Mineral Range Freight Equipment

My postings during the holidays has been obviously limited but I have been working on some models and am prepared at this point to share what I have been doing.

I am continuing with modeling the Mineral Range rolling stock.  Since the primary source of revenue for the railroad was servicing copper mines the majority of equipment was comprised of rock cars and flat cars. 

This model represents the 75 flat cars in the 51 to 199 series.  They were primarily used to carry mine timbers.  

This is a model of the 30 ton rock cars.  There were 100 cars in the series 1000 to 1198.  They were used to haul rock from the mine to the stamp mills and coal from the Portage Lake coal docks to the mines.

Since I need a number of these cars I created styrene patterns for the cars, RTV molds and then cast the parts in resin.  No fancy 3D printing for these models, all the pattern work is in 2D and the components are assembled to create a 3D model.  I know how to make patterns and do castings so there was no long learning curve involved or issues with printers.  The cost per complete model is about $15.

Completed Mineral Range Caboose

Painting and weathering is completed.  I intended for the model to represent a caboose which is three or four years old and in good repair.  When the Mineral Range standard gauged in 1898 it was necessary to purchase new equipment, cabooses, rock cars, flat cars etc.  It seems reasonable that the caboose body would be washed periodically as clean locomotives and I suppose cabooses would reflect on the prosperity of the railroad. 

Mineral Range Four Wheel Caboose

Have been working on the caboose.  I have only one photo of the prototype to work from, it shows the side but end detail is missing, therefore the end is an estimation.  It may or may not have had a window.

 

Four Wheel Bobber, Future Project

This caboose is located at the Houghton County Historical Society.  I was not able to find out what prototype used this four wheel bobber.  Many upper peninsula railroads used this style of caboose.  It is not a Mineral Range cab as they appear to have only one end window the top of which is even with the door header.  The end platforms on the MR car do not span the entire width of the car leaving room for end stairs.   I am currently building a pilot model of this caboose to get a feel for how it needs to be assembled.  My plan is to use this experience and build three bobbers more closely following the Mineral Range prototype.  I will use the dimensions of this prototype as the basis for the MR model.  This will be a build I will be documenting later this fall. 

I have been posting additional information on the Schusters building build.  The build is catching up with the current status of the model.

Coach Yard Car Washer At NAPM

This weeks project at NAPM was to build and install the coach yard car washer.  No one knows who manufactured the model.  It is comprised of white metal castings.  They are not the finest castings when compared to current manufacturing standards but do represent a facility that no manufactures currently produce.  In the back are the detergent storage tanks, pumphouse and control box.  In the right foreground are the washers themselves. There base is made from 1/8" thick styrene sheet and some scrape window material was used as the between track drain cover.

Update to Schusters Build

I have started to post updates to the Schusters build. 

Finished LaBelle Cars

This took a while to get completed.  I added Cal Scale air hoses to each car.  I also fabricated sets of outside brake beams adding each pair to the trucks.