Anyway, I have finally finished (I think) Milwaukee Road flatcar MILW 650008, the 50 foot, 1941 rebuild of a 1929 flatcar to carry World War 2 military equipment and still in use in July 1951 as part of a shipment of M46 tanks from the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant to the US Army pier at Oakland California.
This has been a long slog starting in March when I first saw the photo of M47 tanks being loaded at the Arsenal onto MILW 650007. I had an Athearn 50 blue box flatcar purchased probably in 1970's for a layout at my old house in San Francisco. The Athearn 50 foot flat car seems to be scarce as I have not found any others at local auctions and places that specialize in used trains.
I have had the help of 3 individuals on this project:
- Eric Burg who cut or provided HO scale 4x8 lumber for the deck.
- Robert Kirkham who responded to my plea for the 11 inch height stake pockets that figured prominently on the car sides and designed the STL file to print the pockets
- Jonathan Sauer who kindly printed the stake pockets and helped with minor adjustments to make fit exactly on the flatcar sides.
- Someone who's name I have lost who provided the Milwaukee Railroad car diagram for the 650001-137 flatcars with the correct stake pocket spacing.
Anyway, this ends my initial fleet of cars for the Tanks for the Memories shipment. I have some chocks, cleats and other braces to work on to accurately model the way the cars were shipped.
If I return to this project next year, I hope to bash a 46 foot Rock Island flatcar or 2 that was used in the US Army M46 manual to illustrate the factory to port or depot method of bracing. This will also entail new M46 tanks from the Miniature Tank Company that I can drill out the 2 tank recovery towing hitches on each end of the cars to replicate the steel rods that held the tank car in place. My layout is very small and I usually try to limit freight cars to 40 to 50 foot lengths. I can only accommodate a maximum of 4 40 foot cars on each of my staging yard 4 tracks and the stretch of the eastbound mainline on the staging yard extension.
My next project for Little Port Costa is the long delayed large Port Costa section house build to replace a stand-in illustration board building. The paper windows on the stand-in are beginning to annoy me. The station stand-in in the same layout area was built with Tichy windows that will eventually be used on the final structure.
Til we blog again....if Google allows...
