O.L.Co. 20' Boxcar

On the work bench lately has been an On3 under-frame that will be assembled into a 20' boxcar to run on my freelanced version of the Oregon Lumber Company, (which yes, I'm building in On3, HOn3 and some HO standard gauge thrown in for good measure).  The wood bits were salvaged from a partially assembled Taurus 20' Orecar kit that I got secondhand.  The assembly was pretty poor, but yielded a good supply of O scale timbers and detail parts.


I wanted to take a new approach to building truss rods on this car, using brass wire instead of fishing line, which I have experienced tends to go slack after a short time.  I also wanted to be able to see daylight through the turnbuckles, which I think is a great detail.  To that end, each truss rod is assembled from four individual bits of wire, each one carefully bent to shape and test fit numerous times during assembly.

I like the result, despite taking about three hours to do four truss rods, (including several bourbon and cigarette breaks...).  The underframe is complete minus the coupler draft timbers which will be added once the body is complete.  Since these photos were made the entire underframe has been spray painted black and decking  has been added using some mystery lasercut parts I had laying around.  It was installed upside-down to allow the etched detail to be seen from the bottom, which is fine as I hadn't planned to have any interior detail in this car.