Batch-building freight cars - 9
Step four: Cut out and assemble
Next it’s time to start construction. Starting with the first sub-
assembly, locate all the parts needed. Then cut them off of the
sprues and make little piles of each part. In many cases, cutting
off the parts will take more time than gluing the parts together
but don’t rush this step. Total time to cut out parts in our stock
car build was three hours. 38 minutes.
After you have cut out the parts for a particular subassembly,
put the assemblies together one at a time until all of these par-
ticular assemblies are done.
For this stock car batch proj-
ect, I built the underbodies,
and then I applied weather-
ing to the trucks, wheels and
underbodies. Next I built the
car bodies and applied the
roofs. The last step was to
attach the weathered trucks.
Some subassemblies will
benefit from a bit of initial
weathering. For example,
in order to appear realis-
tic, it is necessary to kill the
shine on the wheels, trucks
and underbody. On the
prototype these parts usu-
ally have varying degrees
of grime on them. When
the underbody is done, but
before mounting the trucks,
paint it flat black (or the
body color, if appropriate
14: This photo of the
workbench shows all the
subassemblies organized
in boxes.
14
MRH-Mar 2013
