Accurail CN AutoRack

Last year at the train show in Woodstock, I bought an old Accurail kit of an open CN auto rack.  I can't really explain why, other than the sellers' price was acceptable and it looked like kind of a fun little project for me to do sometime.  And it was.  It doesn't fit my more modern era, and I don't have any vehicles to put on it, and am unlikely to go looking for any.  My understanding just from looking around on the internet is that the tooling for this car now belongs to Walthers.

Here are all of the kit parts laid out.  Doesn't look too complicated.  The most challenging thing about assembly turned out to be the instructions sheet, which was a somewhat cryptic exploded diagram.

The kit can be built as either a bi-level or tri-level car.  I went for the tri-level model, because why not?  Here I have all of the vertical posts in place on one side, and the others are cut out and ready to go for the 2nd side.  Then it'll be the triangular gusset pieces and the rest of the parts.

It took me a few minutes to figure out that the "X-braces" that are included in the kit aren't intended to go on the tri-level car model.  That despite that I found a couple of photos online of CN tri-level racks with that bracing.  Oh well.

Jumping ahead, here's my completed tri-level. I confess that in three or four areas, I managed to leave glue spots visible on the posts.  I sanded those off best I could, and then sprayed Tamiya Rubber Black, which is a pretty flat finish, over those bad spots and then over most of the car to blend it all in.

Here we are out on the layout.  If you're noticing a little bit of reddish colour on the decks, that's good because I had sprayed them with a little bit of red primer colour before I started assembly, just to try to show some wearing of the paint where the vehicle tires would roll.

The model came with Accumate couplers, but I put Kadee #5 couplers on it because I had them available and they're better anyways.  It also came with 36" plastic wheels, but I haven't changed them to metal ones yet simply because I don't have any.  And besides, this car won't likely see a whole lot of time on the layout.

I saw a photo of a CN autorack that was kind of like this but not really the same, and it had some posts along the top level with cable strung through them.  My guess is a safety thing in an effort to keep a worker from falliing.  So that might make for a nice modification sometime.

But that's going to do it for now.  A pretty nice model that went together well.

Happy Boxing Day out there, and everybody have a Happy New Year.