Reply To: Building a MP 112000, 113000, 114000 Flour car

[Charles Duckworth]

Making sausage….or the ugly scenes behind kit bashing a Mopac flour car.

Started on Stan Rydarowicz’s ART resin kit to transform it into a Mopac flour car; the railroad contracted with St. Louis Refrigerator Car Co. to convert these reefers into boxcars in 1971-72.

So far the biggest hurdle will be plugging the ice hatch holes; for this I used .040 Evergreen styrene cut to the size of the hole and Tamiya putty. You’ll need to remove the lip around each of the openings and remove the semi-circular shape attached to one of the roof stiffeners where the ice hatch would rest when fully opened. Here’s Stan’s page where I ordered the model. http://www.sunshinekits.com/stanpage.html Depending on what prototype you want to build you can order his kits from 1952 or 1954 (I ordered the 1952 car). Just make sure you don’t order the cars from the late 1950s or they won’t have the horizontal rivet strip on the sides.

After I get the ice hatches finished I will have to plug the holes in the roof where the hatch hinges went. The rivets around the hatches and ends of the roof a tiny so I’ll end up sanding them off in the process to hide the ice hatch openings and replaced the rivets with Archer decal rivets. I will be using two 8′ doors for the sides out of a Branchline 40′ boxcar kit. These will have to be reduced in height to match the 8′ 4″ opening on the prototype car.

[attachment=2:2u5pg2br]image.jpeg[/attachment:2u5pg2br]

[attachment=1:2u5pg2br]image.jpeg[/attachment:2u5pg2br][attachment=0:2u5pg2br]image.jpeg[/attachment:2u5pg2br]