Building a MP 112000, 113000, 114000 Flour car

[madonnasuffolk30]

Charlie,

Looking forward to your progress with the model.

Nate

[clemmie_doris12]

I have been wanting a model of these cars for some time. I’m sure there are others in the same boat. Nate and I can’t be the only ones. If this works out, I hope Stan has lots of these kits in stock.

[peggyrothschild]

Changes to Stan’s castings will be a little involved. The roof will need the hatches plugged, putty applied and sanded smooth. There’s a couple of places on the roof ribs where the hatches fold back on rest on that will have to be removed. I need to find an 8′ wide Youngstown style door I can cut down to an 8′ height. Last changes are redoing the bottom sill tabs. None of this is overwhelming but will take some time. As I tackle the changes I’ll add photos.

Stan will be wondering why these kits are flying off his shelves 8^)

[peggyrothschild]

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.

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[Ray Swanson]

That doesn’t look too difficult filling in those holes until you notice the rivet detail that needs to be preserved around the edge of the roof. Yikes!

[peggyrothschild]

[attachment=1:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki][attachment=0:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki][attachment=2:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki]Minor updates, am still dealing with the hatch openings. Lots of filing, sanding and dabs of Tamiya putty. I glued the plastic hinges on from the back of the roof to fill the holes and will file and sand these to match the ribs when they dry. I cut down four Legoes for the ends so I had a larger surface to glue the ends to. [attachment=6:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki][attachment=5:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki][attachment=4:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki][attachment=3:2gvjrgki]image.jpeg[/attachment:2gvjrgki]

[peggyrothschild]

It’s starting to look like a Mopac flour car now that the door is glued on. I still have some clean up to do on the roof but I wanted to see if the sides, ends and roof ‘really’ did fit before I spent another hour on the roof. All the resin parts fit extremely well. If someone were to make a 3D replacement roof and one piece doors I could see doing a couple more of these little guys traveling to and from my mills but plugging the roof and filing and sanding just isn’t my idea of a great way to sit at the hobby desk and this guy may end up being an orphan on the layout.

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[madonnasuffolk30]

I just saw posted on another group that Stan Rydarowicz passed away suddenly this morning of an apparent heart attack. Condolences go out to his family.

Nate

[peggyrothschild]

@obermeyern wrote:

I just saw posted on another group that Stan Rydarowicz passed away suddenly this morning of an apparent heart attack. Condolences go out to his family.

Nate

Thanks for the note, sorry to hear this; I met Stan at one of the RPMs very nice guy and great modeler.

[peggyrothschild]

Pull this guy off the shelf of doom and decided to finish it. Doors are in place with the one photo showing where to make the cuts to lower the door. The roof will get Archer rivets to replace those around the ends where the ice hatched were.

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[peggyrothschild]

Since it appears Stan’s resin kits and parts are no longer available I did a search on FHIX HO reefers and see that Accurail makes one with the five panels on each side, has the correct ends and a diagonal panel roof and is a very good base model to build the MP 114330-114679 series. Nate has posted a photo of one of the cars from this series in an earlier post in this blog. I’m meeting with Hubert Mask at RPM to discuss making decals for these series of unique MP flour and cement cars.

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View of the prototype end

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Accurail’s dreadnaught end – matches the prototype perfectly.

[peggyrothschild]

I’d bought one of the Accurail plug door reefers to see how much work it will be to make a MP flour car. The model has separate ends that are nicely cast, correct number of side panels and correct roof. The modeling effort will be to remove the cast on hatches, all the plug door details, side tack board, poling pockets, cast on hand holds and ladders. So it’s a little more work but it’s a cheap (and the only) way to add one of these unique MP cars to your roster. As mentioned Hubert Mask is willing to make a decal set for these cars so stay tuned.

[Author]

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