Winter 2025-2026 Rolling Stock Projects

The cold weather once again has me in the workshop bringing derelict pieces of rolling stock back to life.

Let's start with a Lionel Giraffe car and a Lionel Autoloader that I worked on simultaneously. Here are the completed projects:

The Giraffe doner car was not too bad to begin with, but I wanted a custom Warrenville Zoo one:

After sanding off the heat stamped graphics, priming, painting and custom decals:

The Autoloader was a heavily rusted mess that I paid $5. for.

I had a lot of rust to sand off and pits to fill with autobody spot filler. More sanding, primer, paint, decals applied, a coat of Dullcoat and then reassembly:

After restoration in WVRR livery. I had 4 original autos in "inventory":

The freight line that shares LIRR trackage is the New York and Atlantic Railway.

I bought a couple perfect donor cars at the fall York meet, a 6464 body on an operating boxcar frame and a hopper car to transform to the NY & A livery:

Stripped and primed:

After painting, custom decals applied and a finishing coat of Dullcoat. Trucks cleaned up and wheels wire brushed. I made the hopper's load by carving a piece of Styrofoam to fit and glued fishtank charcoal to it.

Yes, I know that the shade of green I used is wrong, but I like the way it "pops" with the black trim:

I stripped, painted and decaled these NY & A Railway crew cars for the Railroad Museum of Long Island. The green paint color I used here is very close to what the NY & A uses:

OOPS! After several weeks we noticed that the NY & A herald that I plucked off of the internet and resized, had the word "Atlantic" spelled wrong!

Here are a couple pics with the corrected decals:

This Northern Pacific 6464 boxcar was painted with leftover paint from the RMLI project. The decals with white were bought at a train show, I printed the black and flag decals:

The frame was in rough shape, so I wire wheeled off light rust and painted it. Trucks cleaned and wheels wire brushed too:

I used the same procedures noted for previous projects for the body, with one additional step; the heat stamping was very deep so I needed to spot putty over them before sanding:

I just made this one for Cape Warrenaveral. Note: Rocket Fuel load with a No Smoking warning - lol.

Here is the "before":

Just finished is this Virginian 6464. It matches my postwar FM Trainmaster and the custom Virginian caboose I made a couple years ago:

Before:

The next project started out as a piece of rolling stock and ended up as a Rocket Fuel storage tank for Cape Warrenaveral.

Totally free.

The tank car body was a “throw-in” with a recent train show purchase, I had the paints, the silver base was some leftover tile edging, and the decals were put together from my stash of leftovers I printed for prior projects.

Before, a tank car body from an unknown manufacturer:

After, on the layout:

As you may know, I've made custom cabooses to match all of my Postwar diesels.

I just updated two of these earlier repaints.

Virginian before update:

Virginian after update:

Milwaukee Road before update:

Milwaukee Road after update

Notice that I try to put our wonderful flag on as many of my rolling stock projects as I can.

I expect to complete at least one more rolling stock project before this winter season is over. I'm thinking of a Milwaukee Road 6464, gotta find a donor car.

Keep a lookout for updates here.

For previous year's rolling stock projects click here:

Winter 2024-2025 Custom Rolling Stock Projects

and here:

Winter 2023-2024 Custom Rolling Stock Projects