of .040 x .100 styrene were cut to a length of 5-5/8", test fit, slightly sanded as needed and glued up against the floor stops. Small pieces of the same material were cut to fit behind each of the side ribs as well.
Filing away the body material between the ribs was not a easy process. Although it was easy to remove the material form the car body itself it was slow going once we reached level of the backing material. Prototype photos that Jerry found (see list below) indicated that the rivet line at the now bottom of the sides did not exist on the prototype. So, although, as the RPM handout indicates, you should file to just below the rivet line when removing material, you should come back and sand off the rivets.
On the second car we did, we did not add the backing until after removing the material between the ribs. Also, .040 x .080 material seems to work better. Once we figure out how to post a photo, we will show where the build on these cars is to this point.
Sources of Prototype photos:
Culotta,
Steam Era Freight Cars Refernce Manual, Volume 1, Page 140 - Car number 371015
Kline and Cullota,
The Postwar Freight Car Fleet, Page 75 - Cars 370261 and 371031
Wider,
Railway Prototype Cyclopedia, Volume 9, Pages 9 and 10 - Cars 370577, 370853, 370974
Jerry and Chris