India ink/alcohol blend. The mix is about 1-teaspoon of ink in a
pint of rubbing alcohol.
Rather than stripping the existing paint, I left it in place
because the planned Boxcar Red is a dense color that covers
everything well. If there remained a bit of bleed-through, well,
loggers could occasionally be somewhat slipshod when it came
to cosmetics.
Next came the roof modification, starting with cuts to accom-
modate the cupola. This is the only critical part of the process
because it needs to be as square and even as possible. In [7]
you can see the setup I used for this cut. A metal machin-
ists’ square – very handy for many modeling projects and not
6
6. A machinists’ square is invaluable for achieving a
perfectly square roof cut for the cupola opening.
Logging cabooses - 4
very expensive, a terrific item for your tool kit – held against
the clerestory provided a solid surface for lining up the razor
saw. This first cut was approximately 11’-6” from the end of
the roof but that’s not critical and depends on the size of your
cupola. Mine came from the caboose kit used for the other
project in this story.
The ends of the cupola I used were flat, so it was easy to make
a snug fit from roof to cupola. It may require some cutting,
sanding and filing and repeat fitting for the model you choose,
but it’s important to get that joint as snug as possible.
Once again digging into my scrap box I found some scribed sty-
rene, and cut a few pieces to fill in the gap between the cupola
and roof as shown in [7]. I had previously sanded the paint
7
7. After gluing the cupola in place, scrap scribed
styrene filled the extra spaces to give it a solidly
mounted appearance.
MRH-Oct 2014
