Winter 2025-2026 Rolling Stock Projects
- lionelski
- 19 hours ago
- 2 min read
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:
This Northern Pacific 6464 boxcar was painted with leftover pain 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 expect to complete a couple more rolling stock projects before this winter season is over, keep a lookout for updates here.
For previous year's rolling stock projects click here:
and here: